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Purported FBI Report Calls Anonymous a National Security Threat
itwbennett writes "According to what purports to be a leaked psychological assessment of the leaders of LulzSec and Anonymous by the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, Anonymous is not only not a collection of individuals, it's a coherent group that poses a threat to national security. Neither the FBI nor the Dept. of Homeland Security have commented on the document, which may well be a fake, but seems to reflect accurately the thinking behind a series of DHS warning bulletins and crackdowns that have resulted in 75 raids and 16 arrests of Anonymous members just this year."
How would they know it is or isn't ??
FBI should buy more dogs.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
How long before they finally crack down on all those Anonymous users posting on Slashdot
Anything the government can't understand or control is a security threat.
Money is needed to fight Anonymous. Give us money. More news at eleven.
Really?
We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.
Since Wikileaks popped up, and then these guys rose to prominence, it's been hard to ignore the parallels between their mission and the anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I know, I know, transparent government and pure democracy -- but transparent government is not realistic and few really want pure democracy. The result of Wikileaks/Lulzsec/Anonymous is hurting the US, and the FBI, as a US institution, is labeling them as such.
Anonymous is nothing more than an escapegoat for anything anyone wants to do and get away with it. If the fbi doesn't like iran bank.. anonymous did it. If the NSA DDOS chinese website... Anonymous did it.
Anonymous is nothing more than The Brotherhood (Nineteen Eighty-Four). At best a silly outlet for people who would oppose oppressive governments. At worst a cloak for the planned destructive acts by NSA against anyone who would upset the status quo.
Anonymous did it.
Please, Wall Street and companies like Goldman Sachs are far greater National Security Risks than any conglomeration of people in their basements DDoSing websites.
"The Anonymous ‘collective’ has risen from an amorphous group of individuals on the Internet to the current state of a potential threat to national security. Due to the nature of Anonymous, they believe that they are a leaderless collective. However, it has been shown that there is a defined leadership group," the document reads. "A thorough assessment of each UNSUB’s online activities, speech patterns, and general writings was collected by the FBI. Each UNSUB was individually assessed by members of the SBU (sic) and a psychological profile created from these datasets."
(emphasis mine)
This is what some people on /. have been arguing for some time.
Regardless, the document itself (linked to in the first article) is kind of fun to read.
Of course they're a security threat. However, I feel that the flaws that grant them access to they systems they get into are an even bigger security threat. Granted, they've done some pretty dickish things with the fruits of their endeavors, but nothing so horribly wrong that would make the surfacing of the attacks not worth the end result.
While I would prefer that they be a group of white hats informing the companies they break into of their ability to do so, I certainly prefer their gray hat, chaotic neutral mentality of "get in, get out, release a press release" over what others may do with the information they would be able to gain using the exact same tactics.
There's a reason there is no "Disagree" mod...
Purported FBI Report Calls Anonymous a National Security Threat
I'm not seeing the problem here.
They seem like the only ones willing to protest loudly and illegally.
We're really taking this posting at face value? It's clearly fraudulent. Ars does a good work-up on just how wrong this "document" is:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/09/bisexual-money-grubber-with-aspergers-how-to-troll-anonymous.ars
Garbage story.
given the overwhelming "success" of the so-called War on Drugs.
Because the biggest and most dangerous enemy this nation has is the US Federal Government themselves...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
For the record, (because I know someone is reading this) I am not, never have been and never intend to be a member of anonymous. But I have to wonder what constitutes membership? To be a coherent group, there has to be leadership of some kind and/or some form of permission or acceptance in the group. I have resisted the curiosity thus far, but what if I learned where the anonymous chatrooms are and joined them just to see what's going on? Does that make me a member? Does that prove or indicate my involvement? What if I decided to 'troll' said chatrooms and started spewing nonsense? Does that make me a member?
I worry about this because of the nebulous way people are grouped and prosecuted. The definitions need to be as clear as possible and words like "beyond a shadow of a doubt" keep ringing in my head.
What worries me more is that they are being classified as national security threats and stuff like that. This sounds like the precursor to adding to the residents of GITMO and denial of rights under the US Constitution as well as human rights violations.
I don't know why I am "worried" though... it's almost guaranteed to happen and I should be accepting of this right?
Yeah, but nobody listened.
The FBI is the threat to national security. Anonymous simply reveals how insecure we are.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Sounds like they are a Clear and Present Danger ... time to send in Jack Ryan.
The Harrison Ford version, not the Ben Affleck version ...
"Curiouser and Curiouser...." -Alice
Hello Slashdot! Anonymous has disbanded because we realized we're a bunch of teabaggers.
pffft
They are "group" or wannabes and losers. They aren't a security threat, they are a joke.
Gone!
Starting to sound like the FBI is a threat to national security. I'm sure there are some really great people working there doing really important things; and investigating criminal activity (or protecting soldiers on the battlefield) is important! But when you start being afraid of the truth, you're also doing something wrong.
/. is full of Anonymous members, but don't worry, we're all too cowardly to do anything.
The profilers must've gotten their information from FOX 11 Los Angeles' gritty in-depth investigative report (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNO6G4ApJQY)
An anarchist group which gloats about damaging government operations in the most general sense is viewed by that government as a potential threat to that government. So why the outraged reaction? We should be saying "well, duh" and going on to critique the psych assessments or discuss how what appear to be images of scanned papers got OCRed so well. It's also notable that the report uses "Anonymous" to refer to Lulzsec, that they believe they have the right Topiary when other analysts have said they got a script kiddie who used the same handle, and that they don't believe they have JoePie when other analysts have identified him with the Ryan guy who was captured.
So first they write this: "Due to the nature of Anonymous, they believe that they are a leaderless collective." than a bit later "This will have a profound effect on the collective itself as the arrest of the core would demoralize the whole."
Which one is it ? If member of Anon believe to be leaderless how can arrest of the 'core' demoralize them ?
From the 'profiles' it looks like it's either a joke or someone who knows and dislikes the guys wants to mess with them.
At a maximum rate of 1 arrest per raid, they managed to troll the feds about 50 times. Not bad, not bad at all.
A bit more of this will keep them busy enough, and provide extra jobs at the same time!
Anonymous makes very public hacks, generally of pretty low impact. Are we to assume that they are the only ones hacking? What about the Chinese government? What about hackers who don't spin around and start bragging about their hacks?
How many times have credit card numbers and personal info been taken with no publication? How many times have organizations like the FBI and CIA been harangued or penetrated without public disclosure? If Anonymous can do it, it indicates a significant failure in security on the part of the hackee. You can't shut down all hackers. It's only going to get worse. Think of this as a wake-up call and start securing your systems/software.
In 20 years, I hope we look back on this era the same way we look back on medieval medicine. Public hackers like the members of Anonymous do more good than harm. Letting organizations (especially the government) keep a lid on hacks for fear of the public's reaction? That's the real threat to national security.
Exactly.
Some more money needed badly and not only permission to sue arse off, but to haul any captured suspects at gitmo for some waterboarding excercise, please. Heard that they are running low on quality terrorists these days.
Again we have a case where people blame the crackers/hackers for pointing out security flaws and instead of focusing on the flaws which are the actual threat. So much MORE harm can be caused but when somebody exploits that in a relatively harmless way it is a constructive lesson akin to the master smacking you down (but not easily killing you.) This blame the messenger crap has got to stop!
They are not a real national security threat; however, they are a big threat to the corrupt and greedy... Even the more pointless attacks are not a real threat in that they do not cause great harm - like a REAL national security threat would cause. I don't care if they cause some big company to go broke (like sony) because if they can it shows there is something fundamentally wrong they are pointing out. If you assume we don't learn from mistakes, then one might think like the feds do...
The Chinese and other governments (including the USA) with any brains are exploiting and learning without disclosing what they find so that they can further infiltrate and pose a REAL security threat. Naturally, Anonymous becomes a great front with which to conduct constructive attacks... (the best probably being further intrusion until a truly devastating attack can be made.)
Stupid Americans... always trying to have a simple authoritarian villain. You'd think they'd tend to see things as democratic like groups instead of singular dictatorships....
Any decentralized group is going to have moments where some individuals will have a popular vision or best communicate or best organize RISE TO THE TOP but that does not make them leaders. If everybody was the leader the group wouldn't function; there is no formal leadership just those who take up positions needing to be filled - the highly successful or popular end up becoming leaders but such groups are not built upon those individuals and can sustain the loss. MLK wasn't the leader of the civil rights movement, he didn't start it either; he was just one who rose up above the others because of his communication skills to grab the nation's attention. Useful but non-essential and he himself knew this; despite the warped monument seems to project...(he'd not want it focused so much upon him...again, we repeat the mistake...)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
which may well be a fake, but seems to reflect accurately the thinking behind a series of DHS
In other words, it probably fake, but we want to believe.
In related news, the DHS has begun an investigation of Slashdot's Anonymous Coward, who clearly is the mastermind behind this dangerous group.
Any decentralized group is going to have moments where some individuals will have a popular vision or best communicate or best organize RISE TO THE TOP but that does not make them leaders. If everybody was the leader the group wouldn't function; there is no formal leadership just those who take up positions needing to be filled - the highly successful or popular end up becoming leaders but such groups are not built upon those individuals and can sustain the loss. MLK wasn't the leader of the civil rights movement, he didn't start it either; he was just one who rose up above the others because of his communication skills to grab the nation's attention. Useful but non-essential and he himself knew this; despite the warped monument seems to project...(he'd not want it focused so much upon him...again, we repeat the mistake...)
Reading missives from the FBI on Anonymous is like watching those poor people with the loaded for bear spaceship bearing down on The Festival in Singularity Sky by Charles Stross, as if somehow superior weaponry was the answer.
The only clueful thing in that document is when they say that actual deaths resulting from the attacks would likely have a very negative effect on Anonymous, which is likely true. Deaths of Anonymous members may or may not have an effect. If those deaths are caused by the FBI or other agent of a government, I would expect that to have a galvanizing effect.
There are other ways of disrupting Anonymous that I won't go into here. But taking out the 'leaders' isn't likely to accomplish a great deal.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Of course Anonymous has leaders. A leader is someone who inspires people to follow them. However those leaders normally aren't "defined" (ie have names, ranks, titiles etc) and arise out of the masses when someone feels strongly enough about an issue. There are plenty of people who organise outside the Chans on IRC etc and think themselves bigshots, but they have no more influence on Anonymous then any other anonymous poster*.
However if you lurk on the Chans enough, and spam your message enough, you will gain a following no matter how weak. But Anon will do anything, ranging from abusing 12 year old girls to tracking down animal abusers, if they find it amusing.
The problem the MiB types have is that they think that they can just identify a core group and remove them. That wouldn't stop the random chaos that Anonymous partakes in, because new "leaders" with new ideas for lulz would emerge.
The high profile hacking attacks aren't really "Anonymous" though, they are people who met on the Chans that decided to create more formalised groups with fixed agendas. Anyone can call themselves Anonymous, but the strength of the original idea relies on the Anonymous nature of Chan style image boards.
* Which is why I go to 4chan. It is interesting to have discussions without reputation and the like clouding the strength of an argument. On other forums you normally get insiders and outsiders and people react very differently to the same argument depending upon the screen name attached to it.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Regardless of whether or not this document is fake, it has been deliberately leaked (or made available) by the FBI as an attack on the organisation known as Anonymous.
Why?
Because the idea that there are (or could be) leaders in Anonymous will be an anathema to many of the "soldiers" in Anonymous that (want to?) believe there is no leader or leadership. What could be worse than being told by the FBI that the group you joined and believe has no leaders that tell you what to do actually does have a leadership structure that decides what you do? Depending on the level of paranoia and the form it takes within members, some may never believe any denial that there are leaders within Anonymous.
Without a doubt, the leak of this document is deliberate and an act designed to cause disharmony within Anonymous. The only question is whether the document is based on fact or fiction. Will the leak achieve its outcome? Unless you're in Anonymous (and I'm not), I suspect that there's no real way of knowing.
Let’s see, the FBI could either find Anonymous to be a loosely united group of disaffected nerds OR a focused super group of hacker masterminds out to topple governments. Which result is likely to get more funding steered towards the FBI?
The FBI profiles I've heard are all similar, e.g., "disgruntled single white male, between 20 and 55 years of age, ..." - in other words, the most common type of person in the male population. Victory is claimed when such an individual is arrested for the crime. Jeesh!
I have never seen a statistical study that confirmed the utility or accuracy of criminal profiling, regardless of the crime. Criminal profiling appears to be bad science poorly implemented.
Perhaps Obama could trim the FBI's "BAU"or "BSU" (or whatever unit(s) that do "criminal profiling") from the budget and give the money to something more useful than peace officers' pay.
I don't give 2 cents about government services. Even if today Anon might be doing something you support who knows what they'll be up to tomorrow. They are uncontrollable and unpredictable. Its a mob mentality on a witch hunt. Facts are not important. Your favorite game or website or whatever could be the next target. Or even worse your ISP directly. And don't forget the mob doesn't need or care about a logical reason. The individual is generally smart and reasonable... the mob is not.
There are more constructive ways of informing out security flaws then publicly releasing compromised data.
You can argue that the threat imposed by the group is relatively harmless, but it doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously. If a small group with questionable ethics can cause a big company to go broke by sabotaging their systems, they should be considered a potential security threat.
It opens up all kinds of legal methods to track, surveil, and identify potential Anonymous members that wouldn't be possible for a 'nuisance' group, and remove most of the privacy obstacles around getting information.
/Yadda Yadda.
The FBI is building up evidence against Anonymous and Lulzsec to get a National Security Letter. After that letter comes in, the FBI has all kinds of new powers to work with under the Patriot Act. They won't need a court order to subpoena ISP, internet, and bank records, and wiretaps can be done with fewer obstacles.
~Sticky
The real reason the FBI found Anonymous not to just be a collection of individuals can be found in this leaked classified recording:
(Transcript below):
Subject: Secret Anonymous Gathering 20100924 03:24:36Z
(sound of chanting): "We are all individuals"
"We are all individuals"
"We are all individuals"
"We are all individuals"
"I'm not!"
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Running around shooting random civilians will tend to show that, in general, street clothes aren't bullet proof.
Is the common person going to take away the idea they should be wearing body armor all the time or that there's thugs running around randomly murdering people?
The groups trying to enforce security in government systems are no doubt smiling.
It is sad how the TLA's in charge of security standards are regularly ignored. Maybe these embarrassing break-ins will give them the power to force other government agencies to take security a bit more seriously.
The FBI is ass backwards at this point, they are back in the dark ages, maybe NSA or CIA would have more up to date view points on what is out there, or maybe some of the consultants that are being used by the FBI, but they themselves have been the weak link in security for government run operations for years, they are the laughing stock.
Yes it is true any one possessing the knowledge to hack servers such as cnn, sony or even bank of america should be considered a threat, but not by this alone.
What makes Anonymous so powerful is that like a terrorist cell, they have heads or cells that will keep hacking even if you take the main cell down....
The difference to terrorists though is that they are doing it to show how corrupt our own government is.
When the Amercian govenrment can try to silence Assange and his wikileaks, with fraudulent charges....some hacking group will pop up to say "I DONT THINK SO"
When Sony goes after a small time tweaker only because he can figure out their code and allow others to bypass these limitations, and gets him convicted...
again they stand up and say "I DONT THINK SO"...we should have more people standing up for our rights, not less.....the government wants us stupid, weak, fat out of shape, thoughtless, automatons, watching tons of TV, eating chips and burgers...so that we do not question our place in society.
Sounds way to much like the matrix to me.. O_O
Yeah, keep bashing governments when it's the anon goons that are the ones stealing YOUR personal info while cloak and daggering you into thinking they are doing it for YOUR benefit.
Just look at all of the drama with Wikileaks, they are doing the same bickering and whining governments do amongst each other, so how does that entitle them to steal your info? Because they think they are above our government or the world? Way to show me!
Of course these goons are a threat to national security. So are the Chinese.
You goons only have yourselves to blame.
They are a threat. This is about control of information, what you are allowed to know and what you are not. That applies to any form of government, democratic or totalitarian. The government is the decider and things like anonymous and wikieaks circumvent that. Further, it puts the government under scrutiny just when they got the media in line.
and made Steve Gutenberg a star.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
There must not be much security to start with.
We post trolls. We post goatse.
We are prepubescent.
Expect us to suck.
So 59 of those raids resulted in... a wrong address?
And only 16 arrests? They fail.
And how stupid do you have to be to consider a bunch of script kiddies a threat to national security (assuming that's true)?
Just exactly when was this hacking and cracking by these aNonymous not called in question as a national security threat to any government? These idiots, no matter how sophisticated their computer skills are, have manage to piss off all the right people and its really going to be interesting as fuck to see them fall.. Einstein was a genius and an idiot too. Look at the messes a lot of geniuses have left the world to clean up. History may mention anonymous, but its unlikely anyone will be here to read about them.
So is a mass protest or the truth or leader's liable for the (in)actions.
Plainly evident already on page 4, not contradicted by the rest.
Guys, here's a piece of magic information I am going to share with you: When documents are written by someone above grade school, those documents have a defined sender and an intended recipient/audience. The document will always reflect in various subtle ways both the sender and the audience.
In this case there is a claimed sender. OK, I don't know how the BSU at Quantico operates. The entire document is written in a relaxed, offhand way filled with meme jargon - but hey, there is a slim chance that the internet BSU is somehow the "nerd collective" of the FBI and express themselves like this habitually.
But who is the intended audience? Since the document is a type of "executive summary" it must be addressed to someone outside of the BSU. It refers to "investigators", presumably those investigating Anonymous. The core of this investigative group could theoretically be nerdy tech guys, but many will be ordinary investigators who dip into tech - a possible reader would even be Officer Pot Belly who carries off the servers after the raids.
The document doesn't reflect a semibroad FBI audience. It reflects an audience of adolescent Anonymous "members". It's just a mishmash of language patterns designed to appeal to the 4channer's mind. It is too broad. It tries to explain everything, to tell a story. But no internal document tells a whole story. Most internal documents I see make in my line of work makes no sense at all without a context. This is written like a ball of cotton wool.
Maybe that's one of the more important indicators of who the recipient is - the knowledge that the document presumes. This document doesn't presume zero knowledge - going by sentences like "This includes notable imageboards such as 4chan, Futaba, their associated
wikis, Encyclopredia Dramatica, and a number of forums". Neither does it presume detailed knowledge, because then you would not need to list these and remind the reader that they are notable. The document actually strikes a middle road and presumes a medium amount of knowledge - the particular knowledge that a 4channer would have. This is written to influence the leaders, partly directly, partly by creating the expectation in them that their "followers" expect them to have been influenced.
Sorry bros. It's a funny game, but the hippies never broke into military bases and spread around their documents.
You have a group of individuals who have a proven capability to penetrate and/or disrupt computer systems including government ones, ill defined objectives and agendas and numerous political and national allegiances. Whether they are a threat in the sense that they plan to do something is up for debate. The fact that they could and most likely would is not up for debate. Even if lulzsec and Anonymous were allied in some sense with the US government they'd still be a national security threat.
The FBI probably doesn't realize that it doesn't have to be a "Group" to take parallel or even coordinated action
It could just be a movement comprised of people who generally agree that the FedGov is the biggest threat to freedom on the US... and have the skilz to expose some of the facts that confirm it...
Sometimes people just agree about what "just ain't right" and that's all it takes for a movement to begin...
Running around shooting random civilians will tend to show that, in general, street clothes aren't bullet proof.
Is the common person going to take away the idea they should be wearing body armor all the time or that there's thugs running around randomly murdering people?
Depends on the "common" person, I should think:
Common liberal: only way to stop these thugs is to take away their guns. pulls out wallet and throws money at the Democratic Party.
Common conservative: only way to stop these thugs is to make the police more powerful. pulls out wallet and throws money at the Republican Party.
Common libertarian: only way to deal with this situation is to make sure there is a liberal or conservative between me and the bullets. pulls out wallet and opens a bodyguard service, and is its first customer.
...after all, they don't have Bin Laden anymore.
I think anonymous rocks. The government is just upset because they are starting to fear they may not be able to be the crooked, thieving, liars they have been for many years. They like pushing their influence around. I was reading just the other day about them arresting a protestor for "being apart of anonymous" and when questioned she sincerely didn't even know who or what anonymous is.
And people being arrested claiming they are part of anon doesn't mean they really are. Don't let the government flatter itself. Who or what hacker/cracker/script kiddie doesn't want to be part of the famous anonymous?