Patriotic Hacking (Or Maybe Just Pranking), Cont'd

After Obama's State of the Union Address, Brazilian hackers defaced around 50 U.S. government sites, placing expletive containing messages against Obama on each site. These sites primarily serve the House of Representatives, and were undergoing routine maintenance which briefly exposed the sites to attack. That was all the time these vandals needed to heckle these politicians.

One might wonder what the intentions of such an attack might be. Certainly there was a denunciation of Obama, but it only a petty insult without any serious criticism of the President. The majority of the message posted was a graffiti-esque signature of the vandals. Probably not a serious threat to national security, but certainly a bit troubling considering who was compromised.

Hacking as a State Institution: the Google/China Debacle

The situation Google faces in China, with patriotic hackers (possibly even state sponsored) causing trouble for Google subscribers, some of whom are Chinese dissidents, presents a unique example of a synergistic interaction between cyber-criminals and government regulators. The United States has had similar groups emerge, such as vigilante anti-terror hackers, some of which still operate (for an interesting read, click here). Are we seeing some of the first acts of a new class of hackers? Could these be the field exercises of a new cyber-army? Certainly only time will tell.

Google's response should be interesting too. Will they withdraw as threatened and let domestic search engines like Baidu take over? Or will they launch resistance efforts in China? Maybe nothing will change. Once again, only time will tell, but if you would like to hear a prediction from The Modern Bandit here it is: we haven't heard the last from our patriotic Chinese friends.  

The Florida Bar & Blogging

As some of you may have noticed, my postings to the blog have slowed in recent months, and had come to a stop at the beginning of this year. This was largely due to changes in the Florida Bar's rules regarding attorney advertising that were made effective this year through rule 4-7.6 (the Florida Supreme Court adopted the rules here). Many commentators have expressed fears that these rules would effectively halt legal blogging, and in my case they did, at least temporarily. For those interested, Lyrissa Lidsky, faculty at the University of Florida, has written on the topic here.

After researching the amendments, it is my opinion that my blog does not fall within the scope of the rules (due to being an educational, not advertising blog), but even if it did fall within the scope, I don't believe it violates those rules. Arguably the blurb on the right hand side of my blog about me could be a nominal violation of rule 4-7.6 by way of rule 4-7.2 once I begin practicing law because it could possibly be considered a "statement that characterize[s] the quality of legal services being offered." However, a simple description of one's credentials I don't believe is what the bar intended to prohibit (in the context of prohibiting "information regarding past results" and "testimonials" it appears "quality" means the excellence of an attorney as opposed to an attribute of the attorney, but I could be wrong, we'll see).

If any of you ethicists or bloggers believe that I have it wrong, or wish to contribute, feel free to post a comment at the bottom of this post or email me at charlie@modernbandit.com.

P.S. If any Bar admissions people are reading this post, please don't fail me for my blog. This is in no way a criticism of the Florida Bar, but seriously, couldn't you just make an explicit exception for educational legal bloggers?