Re: erm isn't this what law enforcement is for?
(from the article>
"Before hacking back, the IT department would have to submit some homework to the FBI's National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force so the Feds can make sure national boundaries are being respected and that any action wouldn't interfere with an ongoing investigation."
And I wanted to have a bot do it, automagically. DAMMIT!
This is like "the 2nd ammendment" for cyber-self-defense. Works for me.
A cop cannot be everywhere. Citizens have to take it upon themselves to report and stop crime. I don't know about the U.K. but here in the USA we have "citizen's arrest" laws, where if you catch someone "in the act" you have the right to arrest that person with REASONABLE FORCE [but criminals have black eyes, broken bones, missing teeth, and if he doesn't look like a criminal, the cops won't believe it, heh]. So yeah, if you witness someone stealing, raping, murdering, you have EVERY right to use deadly force in many cases, and that's the point. Citizens are as good as cops at stopping crime.
In this case, it's citizens with computers who could, in theory, do their OWN investigating. But seriously, if you detect an intrusion, putting up a shield may not be enough. You might have to do something to damage the other end, like trick them into downloading a trojan horse that wipes their hard drive or similar. If a bot kicks in a URL re-director that fakes them into going to the wrong web pages [for example], they end up downloading the trojan horse.
I'd be all for THAT. As an extra added bonus, the law contains liability insurance, so if you destroy some innocent person's computer, you have to pay for it. No biggee. It's the same if you shoot the wrong person. You're liable for that, too.
/me gets bumper sticker for PC: This Computer is Protected by Smith & Wesson
Biting the hand that feeds IT
