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The hacktivist movement known as Anonymous has drawn a lot of positive attention to itself as of late, for its announcement and subsequent following up, of an attack on the internet presence of Daesh, the group often referred to as ISIS or ISIL. However it looks like in its efforts to curb the online activities of the terrorist group, Anonymous may have siphoned up a few emails and accounts that could be considered collateral damage.
Within days of its initial announcement to go after Daesh in the wake of the attacks on Paris on 13th November, Anonymous claimed to have downed more than 5,500 Twitter accounts that were promoting Daesh activity. Since then a further 15,000 are said to have been taken offline or targeted with Rickroll links.
Some of those accounts though seem pretty unlikely to be linked with Daesh in any realistic way. President Obama's non-POTUS account was on the list, as was the New York Time's account and even a Twitter help page.
As the BBC points out, the very nature of Anonymous suggests that the unverified list could just contain a few extra accounts for posterity, or was edited later for humorous purposes, but it does suggest that Anonymous hasn't been quite as successful as it claims.
Still, many anons are keen to point out that while downing Twitter accounts is a major part in the war against Daesh, it is only one of many battles. OpISIS is still the main attack against the group they said, reminding everyone that OpParis is just the latest push. They also urge anyone who noticed any of the accounts back online, to report them to Twitter and other anons for further downing.
Not everyone agrees with this tactic however, with some suggesting that being able to track the Daesh accounts is more useful than taking them down. Anonymous argues that frustrating Daesh's ability to use online resources is a good method of showing solidarity against its propaganda.
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KitGuru Says: Do you think Anonymous should be downing accounts, or should it be reporting them to the authorities for monitoring?
reporting to authorities is a better idea
reporting to authorities is a better idea
What is your local police department going to do with one account in a massive hivemind of ISIS propeganda spouts which are probably located in the middle east somewhere.
What is your local police department going to do with one account in a massive hivemind of ISIS propeganda spouts which are probably located in the middle east somewhere.
I don’t know, maybe they’d in turn report it to the Intelligence agencies, such as GCHQ or the NSA
I don’t know, maybe they’d in turn report it to the Intelligence agencies, such as GCHQ or the NSA
Reporting to “the authorities” will serve no purpose.
The only advantage Anon has over “the authorities” is not being bound by things like “lawful search and seizure” or “evidence chain of custody”. Because of these laws, “the authorities” can’t really act upon any evidence Anon provides them. “The authorities” likely already have as much evidence as they can possibly collect in a law abiding manner, and the only things Anon could provide them would be outside their bounds; any evidence from Anon that they tried to use would be thrown out, as it would have been illegally obtained.
I don’t doubt that there’s some branch of some intelligence agency somewhere that’s working in the dark, outside of those bounds, but it’s most likely that anything Anon could give them, they already have. And I doubt any “authorities” that could be reported to would have any idea how to pass it on to them.
Not to mention that, given their reputation, it’s highly unlikely that “the authorities” would take kindly to being told, by some loosely-bound international shadow organization, how to do their jobs and take down some loosely-bound international shadow organization. Some of these “authorities” have been targets of Anon in the past – they don’t see Anon as the good guys, no matter who they’re targeting.