Comment by Bender

I hear ya. This is just my opinion but I don't think journalists are going to be much help. The bots would have to be hurting something belonging to the government or the government is paying for to really get them on it. e.g. some big orgs in the government embed your maps on their site. They would have to create legislation and then someone would have to trace the bots back to their operator for attribution and then someone would have to file lawsuits against them once it is illegal. Or you could try using a ToS/AuP to go after them assuming attribution. I am not a lawyer.

I think your only hope would be to either find subtle differences between them and real legit users or change how your site works so that bots have to be authenticated unless they have a whitelisted IP/CIDR or put your site behind something else that spots the bots. Beyond that all anyone can do is beef up their infrastructure to handle much more than the bots could dish out.

Have you tried silly simple things like hidden javascript puzzles the browser has to solve?