We've just heard from the Met that they are dropping their investigation into MN Swatter

[JustineMumsnet]

We received this mail from the Met today. Not great news but I thought some might be interested in the outcome.

Hacking enquiry

"I am afraid that we can no longer pursue the hacking investigation of Mumsnet any further, there are no other lines of enquiry that we can follow up on. In order to identify the user of the online moniker of DadSec we have approached Twitter for their assistance however they cannot. The suspect used a number of different methods to hide their true identity from using TOR, proxy websites, compromised details and jurisdictions which are not Law enforcement friendly. All of this added together means that we do not at this stage have any viable leads and therefore will have to close this investigation.

I am more than happy to come across and discuss this in more detail in person. Please let me know a date and time and I can visit your offices to speak further.

I am sorry that in this instance we could not find the others who were responsible. If there is anything else that I can help with please do let me know.

Kind regards..."

It would have happened whatever! Due to servers being in different countries they are governed by different rules. They don't have to realise the info to our police. This is why cybercrime is so difficult. This is not an example of the corruption of the patriarchy.

Not surprised at all.

Let's hope it doesn't happen again.

The hacking was a misogynistic act.
I do think that more of an effort world have been made, and the person they did catch would have had a much harsher sentence had it not been a female website that was being attacked.

It doesn't matter how much effort the police make. The servers are in other countries with different laws. Social networks regularly refuse to cooperate with police investigations on cases more serious than this!
The hacking was explicitly an attack on women (and what followed). The investigation does not demonstrate an anti-women bias. It demonstrates the difficulty of policing the internet. International Law is at least a decade behind where it needs to be on this issue.

This is not an example of the corruption of the patriarchy
Don't try and patronise me into agreeing with you. Its a pretty poor tactic, does it ever work?

MN was attacked because it was a women's forum
The swatting attacks occurred because women were talking back and pissing men off
The perpetrators have got away with it. They will not be punished.
They caused a terrifying invasion of a woman's home using the police as a weapon.
But nothing can be done?

Yeah
Right.

The attack was misogynistic. The investigation was not. I am not trying to patronise you merely point out that oddly enough a case can't progress if the police can't access the evidence. It's a huge problem for the police actually. Without evidence the CPS would laugh at them.

Yes cybercrime is notoriously difficult to evidence because of this.

Police need investment in resources for these areas of work but that's not likely to happen any time soon.

Tom Daly gets death threats via twitter. They turn up at the door of the person.
A woman gets rape threats via twitter and she gets a pat on the head and told not to be silly.

Not the same thing I know, and I know that the investigation is different but it goes very deep down.

Daly's death threats were probably not from fake profiles. There are examples of women who have been abused online where the people responsible are now inside.
This type of crime is different. People who abuse from fake profiles or cover their tracks are difficult (often impossible) to catch without engaging in hacking yourself.

David Buchanan, the only person to be prosecuted and punished, was a 16 year old boy with Asperger's Syndrome. He wrote the script that enabled the hack and handed it over to the hackers.
When he realised how they'd used it, he disabled the script.
The judge said that, although his Aperger's Syndrome was not an excuse, it did go some way to explaining his actions.

The hack was awful, and the Swatting attack even worse, but I'm very uncomfortable with the scapegoating of a 16 year old with an ASD diagnosis when the real criminals get to walk away scot free.

Why on earth did he hand over the script to the hackers? I write stuff like this for fun,and am probably on the autistic spectrum, but I wouldn't dream of using it.

David Buchanan may have only been 16 but he knew exactly what he was doing. He wasn't 'scapegoated'. It was his actions that allowed the other criminals to do what they did. It wasn't a matter of boyish high jinx - it was deliberate, pointless and nasty. He was bright enough to know that it was wrong, Aspergers or not.

I'm sure he knew it was wrong but he probably didn't appreciated the enormity of what he was doing. 16 y/o are not mature enough to properly think through the consequences of their actions, especially if they are in thrall to older men who they admire. Even basically decent teenagers can act like total pillocks sometimes and there's an element of luck in how much fallout there is from their pillocking.

I don't think it's fair to judge a 16 y/o, especially if they're autistic, by the same yardstick as a mature criminal.

I think jeffrey got the info he needed for the swat attacks from twitter in any case. He could have got that at any time even without the MN hacking.

I don't think it's fair to judge a 16 y/o, especially if they're autistic, by the same yardstick as a mature criminal

I think when he was sentenced that the court specifically said that his age was taken into account. (I've only read that second hand though).

I imagine if he were a mature criminal then he would have got a harsher sentence.

I think jeffrey got the info he needed for the swat attacks from twitter in any case. He could have got that at any time even without the MN hacking

I don't think that's right. The information the swatted needed bacame available because of David Buchanans actions.