Is Lizard Squad the digital equivalent of the Westboro Baptist Church?

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We all know of the Westboro Baptist Church, the extremist group that claims to be working on behalf of God, protesting funerals, denouncing homosexuals as sinners, and pointing at the United States Government as propagators of the issues they stand against. The world public sees this group as just a group of hateful people trying to rationalize their own disgusting views because they’re terrible people. Over the holidays, Xbox Live and Playstation Network were met with their own hate group going by the name The Lizard Squad.

This group of children orchestrated distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against the networks over the holidays, the time when thousands of people — mostly children — would be unwrapping their new Xbox One or Playstation 4 in the hopes of playing with their new gifts. Unfortunately, because of the actions of a few selfish individuals, that had to wait. The Lizard Squad maintained DDoS attacks against the online networks for days. For those setting their systems up for the first time, they were forced to wait for the networks to come back online.

The Lizard Squad gave interviews (Interview 1  Interview 2) to discuss their actions as well and, despite scrutiny even from the people interviewing, maintained that the attacks were happening “for the greater good”. Claims were made that this was done to show that the digital security of these companies, who make millions of dollars per month, is at risk. It was also said that Xbox Live and Playstation Network were brought down in an attempt to force the children, who got new gaming consoles for the holidays, to spend more time with their families.

https://twitter.com/seanikus/status/548970217125453826

That’s how naïve this group of children are.

I keep saying children despite the perpetrators are eighteen and nineteen years old. They’re children because they think that the world is naïve enough to believe them. They think that if they claim they did these things out of the goodness of their hearts, that people will raise their eyebrows and say, “Oh, in that case well done!”

But that’s not the case. We’re not that stupid. This was done because these children had parents who failed at raising them. Parents who fell for their excuses time and again and, because they’ve been raised so poorly, think that this is how the world works. That they can do what they want, make up weak excuses, and walk away without punishment. I so deeply hope this isn’t true.

The outages were so disruptive to so many, there’s really only one course of action: make an example of these children. They’re old enough to know what they’re doing is wrong, yet they did it anyway. They’re old enough to be held accountable for their actions, it’s time to show the world that these types of attacks, the ones made because a group of children are simply shitty people who take pleasure in other’s misfortune, are not going to be accepted anymore.

From all accounts, these children are overseas, the United Kingdom I believe, which makes this attack an “international incident”. It needs to be treated as one. Don’t let these boys walk away unscathed. The full force of the Microsoft and Sony legal teams, as well as any governments who can get involved, need to be involved. Let these kids know that what they did isn’t funny. What they did isn’t for the greater good, and no matter how many times they say it, that the world knows that they’re selfish, inconsiderate people.

Josh Smith

Josh quit his career on state government to focus on full-time freelancing in the video game and tech fields. He lives in Maine with his wife and two children and in his free time ... who are we kidding, there is no free time.