Hacking nonprofit sites and minds

Don't watch the above video. Really. It's the infamous banned Pokemon scene that gave hundreds of people seizures when first broadcast in Japan. The problem: for some people, the blinking colors acted as a trigger for a neurological disruption known as photosensitive epilepsy.

Why would I post this? Because the effect is in the news again, and this time it involves a nonprofit. Via Wired, there's news that the FBI has begun investigating the infamous (in tech circles, anyway) sabotage on the Epilepsy Foundation online forum, in which hackers used flashing light images to induce seizures in epileptics visiting the site.

The Wired update raises an interesting legal point:

[A]ssuming the Bureau is able to find some of the culprits, it could lead to the first federal prosecution under an anti-cyber terrorism provision passed in 1996 as part of the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act.

The law created a new crime of attacking a computer to cause "physical injury to any person." Some of us laughed at that provision at the time, and as far as I know it's never been used. But in this case it just might fit.

io9 has more from the AP report, including the observation that these hackers were apparently motivated not by money, but malice. In other words, they were nonprofit too.