The gunshot analogy fails hard. LulzSec pre-empted at least half of it, by stressing how harm occurs quietly all the time. Data gets stolen or destroyed and we just don't know it.

Unlike gunshot wound, where a person lands in a hospital, or morgue, or goes missing, data can be, and indeed is, copied quietly. Of gunshots, people are informed most of the time; of security breaches, barely ever. Cops investigate most gunshots, but do they know of most security breaches?

The big hope is the press will at last start paying attention to (in)security of our data. Thus the headline-grabbing tactics.

The other half is that corporations don't shoot people, people shoot people. And to the wit, people don't store 200.000 bank accounts on a web server, corporations do. You can -- and should -- hold corporations to a somewhat higher standard when it comes to affording decent protection for customers. It's no coincidence LulzSec weren't after granny-loves-her-cat blogs, but after commercial services.