Hacker collective Anonymous is exercising its right to free speech, it seems.
A petition has surfaced on the White House website calling for dedicated denial of service attacks (DDoS) against websites to be considered a legal form of protest, akin to waving signs and chanting in a public space.
Of course, it's difficult to verify whether anything claiming to be (or accused of being) affiliated with Anonymous actually is, since the members of the group are unidentified and change constantly.
Still, anyone hoping to legalize DDoS is likely to at least be sympathetic to the causes of Anonymous, which could be pretty much anything that pops up in the internet zeitgeist, but lately has included attacks against Syrian and Israeli websites for human rights abuses, denouncements of the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church and support for Bradley Manning, the jailed Wikileaks source.
The petition describes DDoS as a technological form of a protest staple. "It is the equivalent of repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a webpage. It is, in that way, no different than any 'occupy' protest. Instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time."
The petition also calls for all charges involving DDoS to be dropped, and all prisoners serving sentences for the crime to be released.
There are some similarities between DDoS and sit-ins, but legal scholars are unlikely to draw many comparisons.
Most websites that are attacked are privately-owned or government-run. Protesters can gather on public property, but there's no right to protest in private space, like inside a shopping mall, and the government has always reserved the right to restrict access to its properties.
Many courts have held up reasonable restrictions on free speech in some instances, such as mandating minimum distances from clinic entrances for anti-abortion protesters.
Whether these restrictions are just or constitutional is another matter, but they have a long history.
The petition has nearly 3,000 signatures, but it will need 25,000 by Feb. 6 to garner an official response from the White House.