Originally posted by Ken White:
Could the government not be expected to take a biased view of the what the law says to assist in hacker deterrence on the same basis? I understand that nominally they don't act unless a law is broken but you and I both know there's some, uh -- elasticity is a good word -- in making that determination. I also would include 'unofficially' and not only in the law enforcement sense
The Fed's seem to have been taking the position all along that the wronged party has to be able to show direct damages. And practically, there's a whole lot of reasons to take that approach.

First off, there's a lot ("considerably more than a lot", actually) of attempting "invasive digital information gathering" that goes on (all the time) in the business world. I have first hand knowledge on this one, and have reported the different attempted exploits to the FBI in extreme detail. The attempted exploits were all unsuccessful, but it was a real eye-opener going through the process of trying to deal with law enforcement (both federal and state) to get this crap to cease and desist.

Practically, the feds just really, really don't want to get in the middle of this food fight. It is messy, time consuming, and difficult to explain (agents are much more likely to understand than the AUSA's, and the Judges, well that's another story). It's a tough sell as a case. They run from these types of cases.

Also, don't underestimate all the spinoff effects of the DMCA and copyright/digital piracy cases. It's one of those areas where the congresscritters keep pushing it (in exchange for campaign contributions from industry), but since DOJ gets to play the role of the "heavy" & toss single moms/college kids into the justice system for stealing music (true or not, that's how it's put out there), they look forward to prosecuting those cases like going out & catching some incurable disease. And that ends up applying to just about anything in the digital law enforcement area which isn't a slam-dunk case.

IMO, can't blame the Feds for trying to duck a no-win scenario.

Now, personally, I can't see any way that the two sides (Scientology Group and the US Government; DOJ) could every find any common ground to the level necessary to take on these type of cyber attacks. Got to be some elements of trust, and there's just nothing there to even start with.