A hacktivism case "Deportation class"

A hacktivism case


On June 20 2001, Lufthansa(the german airline)'s website was attacked. some 13,000 people participated in a DDOS action against the airline's homepage and more than one million hits were sent to lufthansa webpage and services went down for several minutes.
the main reason for this attack was Lufthansa's participation as carrier, in forced deportations of asylum seekers. the poor condition in which these transportations were held caused at least death of two passengers.
Lufthansa later claimed that the company was required by law to allow the use of its flights for deportations. The demonstrators also claim they never intended to totally disrupt Lufthansa and it was only an 'activist demonstration'.
After several years(more than 3) German court found that DDOS actions were a valid form of political protest!(which is cool!) one reason for that can be that while the site itself was rendered briefly inaccessible, the actual corporation, its ability to fly planes, maintain normal operations, and communicate internally and with the media remained, for practical purposed, unaffected.[2]


resources :

1. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/01/lufthansa_ddos_attack/

2. Molly Sauter, "Towards a New Framework for the Ethical Analysis of Activist DDOS Actions"