[yelling_cat]

They won't be snagging professionals with this, and in this specific case I think that's fine.

I expect most of the people who'd fall for it are young or immature people, trying to get back at someone who beat them in a game or argued with them on social media. For whatever reason many of these folks see DDoSing, sending death threats and even swatting as "pranks" instead of crimes. A friendly reminder that doing this stuff can get them in serious trouble could nip that behavior in the bud before something tragic happens.

[mulmen]

But the same systemic weakness that enables Swatting can be exploited here. Specifically that the government assumes good faith. Instead of sending a SWAT team to your house I can sign up for a DDoS in your name.

[incone123]

I'd like to think that the investigation would be more sophisticated than just see what name is on the ddos request.

[kevviiinn]

You have far more faith in police than I do

[incone123]

Apart from people (hopefully) not using their real names to make the ddos request, I would guess the investigation is done by a tech department rather than non specialist officers.

[kevviiinn]

You have far more faith in police than I do

We have nontechnical people making legislation about technical things, why do you think police are any different

[incone123]

I don't think non technical people could pursue the investigation at all. I'm technical but not in that specialism so I'd have to do some studying just to get started.

Do you really imagine a patrol cop gets given a computer and told to 'find the suspect'? The legislators have someone else write what they put their name to, so that's not comparable.

[eli]

And then you'll get a warning from the police? While not ideal, that's hardly the same as a potentially fatal swatting

[marcosdumay]

Depends entirely on how the police reacts, but it could as well lead to them confiscating all of your computers and putting you in a jail.

Of course, swatting is worse. An on-demand terrorist attack by phone call is hard to top. But this one can be pretty bad too. Well, or maybe not, because it's not the starting evidence that makes it bad.

[mulmen]

It doesn't have to be fatal to be bad.

[vlovich123]

Assuming the legal system uses it as a teaching exercise. For some reason I feel like it's going to be used to throw the book at people who would be better served by guidance / opportunities instead.

[_Wintermute]

From what I've heard on DarkNet Diaries, the UK courts seem quite good at picking up intelligent youngsters involved in hacking and giving them a chance to move into cybersecurity.

[g_p]

The UK has a few pretty good schemes (e.g. Cyber Prevent) that try to intervene and stop young people before they get landed with a criminal record for (lower level) cyber crime - at one point the average age at time of arrest was 17.

[InCityDreams]

>before something tragic happens.

Gotta be USA.