Anonymous Takes Down Thousands of ISIS-Related Twitter Accounts In a Day (softpedia.com)

BarbaraHudson writes: Softpedia is reporting that Anonymous, along with social media users, have identified several thousand Twitter accounts allegedly linked to ISIS members. "Besides scanning for ISIS Twitter accounts themselves, the hacking group has also opened access to the [takedown operation] site to those interested. Anyone who comes across ISIS social media accounts can easily search the database and report any new terrorists and supporters. The website is called #opIceISIS [slow right now, but it does load] and will index ISIS members based on their real name, location, picture, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts." Anonymous crowdsourcing their operations... welcome to the brave new world, ISIS. An article at The Independent reminds everyone that this information has not been independently confirmed, and that Anonymous is certainly capable of misidentifying people. It's also worth exploring the question of why Twitter hasn't already disabled these accounts, and why intelligence agencies haven't done anything about them, if they're so easy to find.

Comments

what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry that i am posting as anonymous coward, on public pc.
What good would this do ? it wont really hurt isis in any way, they can just create new accounts.

Re:what good will this do ?

[Grishnakh]

It makes it much harder for them to conduct their recruitment and other operations which depend on an online presence.

Re:what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well played "Anonymous Coward"! But now we all know your last name!!!



Is that "CHO-WARD" or "COW-ARRR'ed"?

Re:what good will this do ?

[BitZtream]

Are you seriously so naive to think that they get a lot of recruits from twitter?

Sure they get some, but typically first world whiney brats on twitter aren't the type that can actually survive even being around where ISIS does actual recruiting.

When you make silly comments like this it shows that you really have no idea what motivates these people to be terrorists.

Silly first world issues don't have any effect on people living in places that would call Hell an improvement.

Re:what good will this do ?

[nospam007]

"Sure they get some, but typically first world whiney brats on twitter aren't the type that can actually survive even being around where ISIS does actual recruiting."

Suicide bombers/shooters are known for 'not surviving', it is kind of their thing.

Re:what good will this do ?

[Coren22]

Achmed survived....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:what good will this do ?

[HiThere]

Think military bootcamp.

Re:what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

ISIS can no longer contribute to discussions on equal pay, micro-aggressions, girls in tech and free trade coffee.

We're saved.

Re:what good will this do ?

[prefec2]

Most recruits of IS are young men, in a life changing situation, which are instable. Life changing situations are when thy end school and train in a profession, move towns for jobs, go to college and university. Therefore, this applies to most likely 1/3 of all slashdotters. I would assume that they use Twitter and Facebook beside all hate about it.

Re:what good will this do ?

[BitZtream]

Yea, people who have time to dick around and read Twitter are not the kind of people who are willing to blow themselves up unless it's due to shear boredom.

You don't leave your comfy first world life, regardless of how bad you think it is to go join people that don't have electricity for hundreds of miles. No clean water, little food .... Oh and constant attacks from the most powerful militaries to have ever existed.

They probably have gotten a few from Twitter because you can literally sell anything to some moron on the internet ... But all 8 of those people died from dysentery a week after they got there.

Suicide bombers blow themselves up because the alternative is better than living and they are angry. Death is an escape to people who have been indoctrinated on that level. They are not people who have the privilege of sitting on their fat asses reading pointless bullshit on Twitter. The people ISIS recruit would likely cut off appendages in trade for being so lucky as to be able to read Twitter rather than scrounge for food, water, and shelter.

Re:what good will this do ?

[amicusNYCL]

Like these folks.

Re: what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the videos Vice News made inside ISIS territory. People are not starving. They even have electricity. It's not Ethiopia in the 80s. (Even Ethiopia wasn't quite how it looked on the news.) They do use social media, mainly for propaganda purposes. And they hate the west because they are taught to, because that hatred serves the needs of the people in power, not for any other reason.

Re:what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Are you seriously so naive to think that they get a lot of recruits from twitter?

Honestly, maybe. Some of their big accounts are pretty Muslim girls who talk all about jihad and shit. How many are catfish is irrelevant- it speaks to their demographic, which is disenfranchised young men. Many others simply exist to encourage each other.

Here's a better way to look at it- ISIS has thousands of twitter accounts. If that didn't help them in some material way, they would not have thousands of twitter accounts. It's really that simple.

Re:what good will this do ?

[mmell]

Wait - I know - let's see if we can get 'em all run some kind of hostfile manager for windows . . .

Re:what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't think military bootcamp.

With their limited resources, they can only provide training, real training to a few which are either the best and the brightest or more likely acquaintances or relations of important people.
The rest ... the more ignorant they're kept, the better.
Most people aren't stupid, give them enough pieces of the puzzle and they'll question anything, even why they should wear those fancy vests in "combat".

Re:what good will this do ?

[rahvin112]

Their entire PR and recruiting operation works on twitter, facebook and other social network properties. You don't actually think they are calling people do you? Sure they have facilitators on the outside spreading their message but 99% of their propaganda goes out via social networking and based on the people they've caught trying to join daesh they are their primary recruiting tools as well.

What do you think they are holding job fairs or some such nonsense? Their only way to communicate with people is through social media.

Re:what good will this do ?

[Samantha Wright]

There's a group that doesn't need to meet those criteria: women. Example.

Re:what good will this do ?

[tburkhol]

Yea, people who have time to dick around and read Twitter are not the kind of people who are willing to blow themselves up unless it's due to shear boredom.

Bored, idealistic, rich kids have been part of most major revolutions or asymmetric conflicts. "Useful idiots" maybe. Philosophers. Basically, kids angry with the world, looking for ways to improve the plight of some oppressed group. People who can be convinced of a noble sacrifice, however misguided.

I doubt very much that suicide bombers are sitting in their hovels, just waiting for someone to suggest the vest and the 72 virgins. They're cultivated over years. Slowly. Twitter and social media are extremely efficient tools to make first contact with many, many people.

Re:what good will this do ?

[Coren22]

That might finally push them over the edge!

Re: what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It will probably hinder efforts by intelligence agencies. I'm sure they were already monitoring the accounts with intention of landing smart bombs on their heads rather than just get their social media accounts cancelled.

Re:what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who believes the whiny brats on Slashdot are now suddenly experts on the effectiveness of terrorist recruitment? Don't you have somebody's computer you're supposed to be fixing?

Re:what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Well, if they're actually putting real names out there, it could help. It will take extra effort to verify most of this, but it could be a good thing.

Re:what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

While that's certainly notable, it doesn't change the general statement about suicide bombers and shooters.

Re:what good will this do ?

[Coren22]

You may want to read the below Wikipedia article. It likely will give you some insight into some things you may be missing on the internet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:what good will this do ?

[BitZtream]

You are aware that people have been recruiting since before there was an Internet ... Right?

You too are trapped in this retarded first world view of things and have absolutely no concept of how different their world is from yours. Most of their members have never seen the Internet, how the fuck are they going to be recruited by an entirely first world time sink they don't even know exists.

Just because you once heard a news story about a couple girls who did it via social media doesn't make it common, it just makes you look silly for believing that.

Re:what good will this do ?

[powerlord]

Think military bootcamp.

Isn't that the Arab distribution of OSX's ability to run Windows 10?

Re:what good will this do ?

[tarlek1234]

I'm tired of seeing zillions of replies to "Score:0" posts, and having to diddle around and lose my place just to see the original post. A top-level post should always be visible if there are responses to it.

Re:what good will this do ?

[kheldan]

What good would this do ?

It's disruptive to their Internet-based propaganda and radicalization/recruiting operations, and hopefully it's making them an embarassment to anyone who is witnessing them being outed and shut down.

Unfortunately in their enthusiasm to do as much damage as possible, they may be disrupting government intelligence operations, that might have been monitoring some of those accounts for intel on ISIL operations. That's something I didn't consider until someone else mentioned it to me.

Re:what good will this do ?

[BarbaraHudson]

They use the accounts, as well as facebook accoiunts, for multiple reasons:

1 Communications between cells using code phrases
2 Distribution of propaganda (fear and terror - after all, they're terrorists)
3.Recruiting

Take down one channel of communication (a twitter for facebook account), and you have to tell people where to look for the next one. Do it often enough, quickly enough, and you've crippled their means of communications to the outside world. Sure, accounts are free - but imagine if you had to buy a new burner phone AND tell everyone your new phone number, every day.

Re:what good will this do ?

[BarbaraHudson]

Seems to me they've been able to give real-life experience on the ground against their enemies for quite some time.

Re:what good will this do ?

[BarbaraHudson]

That's like saying that people have been recruited before movies. Sure - but once movies came out, those patriotic newsreels were a big thing in theaters.

And it's certainly easier to get their propaganda out there when it's searchable and nobody bothers to take it down on the false theory that it's better to listen in ... it's not, because we're not gathering evidence to take them to trial, and it's not like we can go there, knock in their door, and arrest them.

Re:what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those you recruit from twitter and the like aren't that useful in Syria. You have enough desperate people in Syria that will give their life for a small wage to support their family and a bit of security (for some people living there, its safer to have ISIS in your territory than nobody.

What those you recruit from the western world are really good for is using them as terrorists in the western world. They are by default watched less closely when already in the country for 15 years than if they arrived yesterday. They also might already have some capital ready to use. Some of them go to fight in Syria, but they don't have much of a stake in it. And the fight in Syria itself is not religious enough that they care enough.

Re:what good will this do ?

[WoOS]

According to newspaper and magazine reports most recruitment happens in personal contact with radical preachers.

Re: what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You both post opinions, and argue then like facts. Bad! Stop that!

Re:what good will this do ?

[BarbaraHudson]

What good would this do ?

It's disruptive to their Internet-based propaganda and radicalization/recruiting operations, and hopefully it's making them an embarassment to anyone who is witnessing them being outed and shut down. Unfortunately in their enthusiasm to do as much damage as possible, they may be disrupting government intelligence operations, that might have been monitoring some of those accounts for intel on ISIL operations. That's something I didn't consider until someone else mentioned it to me.

It's not like the government can use the IP address to go knock on their door with a search warrant. Letting them continue isn't going to be useful if you can't connect the fake account to a real person, and a real location. Have the good guys shut down the account and immediately replace it with a fake new account that imitates ISIS, just to sow confusion. Then shut down the new account, to fuel paranoia.

Re: what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, like the ISIS bomber that Turkey warned France about twice, but that France only inquired about post-mortem?

Re: what good will this do ?

[jsh1972]

mod this guy up, please... No points, or I would.

Re:what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure the stories of folks in first world countries like the US, UK, etc, leaving to join ISIS might have something to do with social networking.

Sitting around a campfire swapping goat stories in the ME ? Not so much.

You've obviously learned nothing in the past decade or so. Let me enlighten you a bit:

The freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, but ultimately pointless if no one can hear you.
Call for a Jihad around the aforementioned campfire and few will hear you or care.

Do it online where you have a larger audience, and your chances of recruiting someone go way up.
If you can restrict or limit the message, you effectively control the idea.

Re:what good will this do ?

[kheldan]

Letting them continue isn't going to be useful if you can't connect the fake account to a real person, and a real location

I don't necessarily agree with that. Being able to monitor what they're saying could potentially be useful. If they get too comfortable they might let something slip that they might not if they're completely vigilant.

Re:what good will this do ?

[Tharkkun]

You are aware that people have been recruiting since before there was an Internet ... Right?

You too are trapped in this retarded first world view of things and have absolutely no concept of how different their world is from yours. Most of their members have never seen the Internet, how the fuck are they going to be recruited by an entirely first world time sink they don't even know exists.

Just because you once heard a news story about a couple girls who did it via social media doesn't make it common, it just makes you look silly for believing that.

That's where you're wrong. How do you think CNN gets a hold of all their videos? Internet. They have the money to setup and leverage social media. Facebook is the #1 form of communication across the planet. Especially for young recruits. That's how they intercept would be recruits crossing the borders into the middle east. Social media.

Re:what good will this do ?

[SharpFang]

read at -1 you pussy.

Re:what good will this do ?

[BarbaraHudson]

Do you really believe they're going to give their home address or real identity? When people go to ISIS for the first time, they don't meet the catfish who suckered them in - ISIS isn't stupid enough not to use a cut-out.

More likely, whatever they "accidentally let slip" isn't an accident.

Re:what good will this do ?

[JohnnyComeLately]

There's a father in the UK who would disagree with you. His daughter, who was very quiet, introspective and not very religious was introduced to ISIS via Twitter. They carefully groom, have "handlers," who spot the girls and then hand them off. They're then fed a steady stream, similar to what you see on your Twitter and Facebook. With the aim to gradually move you from center and an "entertaining extreme ideas," without any aim to do them yourself. Then one day, "Come check it out for yourself. Here's Twitter accounts of others who are here and having a great time!!" The UK girl hid her trip from her parents who had 0 idea until the police showed up. The sick irony is the police had previously contacted the school, who sent home a letter with the girl for her parents to read. Guess whether parents saw it? Long story still long... It is good that Anon is shutting these down.

For the people asking why intel communities aren't shutting them down: They're intel sources. Why would you shut down accounts when they tell you TTPs, SOPs, areas of influence, capabilities, locations (eg. idiot Twitters a pic of the ISIS HQ, which is then bombed within 24 hours), etc. Besides, no manning for this as there's no DoD or IC requirements to "shut down propaganda accounts."

Re:what good will this do ?

[fustakrakich]

Yes, imagine if YOU had to buy a new burner phone AND tell everyone your new phone number, every day, because somebody doesn't like you, or just a whim. Sorry, it ain't cool. It's censorship. It's tyrannical. And it's chickenshit.

If you want to get serious about this "ISIS" thing, replace your weapons bazaars with weapons embargoes. Twitter doesn't enable ISIS, your banks (the same ones caught laundering money for the cartels) and tax dollars do, in a very literal sense. What do we call them? Oh yeah, moderate rebels... sheesh!

Re: what good will this do ?

[IBME]

Reminds me of when a teacher catches you passing a note to a girl in class. Is anonymous like 13 or what? Any real damage would entail taking their money or damaging them in a security sensitive fashion. Getting unfriended on facebook aint shit.

Re: what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators! Don't be an ass! Or one of those "SJW"s. That was funny as hell... Somebody, please come and help this guy out and mod him up. Heh, I bet a girl posted it

Re:what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think military bootcamp.

Isn't that the Arab distribution of OSX's ability to run Windows 10?

Nono, that one is called suicide bootcamp

Re: what good will this do ?

[Grishnakh]

No, you're missing how powerful social media is for recruiting extremists to their cause.

Re:what good will this do ?

[turbidostato]

"Their entire PR and recruiting operation works on twitter, facebook and other social network properties."

Or they are recruiting them in around their mosques and the society they cultivate, whispering here and there, seeding ideas in early teenagers' minds and nurturing them to grow.

But, who knows, maybe it's twitter after all.

Re:what good will this do ?

[turbidostato]

"That's where you're wrong. How do you think CNN gets a hold of all their videos? Internet. They have the money to setup and leverage social media."

What you may not understand it that what you see in CNN is not meant to gain adepts: it is targeted at you.

Yes, it's difficult to grasp that they may use different marketing tactics and channels to reach different goals but, hey, that's the case.

"That's how they intercept would be recruits crossing the borders into the middle east. Social media."

Yes, and police may use hound dogs to track fugitives. This doesn't mean those fugitives either got in prison or escaped from it because of their particular odor.

Re:what good will this do ?

[BarbaraHudson]

We should start with Saudi Arabia. But we won't. Because MONEY!

Re:what good will this do ?

[Jack Griffin]

There was terrorism before airports, therefore we should not protect airports....
The Paris terrorists were French citizens, they had the Internet.
Communication is the key to coordinating any major operation. The removal of any communication channel can only be a positive.

Re:what good will this do ?

[fustakrakich]

Well exactly, so why is everybody obsessed with this Twitter/Anonymous bullshit? And why would you approve of illegally taking down someone else's account? If it's okay for them, then it's okay to do the same to you. That is your deal with the devil.

Re:what good will this do ?

[Kkloe]

whats the illegally part?, twitter, facebook, isp's have their rules, you dont like them, create your own isp to provide internet, your own hosting to provide servers, your own homepage to provide propaganda, you have the choice and tools to do that

Re:what good will this do ?

[kheldan]

That's your opinion, just like what I'm saying is just my opinion, because neither of us are trained intellgence analysts who work for the NSA or CIA or MIS or any other intelligence organization, we're random anonymous people on the Internet posting on a discussion forum. Neither one of us can definitively say whether or not what these Sunni extremists post on Twitter or Facebook has any intelligence value to the aforementioned trained individuals.

Re:what good will this do ?

[KGIII]

Are you new here? We're experts on EVERY subject and we know better than anyone else. If you did it, you did it wrong. It doesn't even matter what you eat - we know best and we'll tell you how you're wrong.

It's what we do.

Re:what good will this do ?

[KGIII]

Yip. Stop depending on other people to censor/tailor your content. Yes, it means you see shit posts. Oh well... Move on or waste your daily allotment of posts on a reply to them. If you can't handle reading at -1 then, well, you probably don't belong here. The only value in hiding the -1 posts is, from what I can see, is keeping them from being scraped by a search engine.

Re:what good will this do ?

[KGIII]

Or, instead of being embarrassed, they spin it as if they're innocent victims and being oppressed, silenced, and poorly treated minorities who are simply trying to do the work of God. It may actually have the effect of making people more inclined to join them.

Re:what good will this do ?

[GLMDesigns]

Except for those that do. And there have been 1000s from the US, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Spain that have.

Re:what good will this do ?

[fustakrakich]

whats the illegally part?

Sorry, the headline says, "Anonymous takes down... twitter accounts.." It might have been more accurate to say "Twitter takes down thousands of ISIS accounts identified by Anonymous.", if that's the way it happened.

Re:what good will this do ?

[BarbaraHudson]

Fair enough, except for the part about us being anonymous people - using a nym makes me feel like I'm hiding behind anonymity and trying to avoid responsibility for what I say. I've always been that way. Besides, all the good nyms are taken :-).

Funny that, my address, phone number, email address are also on the net, and there haven't been any dire consequences. Then again, I grew up in a time when everyone had a phone book that gave everyones name, address, and phone number, no big deal. I get that other people prefer (or even need) anonymity - it's just not my cup of tea. I try to live by the rule of "Don't do anything that you wouldn't want everyone to see on the front page of the New York Times."

Re:what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most Gamergaters are pro-ISIS. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if this kills Gamergate, there's significant overlap.

Re:what good will this do ?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Their entire PR and recruiting operation works on twitter, facebook and other social network properties. You don't actually think they are calling people do you?

They don't do in-person recruiting? When a village is overrun and captured by ISIS, they don't just round up and indoctrinate everyone? They do this via twitter and facebook instead?

What?

Re: what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

haha. intel hides behind anon. do qe think those folks cannot ride a bus ?

Re: what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great post!

Re:what good will this do ?

[kheldan]

I try to live by the rule of "Don't do anything that you wouldn't want everyone to see on the front page of the New York Times."

Well, then, I hope that works out for you. There doesn't have to be any rational reason for some Internet nutjobs to decide that you shouldn't keep breathing any longer, or some Internet stalker to decide to fixate on you.

Re:what good will this do ?

[rahvin112]

ISIS comes in two groups. Former Iraqi army officers and foreign fighters. There are occasional local supporters but they are vastly outnumbered by the prior two groups. Every single one of those foreign fighters was recruited through their external public affairs operation which runs entirely on social media sites.

If twitter wasn't a big deal to them they wouldn't have threatened to kill the twitter executives when they banned a thousand of their accounts earlier this year.

Re:what good will this do ?

[BarbaraHudson]

I've already had to deal with a schizophrenic killer when I was a kid (hence the PTSD), and I've had stalkers both online (one became such a nuisance that when I alerted their employer for the nth time (with links), they called in the police and fired the idiot) and in real life (wasn't even aware of that one until someone else told me that they had seen the pictures they were taking of me while following me around). I've also survived a couple of sexual assaults, and I'm still around. My sisters are surprised, and I guess so am I ...

Thank $diety for therapy dogs and anti-depressants :-)

Re: what good will this do ?

[JosephWilliamCarson]

At the very least it's an voluntary initiative to work at cutting off terrorist usage of Twitter and potentially other communication systems that are being used to distribute terrorist related propaganda. I agree that many recruits probably don't come from Twitter, but it's still a distribution network for their own propaganda. Terrorists always win when people are afraid, an audience is still a pretty important factor for them. In addition to fueling the the hatred of those who support them, it still expands their reach of mindshare in the world, to the point of inspiring other nut jobs that this is a serious war that's worth dying for. It's not going to make them go away if we work together to reduce the abuse of social communication systems, but we don't need to sit idle and just allow them to use our systems to advertise their "war".

Re: what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been articles specifically talking about every issue you have posed with their post. What YOUR comment shows is a lack of knowledge.

Re:what good will this do ?

[unicornzvi]

More importantly it makes it much more difficult for anyone who was trying to get the actual terrorists and leaders (not just the idiots "associated with ISIS") to get the connections they need. In other words it makes the hackers feel good, and helps the terrorists.

Re:what good will this do ?

[RespekMyAthorati]

You don't actually think they are calling people do you?

Maybe.

Re: what good will this do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sitting around watching DVDs and smoking weed all day is reportedly exactly what Paris bomber Ibrahim Abdeslam did before the attack. See the link:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/shocking-footage-shows-paris-suicide-6870538

quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[swschrad]

and using what they find for targeting information.

at this point, all civilized nations appear to have decided that since ISIS wants to live in 600 AD, we can help by bombing them there. that does not need pinpoint targeting.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[MachineShedFred]

Exactly. Think of it this way:

A dumb cop that discovers a black market operation's stash house kicks in the door, makes a few arrests, and gets some B-roll on the news with drugs and guns on a table.

A smart cop that discovers a black market operation's stash house will sit on the location watching who and what goes where, and build cases on all of it and take the whole operation and it's suppliers at the same time.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[tinkerton]

It's mixed indeed. Now if anonymous screens a bit and removes the twitter accounts that are the least interesting, while leaving alone the ones that are too talkative, then maybe there's a value. Not much though. It's more a feelgood operation.

As for bombing them to 600 AD, yeah right. I read somewhere that there are 10 million people living under ISIS rule. Guess who will suffer most. I'm not saying don't do it, but it's nothing to go bragging about.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[khasim]

So at what point does the "smart cop" decide to stop them? After they've killed 129 people?

That makes a good movie plot but it doesn't work in real life.

The problem is that our "intelligence" agencies are more focused on electronics than on intelligence. It's easier. It's cheaper. It can cover a lot more "suspects". And it can be easily abused.

Stopping an attack makes you look good for one day.

Having a fearsome enemy that can attack any where, any time means you have funding for life.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Anubis IV]

I completely agree. Of course, there's also the case to be made that if a community activist posts a map to all of the drug dens in the neighborhood, it may finally encourage the community to take matters into their own hands, making the neighborhood inhospitable to the criminals. Get enough neighborhoods doing it, and it becomes pretty hard to do illegal business.

If the community actually responds, then great. But if they don't, which is what we'd typically expect, then the smart cop does exactly what you said: use the small fish to find the bigger ones.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[CanadianMacFan]

They've killed a lot more than 129 people (along with many other atrocities). There have been thousands dead already but I guess they don't count since they weren't in a first world country.

Not that the West really has the stomach to stop ISIS. All we want to do is send planes over there to drop bombs and let the smaller countries from the area do the fighting on the ground. Getting rid of them is going to take putting troops over there but the people here don't want to deal with the casualties that would come with that.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[losfromla]

Except that drug dens exist to supply a demand. That demand will be filled, because, life. They are only criminals because they don't have lobbyists like Philip-Morris, so, bad analogy.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[khasim]

They've killed a lot more than 129 people (along with many other atrocities). There have been thousands dead already but I guess they don't count since they weren't in a first world country.

More like it is a bit more difficult to arrest someone who is part of an armed organization in a different country.

Why would they be using social media to communicate with each other when they're bivouacked together?

Not that the West really has the stomach to stop ISIS.

It's not that they do not have the stomach for it.

They see advantages in having a scary enemy to distract from other issues.

All we want to do is send planes over there to drop bombs and let the smaller countries from the area do the fighting on the ground.

Because once a bomb is used, a replacement has to be purchased. Which means a LOT of money flowing from taxes to vendors.

Getting rid of them is going to take putting troops over there but the people here don't want to deal with the casualties that would come with that.

That is what created them the last time.

At this point there is no clean/easy way to deal with the mess we created. And we aren't willing to spend the money/years helping them if our vendors do not see a cash ROI.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

So at what point does the "smart cop" decide to stop them? After they've killed 129 people?

That's always the tough call to make when receiving intelligence from sources. For instance during WW2 the British received information about German bombing raids in advance through agents but sometimes had to choose not to evacuate civilians near the targets so that the source would not be compromised and could continue to provide intelligence. Hindsight is 20/20 and we don't know what Western intelligence agencies knew before the Paris attacks.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[F.Ultra]

Find what? This is propaganda channels and not secret information channels. It's like the Nazis in WW2 would eagerly collect the British "what your wife is doing at home while you are away to fight this war" pamphlets in order to collect vital intelligence information on the allied war effort. The ISIL Twitter accounts serve no purpose what so ever for intelligence agencies.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[F.Ultra]

It's more like a cop finding pamphlets with "do drugs, it's cool!" written on them and do nothing because he hopes to find vital secret information on them, which he of course never will since it's only propaganda.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Anubis IV]

It's only a bad analogy if you make the assumption that demand must be supplied from local sources. Your whole statement is predicated on that assumption, but that's not a safe assumption with drugs and it's not a safe assumption with terrorism.

I agree that suppliers will seek to fill demand, generally speaking, but a den may be in a particular neighborhood for any number of reasons, only one of which is to be close to consumers. If all of the neighborhoods in a region make themselves inhospitable to drug dens, criminals will still seek to supply the demand in that region, of course, but they may be incapable of doing so, simply because it would have become too difficult for them to operate there.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[BarbaraHudson]

The governments have already said that their best intelligence is from people, not the internet. You've got to figure that the flow of refugees who have no love of ISIS are going to be primed to give up whatever they know.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[BarbaraHudson]

So at what point does the "smart cop" decide to stop them? After they've killed 129 people?

That's always the tough call to make when receiving intelligence from sources. For instance during WW2 the British received information about German bombing raids in advance through agents but sometimes had to choose not to evacuate civilians near the targets so that the source would not be compromised and could continue to provide intelligence. Hindsight is 20/20 and we don't know what Western intelligence agencies knew before the Paris attacks.

Bullcrap. Turkey warned about one of the Paris attackers by name:

A senior Turkish official provided background information to Al Jazeera on Monday about one of the attackers, 29-year-old Paris native Omar Ismail Mostefai, who died in the attack on the Bataclan concert hall on Friday night.

The official said Mostefai entered Turkey in 2013, and that there was no record of him ever leaving.

In October 2014, France asked for information from Turkish intelligence about four "terror suspects", the official said, adding that during their investigation, Turkish authorities identified Mostefai as a fifth suspect.

Turkish authorities "notified their French counterparts twice - in December 2014 and June 2015 [about Mostefai]," the official said.

"We have, however, not heard back from France on the matter. It was only after the Paris attacks that the Turkish authorities received an information request about Omar Ismail Mostefai from Turkey."

To quote from Cool Hand Luke, "What we have here is a failure to com-mu-ni-cate".

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

So at what point does the "smart cop" decide to stop them? After they've killed 129 people?

This should NOT be sitting at +5 Insightful.
It was an analogy, it wasn't a great one, but you made it completely fucking idiotic with your talk about killing people. So let's change it up so maybe you'll get the fucking point.

A cop discovers a frequency on the AM radio band which is transmitting the locations for upcoming drug shipments.
A smart cop monitors the transmissions, and watches the radio site from a distance to see who is making them. He not only is able to intercept several drug shipments, but also causes the Cartel to begin distrusting their own people, thinking the radio operator may be leaking information to the police. The cops wait until the leader shows up for an in-person visit, and arrests the whole ring.

A dumb cop finds the transmission antenna, and destroys it. The next day, the drug dealers are transmitting on a different frequency from a different location, or simply switch to a different communication method. No drugs are stopped, no Cartel members are caught.

Do you get the point now? If not, you're just being intentionally stupid.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[SharpFang]

Where would you find these?

Because the most recent wave exhibited some quite aggressive hostility against the western countries and seemed quite sympathetic towards ISIS.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[SharpFang]

By the time a junkie on a high from a bad batch goes on a killing spree and murders everyone in a local school. The bad batch went through because it would reveal the antenna was compromised if it was stopped.

Not long afterwards the cartel boss begins suspecting the antenna was compromised anyway and moves the communication to different media, vanishing without a trace. Also, drugs are flooding the streets and the smart cop's daughter dies in a drive-by shooting between the cartel's men and some dealer.

All because the smart cop wasted too much time letting it slip, all in hopes of catching the big fish.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[BarbaraHudson]

If they are "quite sympathetic towards ISIS", why are they risking death by running away from them? I'm not buying that millions of refugees are all fleeing the war zones because they want to be ISIS sleeper agents.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

"They've killed a lot more than 129 people" well if they went on a shooting spree in a school short of waving ISIS flags would you lot notice the difference?

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said they were fleeing daesh? Many of them are fleeing poverty, or Assad, or something else. Europe and the US have nice social safety nets designed for legal immigrants and native-born citizens. Who wouldn't want a slice of that pie?

Also, they don't all have to be sleeper agents to become unwitting (or witting/willing) tools of daesh.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[fustakrakich]

Except that drug dens exist to supply a demand.

So does ISIS, and all those other groups out there. They are being paid, by just about everybody. There is a big demand for terrorists. If there wasn't, we wouldn't be hearing so much about them. Business is good.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

Where you were when the Americans used to call the Taliban "freedom fighters"?
Because at the time I was way piss off that women in Afghanistan didn't want to risk going to the doctors when ill to avoid being accused of Sin and stoned to dead
Did you complained then? or have you started worrying about non first world countries now that people is crying over Paris?
I'm sorry for all those other countries too but let me spell it for you
Paris is Rousseau, the revolution it is the root of the reason of way I can speak freely to you, and those attacks to France, Europe and the so called west in general, feel to me not as an attack to a particular country but to my way of life, my freedom, and to fucking rock and roll, it feels personal because it is and right now I want that lot extinct for the good of humanity
I want the declaration of human rights to became an international enforced law above all religions and customs, signed by every government, leader and religion, and those that do not want to abide by it to be isolated from the civilized world until they decide to change
If your customs suck, change them, in the twenty first century we should be looking into making a better world, not wasting our time making excuses for all the backwards sick bastard in the world

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

Hindsight is 20/20. What I would ask is how many of these alerts has Turkey sent France in the past? France can only watch so many suspects with their resources. Additionally, we know that at least some of the attackers used fake passports made in Turkey and the statement that he entered Turkey in 2013 and never officially left leads to the idea that this guy might have been travelling under a fake name. How do you track the travel of someone using a fake name, possibly multiple fake names? Biometrics would be nice but does France record the fingerprints of everyone crossing the border? They are part of the Schengen Area so as long as you can get into any one of those countries, you can pretty much travel unrestricted. I don't know the border crossing policies of the countries between Turkey and the Schengen Area but from the videos of the massive amounts of refugees running across borders, it doesn't appear that difficult to travel by ground.

I think the EU has to make a collective effort to beef up security at the borders of the Schengen Area if they wish to reduce the travel of extremists back into the EU. It's great that Turkey was making the effort to alert other countries about the travels of suspects and there should be more cooperation but when someone can just come in under a fake name, you lose the guy and he could be anywhere.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

More like it is a bit more difficult to arrest someone who is part of an armed organization in a different country.

You don't arrest them, you kill them.

Why would they be using social media to communicate with each other when they're bivouacked together?

There were several teams of terrorists involved in the Paris attacks, some twenty people in all. It's likely that they split themselves into smaller cells before the attack, to avoid attracting attention as a single large group, and it would therefore have been necessary to coordinate the activities of the different cells without everyone meeting in person.

It's not that they do not have the stomach for it.

Some do, but let's be honest here and say that most don't. Nothing short of total warfare is going to stop ISIS. They're fanatics, willing to die for a cause, which means that we must burn them to the ground to defeat them. They will never surrender.

They see advantages in having a scary enemy to distract from other issues.

There are simpler, less dangerous and much easier to control distractions. No, ISIS is more like a wildfire out of control and underestimating them has already cost us in Paris, we should not make that mistake again.

Because once a bomb is used, a replacement has to be purchased. Which means a LOT of money flowing from taxes to vendors.

ISIS lacks integrated air defense and surface to air missiles. They would be unable to stop a B-52 raid from completely destroying Raqqa with simple high explosive dumb bombs and incendiaries. Hell, Assad is bombing them on the cheap by rolling barrels of explosives out the back of cargo planes. This doesn't have to be expensive.

At this point there is no clean/easy way to deal with the mess we created.

I for one don't care if the solution is messy, as long as the problem is solved. Reducing all ISIS controlled cities to burned out ruins, cutting off their supplies of food, medicine and clean water would have large numbers of them dying from disease and starvation in less than 2 years. Problem solved.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

They see advantages in having a scary enemy to distract from other issues.

Agreed. The really interesting thing about that quote is it fits both sides of many issues. It is evil to use things like racism, xenophobia, and fear to acquire and manipulate the populous, regardless of which side you are on. That is not to equate the sides. They are not remotely equal, but to conquer this kind of thing you need to get at the root causes. It has to be blindingly obvious to anyone around the world that we have nothing against any particular religion or people. When our politicians feed the xenophobia by saying things like we refuse to even consider taking any non-christian refugees we might as well be helping the actual terrorists recruit, since from a neutral third part it could certainly appears that we might be against their religion. Add a bit of video editing and I'd be utterly surprised if it wasn't used in propaganda videos.

Suppose instead we opened our doors wide to Syrian refugees. Suppose we made a visible and actual attempt to show we were decent human beings and gave a damn. We have a lot of unused housing that could be used. Sure, some terrorists would probably get in and kill people, but suppose we did not let fear rule our lives and still continued to help those who genuinely seem to be good people.

Would all of that end ISIS? Probably not, but it should at least hurt recruitment a bit, at least among those who are exposed to an actual free press and know the truth.

We as a country are a bit too insular. It doesn't help that it is not common for one to have enough money to wander the world. I certainly never have. I wonder, however, if there is something we could do about it. What if we had more foreign exchange programs? Ramp that up. Much of it could even be virtual. If everyone growing up had at least one Muslim friend, and maybe one Hindu, Buddhist, and Shinto friend? Of course to make it really work we would have to all learn multiple languages or agree on one, and that is another issue. Still, perhaps a virtual classroom and real time translation would help?

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[mrbester]

If you mean allowing the destruction of Coventry, we destroyed Dresden in revenge for having to keep secret the fact the codes were broken and we knew it was coming. And we were subsequently painted as the bad guys for doing it by revisionist shitheads.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Cederic]

I'm not buying that millions of people are trying to get into Western Europe because they're refugees from violence.

They could stop in Israel, or Jordan, or Lebanon or even Turkey, and be safe. No, they're either economic migrants or have malicious intent.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Also:

A corrupt cop that discovers a black market operation's stash house will sit on the location watching who and what goes where, and build cases on all of it and take the whole operation over to become filthy rich (muahaha, pinky to mouth)

The line between good and evil is pretty blurry when police don't follow the laws as intended. Sometimes, arresting the low level people is the right thing to do, not letting crimes go unpunished.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[dave420]

"We"? You must be pretty old. Unless, that is, you are attempting to take partial credit for what others did... How wonderfully classy.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[squiggleslash]

They could stop in Israel, or Jordan, or Lebanon or even Turkey

So if they're economic migrants, why not stop in Israel or Turkey? And Barbara has already dealt with the "malicious intent" argument.

It's pretty straightforward. They're trying to get the hell away from danger and horror. The West is one of the few places in the world you can flee to and, if you're accepted be given a chance to recover - not become rich, but not spend the rest of your miserable life in a refugee camp, which you might accept for yourself but you'll never accept for your family.

Put yourself in the shoes of someone fleeing war and a horrific terrorist group that beheads people for expressing any view or making any action deemed bad by one reading of a 1,500 year old book. Where would you go? One of the many countries that literally can't cope with any influx of refugees, a country that treats people like you as the enemy, or Europe and the US?

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[BarbaraHudson]

I'm an atheist, but I think that the last verse of 1 Cor. 13 pretty much sums up what is right in these situations ...

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me put this another way:

Two bulls - a father bull and a son bull - are sitting on a grassy hill overlooking a field of cows. The son bull goes to the father bull 'Hey dad, lets run down and fuck one those bulls!!' The father bull, whilst appreciating his sons enthusiasm, takes a moment to respond and when he does he says 'No son, lets walk down there..and fuck them all'.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[dave420]

Or that those places you list have been subjected to massive violence, and they just want the safest lives possible for their families, a desire we all understand. It's almost as if you don't consider them human beings...

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[mrbester]

Like no USian ever uses "we" to denote a people of whom they are a member. You might not have dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, but "we the people" did.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

America (and its allies) killed 300,000-400,000 in their misguided second invasion of Iraq - which was by an objective measure and act of terrorism. If we can't bring those commander's in chief to justice where the crime was so obvious and egregious why would we presume to have any chance of stopped a distributed collection of disillusioned militants. Also, since ISIS gets most of its weapons from the FSA who are being armed by the US in a thinly-veiled attempt to destabilize the ruling government, does the US actually want to stop ISIS? WTF don't they stop arming them then?!

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[losfromla]

Yeah, except that criminalizing drugs was the first mistake. All arguments that take drugs being illegal as somehow morally superior as their foundation are flawed.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[losfromla]

Really? They are being paid? Are you really, truly, and seriously suggesting that terrorists are not idealists and instead are mercenaries for hire? This is indeed a novel notion that no one I've heard of has put forth before. Please provide some base for your statements as I cannot imagine what drove a person who can apparently put words together into sentences to come up with such ideas.

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[fustakrakich]

Yes, they ARE being paid...

  "Abu Khaled,like other ISIS members, was paid $100 per month, in U.S. greenbacks, not Syrian lira, despite the latter being the coin of the realm in al-Bab. Currency exchange houses exist in the city where ISIS employees can take their salaries for conversion, although they scarcely need to, given the freebies that come with ISIS employment.

"I rented a house, which was paid for by ISIS," Abu Khaled told me. "It cost $50 per month. They paid for the house, the electricity. Plus, I was married, so I got an additional $50 per month for my wife. If you have kids, you get $35 for each. If you have parents, they pay $50 for each parent. This is a welfare state."

"This is why a lot of people are joining," said Abu Khaled. "I knew a mason who worked construction. He used to get 1,000 lira per day. That's nothing. Now he's joined ISIS and gets 35,000 lira---$100 for himself, $50 for his wife, $35 for his kids. He makes $600 to $700 per month. He gave up masonry. He's just a fighter now, but he joined for the income."

Sorry to run your little bandwagon off the cliff there, honey. Do try to cope the best you can. Ever think of moonlighting? I'm sure they're hiring...

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[fustakrakich]

Damn! I forgot to mention, they got some good drugs, too, in case you're into that sort of thing. Now, if you have any further doubts, feel free to ask, thankyouverymuch

Re:quite likely "intelligence" is monitoring

[Anubis IV]

I disagree with your assertion that those arguments are necessarily flawed, but regardless of our disagreement over that subject, that's immaterial to the discussion here, since if you have an issue with the analogy introduced by the previous poster, you can easily swap it out for most other forms of illegal business activity with which you have no such qualms (e.g. gun running? sex trafficking?) without changing the core of the arguments. Drugs were a convenient analogy that are familiar to most here, but if they don't work for you, the arguments hold up just fine with any number of other illegal business ventures being substituted in their place.

Why they haven't taken them down

[chuckymonkey]

It's pretty easy actually, better to keep tabs on the enemy by letting them continue to use accounts that we know about rather than drive them to ones that we don't.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[king neckbeard]

Well, they seem to have been too lenient, seeing as they let such a major attack happen.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming that governments genuinely care about preventing terrorism when the only thing they've ever actually shown any interest in is advancing their own agendas. So perhaps the real reason these accounts are left active is just so they have something to keep pointing to and saying, "Look how uncontrollable terrorists are! This is why you need to continue sacrificing your privacy for the illusion of safety!"

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[lurker412]

Taking them down seems like a futile approach, as they'll only reappear with a different identity. Clever trolling would be more effective--poison the well instead. Problem is, to be effective requires considerable language skills and cultural expertise, which one wouldn't necessarily expect from a hacker community.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter generally doesn't take action against an account until a third party tells them to, whether that's a bevy of user complaints or a court order. This is partially down to prioritizing manpower and partially because it would open a big can of worms for them to take on the role of legal arbiter for every nation in the world.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter generally doesn't take action against an account until a third party tells them to, whether that's a bevy of user complaints or a court order. This is partially down to prioritizing manpower and partially because it would open a big can of worms for them to take on the role of legal arbiter for every nation in the world.

They don't take action at all. Unless it suits their particular agenda.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[prefec2]

If you only fight them in a war like scenario then this is correct. However, we can only win when we stop to produce young people who become willingly the tools of IS. Therefore, we have to cut the communication links of IS. And we must help those young men in school, university, and society to find another way to get recognition in life.

See also: http://www.theguardian.com/pro...

Re: Why they haven't taken them down

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, eliminating your enemy is bad for you if you need its presence to excuse your policy and spending.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[AmiMoJo]

Problem is you push people on to the dark web. The people reading this stuff will quickly get instructions to download Tails and their reading habits will become much harder to monitor.

Actually, that may be a good thing. Force GCHQ/NSA to target individuals instead of relying on bulk collection. Oh man, what a moral dilemma, which bad guys do we help?

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. Social media does not take accounts down en masse for two reasons. It makes their investors and shareholders happy because of higher numbers, and it makes famous people not lose hundreds of thousands of followers overnight like what happened when instagram did a mass purge, which minimizes recoil from their positive efforts.

Agencies who want to track people through known social media accounts have already indexed the data, so this argument holds no weight.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely shielding young people from opposing viewpoints, rather than discussing them, will keep them safe!

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a horribly double-edged sword.

Giving them an avenue to be tracked? Great idea.
Giving them the ability to communicate their evil deeds to the world? Bad, they want the attention. Even if that attention is indirect, like that silly Facebook French flag thing happening just now.

This is the same issue with Belgium just recently saying how terrorists were using PS4 to communicate.
What a stupid idea, now they are just going to use other systems to communicate.
ISIS aren't stupid, they just aren't as knowledgeable as your average geek. (they are like the fake geeks that think they are hacking using torrents or some shit)
The more they learn about how they are being spied on, the further in to the dark they will get and become even less trackable, and THAT is even worse.

Eventually it is going to get to a point where they will start using custom hardware, or keyword systems they only tell each other about in real life and such.
Not those stupid obvious keywords you hear on TV shows either, I mean complex ones that are basically impossible to know about unless you are in on the system being used. Ones that can be wired straight in to natural speech and sound like a legit sentence, some "casual" banter between the terrorists. It isn't hard to do if you actually think about it and plan it out correctly. You can make every X words be your actual sentences, or even a running number, say 34762, so every 3rd, 4th, 7th, Nth words in order. That would allow for flexible encoding, and even harder to crack encoding.
We can only hope it never does get to situations like that, because if it does, it will become impossibly harder to figure out what they are doing and the world will become a very bad place.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[Anonymous Coward]

And how do they figure out what individuals to target? That's what bulk collection is for.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[prefec2]

France has also a bulk monitoring and collecting of meta data, like the UK. And you can be sure that thy also monitor Internet traffic. However, they were not able to find anything. This is also one of the biggest problems. They have so much data, but they do not know what to do with it.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[fustakrakich]

Twitter, BAH! If you want to be effective, follow their finances and arms deals, but be careful, you will find out things you don't want to know. Or you could file an FOIA request for the receipts at the state department. There you will find what makes this ride go 'round and 'round.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[Jack Griffin]

It seems Anonymous haven't learnt from the whole RIAA/MPAA debacle.
As you say, you can't win at whack-a-mole, you need to give the moles Ebola and let them do your work for you.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[Cederic]

I think it's very reasonable to assume that the French did not want an attack to take place, and that they would have acted had they known it was being initiated.

There's no leniency, just communication and resource challenges, and (even in France) a dogged insistence on mostly obeying the law by not (e.g.) rounding up all muslims and feeding them to pigs.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[king neckbeard]

The French were apparently warned by Turkey. Given that governments have been warned about at least 9/11, the Boston bombings, and these Paris attacks. They are NOT obeying the law, and they STILL can't catch anyone that they didn't groom themselves. They are useless.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[Cederic]

Ok, they were warned by Turkey. Was the warning the only one the Turks have ever given, or is this one of sixty a day? Are the Turks reliable or do they give a warning for anything? Did the warning includes the names of the attackers, including the names they were using in France or Belgium? Did the warning include a date? Did the warning include a location? Was the location 'France', 'Paris' or actually useful? Did the warning include the time of the attacks? Did the warning include anything fucking actionable at all?

Or would you like to assume that everybody in France is malicious and/or incompetent, on the grounds it's easier than thinking?

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[sociocapitalist]

If you only fight them in a war like scenario then this is correct. However, we can only win when we stop to produce young people who become willingly the tools of IS. Therefore, we have to cut the communication links of IS. And we must help those young men in school, university, and society to find another way to get recognition in life.

See also: http://www.theguardian.com/pro...

You say young men but it isn't only men.

Has to be both methods - monitor the known communications channels to identify 'at risk' youth and then help them find a different path or if they choose to stay on that path, help them meet their god face to face.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[king neckbeard]

We've got global monitoring of basically all eletronic communications, and we can't catch jack shit. At this point, I don't care the reason or reasons, they've merely shown that they won't get the job done.

Re: Why they haven't taken them down

[prefec2]

Absolutely.

Re:Why they haven't taken them down

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always maintained ever since I used to have a Girlfriend who worked in the security dept of a Shopping center , that Subliminal messaging works.. I propose that all schools from grammar to high school have soothing background music played over the schools intercom on a daily basis with the subliminal message. Mind Your parents., stay away from drugs, gangs, ISIS and all other Subversive groups. do your homework .Be kind to your elders Basicall repeat the 10 Commandments in subliminal form NUFF SAID!!

Find one

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

and why intelligence agencies haven't done anything about them, if they're so easy to find.

One likes to think they are finding and tracking whoever logs in to them, and sorting the hot air people from the real networked folks.

Re:Find one

[BarbaraHudson]

and why intelligence agencies haven't done anything about them, if they're so easy to find.

One likes to think they are finding and tracking whoever logs in to them, and sorting the hot air people from the real networked folks.

In that case, it's clearly not working. Twitter and Facebook (and youtube) are propaganda. It's the easy way for them to find people who are disillusioned, depressed, prey to dogma, as well as build up their "brand."

Maybe intelligence agencies were running them

[Anonymous Coward]

these accounts might have been well known to intelligence agencies, and maybe Anonymous just screwed up a bunch of important sources of intelligence gathering and monitoring.

if Anonymous declared war on ISIS after JeSuisCharlie, why didn't Anonymous take these down before the latest incident.

none of it makes sense as part of a bigger picture without more information. As a smaller picture, perhaps Anonymous is some teenagers with short attentions spans

Re:Maybe intelligence agencies were running them

[HiThere]

You seem to be under the impression that just because some group uses the name Anonymous, they are the same as other groups that use the same name. I don't believe this is correct.

Re:Maybe intelligence agencies were running them

[Anonymous Coward]

What? You mean all the anonymous cowards here *aren't* the same person?

The very definition of "slacktivism"

[vivaoporto]

This is a feel good measure, the very definition of "slacktivism".

Reporting twitter accounts from people most likely fanboying from their comfortable homes in the west is nothing, how long until they create another account? 1 hour, 2 hours?

When one look back and look at the most remarkable hacks against high profile targets (like the one Saudi Aramco suffered in 2012.) it puts in context that this kind of initiative is well intentioned but naive and a waste of time for the volunteers.

Re:The very definition of "slacktivism"

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a feel good measure, the very definition of "slacktivism".

Aye, but they're finally aiming their lazy attacks at a hostile faction. Even if it just means 3% less inconvenience for people who aren't trying to decapitate civilians, that is better than many of the things that have been done under the mask of Anonymous.

ISIS don't use followers

[Anonymous Coward]

They use trending hashtags from their own region and the odd word. This effort isn't doing anything other than disabling a few obviously trolls/sympathisers. Don't you think the world's govt wouldn't already be monitory such obvious twatter accounts?

Come back with they do something useful like dox the money trail. Don't hold your breath.

Re:ISIS don't use followers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it just seems likely that all Anonymous is doing is getting a lot shitposting accounts knocked offline, rather than actual jihadists. BTW, Anonymous is really publicity whoring themselves out here, aren't they? How many more op flops does there have to be before the press stops giving these guys the attention they so desperately crave?

Re:ISIS don't use followers

[Anonymous Coward]

Come back with they do something useful like dox the money trail.

Israel.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Re:ISIS don't use followers

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you misspelled Saudi Arabia

Re:ISIS don't use followers

[BarbaraHudson]

We already know that they got hundreds of millions by robbing an Iraqi bank. Then there's the black market oil they sell, the contributions from Arabs living elsewhere, hostage ransoms, taxing those inhabitants who are still living there ...

Heck, they even pay pensions to the wives of fighters KIA.

Re:ISIS don't use followers

[fustakrakich]

The money trail is "hidden" in plain sight. Just like in Men in Black...

Re:ISIS don't use followers

[fustakrakich]

We already know that they got hundreds of millions by robbing an Iraqi bank.

Huh, so that where all those missing billions ended up? "Robbery"? Most likely staged... It's a neat way of transferring funds without having to deal with the paperwork. Just like when we hear about weapons depots being "raided", for instance that time in Libya that everybody is always talking about.

And Kissinger goes to a dinner party and sips champagne.

Re:ISIS don't use followers

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh by the way that stealing all the bank money in Mosul was our propaganda.
  Latter the bank president debunked the story like 3 months later, that the bank
deposits were intact. The bank president had by then escaped to Baghdad.

Re:ISIS don't use followers

[king neckbeard]

I think you misspelled Reptilian home planet.

Just making the job harder

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if Anonymous thought that perhaps taking out these ISIS sites they are making the job harder for the intelligence community. If ISIS is pushed underground it just means governments will employ more tactics like the ones used by the NSA.

I say leave the sites open but connect the data and hand it over to the NSA or CIA etc so they can run with it and hunt these people down.

Re:Just making the job harder

[hesiod]

I wonder if Anonymous thought

You can stop right there and be sure the answer is "no, they did not."

Idiots...

[Anonymous Coward]

Far better to use the information to direct daesch to attach each other.

They think it is encryted

[Anonymous Coward]

The intelligence agencies probably think twitter is encrypted and that is why back doors should be built into everything.

Great Work Kids!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is literally nothing in the world harder than creating a Twitter account. I know, I tried. Couldn't read the damn CAPTCHA without my spectacles.

Anonymous has completely ruined the infrastructure of terror. It will take centuries to rebuild.

Great work kids. I hope you all get medals for you bravery.

Re:Great Work Kids!

[Anonymous Coward]

Creating an account may not be hard, but rebuilding a following is harder.

From Someone in the CIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for fucking up the accounts we've been monitoring you goddamned Asperger kids.

Re:From Someone in the CIA

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that this post was actually made by an Asperger kid. And not one working for a three-letter agency. Except maybe McD.

Re:From Someone in the CIA

[Anonymous Coward]

All your monitoring has really helped. If we had only known that you were on the verge of shutting Daesh down, we would never have interfered.

Re:From Someone in the CIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever CIA is doing it doesn't work. Let Anonymous have their fun, even if they are inefficient they are not less efficient than CIA.

Oh, BTW, guess what organization usually creates terrorist networks to use against their opponent until the terrorists turns against them?
You think that CIA just sat on their asses in that war against al Qaida and then suddenly ISIS that happens to oppose al Qaida magically grew strong after the war?

Re:From Someone in the CIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Your tears bring me great joy.

RE:Why intelligence agencies haven't done anything

[extranatural]

It could easily be the case that U.S. intelligence agencies are too incompetent to catch these terrorist affiliated social media accounts.

U.S. intelligence agencies haven't exactly demonstrated a capacity to really make effective use of the big data they collect.

Yes, they are quite good at intercepting and collecting data, but there are many indications that the NSA in particular doesn't really have the data intelligence necessary to effectively sift through what they capture.

In the 'proud' tradition of the TSA, our intelligence agency's anti-terror data collection operations may be more security theater than actual security.

That said I'm not sure a bunch of anons are likely to do much better.

Does this help?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the world's government "Intelligence Agencies" want criminals off social media or Internet? Probably not...

Call me stupid but...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Anonymous Takes Down Thousands of ISIS-Related Twitter Accounts

Call me stupid but why doesn't Twitter shut off terrorist/childporn/etc. accounts regularly? Isn't there a TOS for that? Is there ANY way to get kicked off of Twitter?

Re:Call me stupid but...

[freeze128]

You say that like there is an infinite number of moderators at twitter that are reading every single feed. There isn't, and they're not.

Re:Call me stupid but...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> You say that like there is an infinite number of moderators at twitter

No, I say that like there are a FINITE number of anonymous members who were able to make the necessary distinctions.

Re:Call me stupid but...

[gstoddart]

Yes, well, and what was the accuracy rate of anonymous?

It's all well and good to say they've done something ... it's another to know how good of a job they've done at it.

If they shut down thousands of accounts, and 99% of them had nothing to do with ISIS, that's hardly some great success now is it?

Those "necessary distinctions" have yet to be validated as anything other than Anonymous saying they've done so.

The proof is in the proof, not in the press release.

Re:Call me stupid but...

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

No, I say that like there are a FINITE number of anonymous members who were able to make the necessary distinctions.

The crucial difference is, Twitter didn't have to pay them anything.

Re:Call me stupid but...

[Anonymous Coward]

"99% of them had nothing to do with ISIS"
comeonman, this is what is known as winwin. its time anon moved on to all other social media and lets include all proponents of violence including gun nuts and physical comedy activists. this way i can have the bw back for my pron.

Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

ISIS is like a startup with a fresh capital injection: so eager to accumulate new employees they are sloppy with everything they do.

These twitter accounts are a giant gaping sieve of information for the NSA/CIA/DIA/FBI/GCHQ/other "Five Eyes" agencies.

[satire]Personally I think GWB/Cheney/Rumsfeld were actually sleeper agents of the Chinese/Russian governments who actively sought payback for Charlie Wilson's War/Rambo III IRL[/satire]

ISIS has help desk to aid terrorists w/encryption

[JoeyRox]

http://thehill.com/policy/cybe...

I was able to infiltrate this ISIS help desk and here is the prompt I heard when calling into it (translated from Arabic):

Welcome to the Daesh hotline. Please listen carefully to the following message as our options have changed.
Press 1 for information on how to encrypt messages sent to members of your terrorist cell
Press 2 if you're a suicidal bomber and are having trouble detonating your device
Press 3 if you're an oppressed female who would like to sign up for our next Perl Programming Bootmap
Press 4 for tips on how to write terror and/or hate messages in 140 characters or less
Press 5 to voice your displeasure with systemd
Or Press 0 to speak with a member of the Bush family for further assistance

teh reaperening

[Thud457]

I thought ISIS recruitment was a good thing because it removed the stupid fuckups from our society to a location where we can safely dispose of them by bombing them from a drone.

Re:teh reaperening

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> it removed the stupid fuckups from our society to a location where we can safely dispose of them by bombing

That was kind of the point behind invading Iraq, if you listen to certain neo-cons. Unfortunately, it turns out that 1) the supply of stupid fuckups is nearly inexhaustible, 2) they start hiding among the civilians (which we then bomb) and 3) some are happy to "play ISIS" in their own backyards (like this fuckup).

Re:teh reaperening

[TooManyNames]

Great plan... until that drone misidentifies someone else for the stupid fuckup (creating more anti-whoever sent the drone sentiment), and that stupid fuckup lives to take out a dozen or so non-fuckups before they finally go.

Re: teh reaperening

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the ones who are removed, but only after taking a lot of locals with them as they decide to attack on home soil rather than move to Syria?

Re:teh reaperening

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

It could be - but some of them wouldn't be (quite as) stupid fuckups if they had better options available. The more refugees we take in, and the more we treat them like normal people, the less they're going to want to attack us. We absolutely cannot afford to make it a "West vs. Islam" fight, because that's how they get more recruits. It's playing right into their hands.

Re:teh reaperening

[publiclurker]

Not to mention that when this happens friends and relatives of the misidentified decide to join the fuckups.

Re:teh reaperening

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is nobody has used big enough bombs to end the orgy of violence occurring in the ME. The military has had to fight with one hand tied behind their backs while people moan and bitch about civilian casualties. It's past time too just flatten any city hosting ISIS presence. I suggest we let the Russians do it since nobody gives a shit what they do while fixated on every US action. If there has ever been a case for unleashing total war the ME meets all the relevant criteria. There is no chance of a diplomatic solution to fix all the problems in the region. Countries large and small can have all the summits and meetings they want but they will not solve any of the problems. And taking down Twitter accounts and other social media accounts just removes one of the primary ways the intelligence agencies gather information. And the online recruiting and propaganda exercises are centered in western countries that do have access to the internet.

Re:teh reaperening

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot 2.5 ) when you bomb innocent civilians, you actually create more terrorists than you just killed, because now those innocent people and their families hate you, with reason.

Re:teh reaperening

[SharpFang]

One simple way around that: leave no survivors.

Re:teh reaperening

[SharpFang]

The "refugees" adamantly refuse to behave like normal people though. They aren't trying to escape the hell in their home country - they are bringing that hell with them in attempt to leech the West for welfare support. Their desire to attack us doesn't seem to wane any over time, just opposite - they grow increasingly angry that WE don't adapt THEIR ways, that countries don't agree to create districts with sharia law, that they shun inhumane treatment of women, that they demand tolerance to other religions.

We've given that strategy a try and it has failed. You just lack enough first-hand info on how badly it failed and keeps failing. These people simply don't accept compromises. Their way or highway. And if the infidel suckers are willing to give them money for free, all the better, but that only means the infidel suckers deserve even less respect.

Re:teh reaperening

[cold fjord]

That was kind of the point behind invading Iraq, if you listen to certain neo-cons. Unfortunately, it turns out that 1) the supply of stupid fuckups is nearly inexhaustible...

That isn't quite correct. Most of Al Qaeda eventually fled Iraq because things had turned so bad for them. Iraq continued to grow more peaceful as the extremists were captured, killed, forced into hiding, or fled. Where did they go? Afghanistan. Guess what happened in Afghanistan at that time? It started heating up, violence started spiking. After President Obama declined to negotiate an agreement for US troops to remain in Iraq the reverse started happening. Militants eventually started traveling to Iraq and Syria, melding into ISIS.

When things were especially bloody in Iraq, say 2005-2007, al Qaeda was able to recruit suicide bombers. But eventually as the war started to go against them and recruiting became more difficult the supply of "good" candidates for suicide bombers started to dry up and they had to make do. They did things like coerce people (drive this car here or we'll kill you and your family), and use children and the mentally infirm or grief stricken.

Re:teh reaperening

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

No, a lot of them do behave like normal people would, if they were in that situation. If you're forced to leave your home and travel across a continent, arrive in a land that mostly speaks a different language than you, and the people there don't treat you well, how much would you like them and want to get along? To be sure, there are cultural differences, but those can be overcome, with effort. There are certainly some who try to take advantage, but they're no different from the people who already take advantage of the system. You lack a sufficient timescale to appreciate the strategy - it worked in America for pretty much every immigrant group that showed up. Xenophobia at first, sure, but by the first or second generation they're mostly just normal Americans.

Re:teh reaperening

[SharpFang]

Yeah, the Native Americans have quite seamlessly blended with the society. There are certainly no more racial/cultural issues with the Black, the ghetto districts just don't exist. And the peaceful Amishes have embraced the progress and are indistinguishable from any common American.

Re:teh reaperening

[Anonymous Coward]

In the USA refugees get exactly 1 year of government aid and then nothing after that for a period of 10 years; no food stamps, no welfare checks; no government assistance at all. Refugees don't leach off western welfare.

Re:teh reaperening

[jp10558]

The US isn't really a melting pot, it's a bunch of groups sort of working together. There are issues - but they're not regularly committing terrorism against other countries either. They're not recruiting people in other countries to come and fight here. They're not even often attacking others inside their communities in the way ISIS / Taliban / etc have.

I'll take the US level of getting along, as low as it is, over the Middle East level of exporting terrorism.

Re:teh reaperening

[dave420]

Your understanding of recent history is laughable. It amazes me that you didn't choke to death on your keyboard while attempting to type that. Wow. Simply incredible.

Re:teh reaperening

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Well, those groups were (and still are) treated differently by the government and populace, and some of their isolation is self-enforced. And while the Amish are somewhat insular, they are peaceful. However, as jp10558 said, even though the US has issues with different groups, it is a lot better than Western Europe or the Middle East. Look at how well the different East and South Asian immigrants have done here. There are tensions between groups, but things are getting better over time.

Re: teh reaperening

[Anonymous Coward]

less vicously speaking, the mohammedics urgently need Birth Control. to many poor and hungry young folks are the root cause of all this.

what WE should do is to stop supporting the saudi brutalists. they actively fund and ideologize not just isis, but they also spread the idea of having as many kids as possible.

mohammedism is like a dangerous fungi...

but the saudis are smart enough to bribe our leaders and have the temerity to show up in germany, when i call out their nasty acts.

in other words, our rotten elite and security services are part of the problem.

Re: teh reaperening

[Anonymous Coward]

your biggest gang raped iraq because the saudis killed new yorkers.

and by all accounts we have to believe you at least accept saudi and turk support of isis.

Re:teh reaperening

[SharpFang]

Note how none of them have in their tenets of faith how death while killing infidels will bring them paradise.

They didn't adapt because their culture shuns yours. But they don't commit terrorist acts because their culture doesn't encourage doing so.

Re:teh reaperening

[SharpFang]

Do any of the adapting immigrant groups having Jihad/Holy War as a part of their culture? Did they reject it due to cultural adaptation or did they rather arrive without that concept in the first place?

Re:teh reaperening

[jp10558]

So you think that only cultural encouragement lends people to committing acts of terror? There's no other reason someone might engage in asymmetric warfare? More to the point, did the IRAs culture encourage them to carry out bombings? There have been terrorists at different times, including organized groups, that to my limited knowledge are not muslim, and don't have any "tenets of faith [that] death while killing infidels will bring them paradise".

Re:teh reaperening

[SharpFang]

So, IRA terrorists immigrated to Belfast from some country 2000km away?

Re:teh reaperening

[Grishnakh]

You lack a sufficient timescale to appreciate the strategy - it worked in America for pretty much every immigrant group that showed up.

No, it didn't. A century ago, there was no such thing as welfare. Irish and Italians who came here either worked their asses off, or they starved to death. Many of those who did work died on the job; there was no such thing as workers' rights, weekends off, OSHA, safety rules, ESL classes, etc. A lot of people seem to laud immigration as having built America, but what it really did was *exploit* immigrants. It worked out well for the capitalists, but it didn't work out all that well for many of the immigrants. For those lucky ones who survived the horrific work conditions and economic climate with no safety net, their kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids got pretty good lives out of the deal I guess.

These days, much of that stuff doesn't apply any more. We have welfare, safety nets, etc., so the whole dynamic is changed. Immigrants no longer are forced to integrate and go to work. Do you really want to go back to the days before OSHA and social programs?

Re:teh reaperening

[Grishnakh]

The IRA, despicable as their acts were, were fighting for their homeland against people they saw as invaders: the British. They were not immigrant in any way, shape, or form. The British were the newcomers.

It's not that different from Israel vs. Palestine. The Palestinians have been there for centuries so of course they're pissed at Israel coming in and pushing them around, since Israel is a very new country, and many Israelis are pretty new to the region (and there's even more Jews immigrating there now from Europe).

The terrorism is Europe is being done by people who are the kids of Muslim immigrants from far away. They have nothing valid to fight about: they're basically newcomers, plus they get all kinds of social welfare benefits there. But they're still pissed for various stupid reasons: Europeans don't accept them (whine whine), they don't have good jobs, their religion isn't accepted/dominant, etc. It's nothing at all like the IRA or even Palestinians. They're just a bunch of spoiled brats.

If anything, it shows that Muslim immigration is more of a long-term problem than a short-term one. The new arrivals really don't seem to cause problems, but then they pop out some kids and those kids do everything they can to destroy the society that took in their parents. Maybe Muslim immigrants should just be sterilized; that would solve the problem.

Re:teh reaperening

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that was the UVF terrorists.

accomplished what?

[iggymanz]

So the will stop ISIL from sawing off people's heads, raping, slaughtering, stealing, being pedophiles, vandals, shooting up discos in foreign countries etc.?

It will keep the really stupid ones, such as certain known ones from the USA for instance, from bragging as much I suppose.

Re:accomplished what?

[Anonymous Coward]

five guys in the desert that no one has heard of aren't much of a threat.
But give them a global platform, and five guys becomes fifty guys, then five thousand, and so on.

ISIL live on propaganda, they recruit through it, they sow the discord they want through it, and they create fear through it. If you remove their ability to communicate outside their own circle, they'll wither and die.

Re:accomplished what?

[iggymanz]

You are so funny. They have and can recruit in person, on radio, on tv, via newspaper, to the neighboring towns as they expand. you can't remove their ability to communicate. they don't need facebook, twitter nor anything else.

you can kill them, then they will die whether they wither or not.

but imagining taking away some social media accounts will matter is just a delusion by ignorant kids

Dumb

[poity]

So they just reported them and drove them to new accounts or more obscure platforms?
Why not infiltrate them, honeypot them, phish them, throw in some trojans, etc? They could have caused a lot more trouble. Are these even the 4chan Anons from yesteryear? Where is the chaotic element?

Re:Dumb

[Krishnoid]

It's also worth exploring the question of why Twitter hasn't already disabled these accounts, and why intelligence agencies haven't done anything about them, if they're so easy to find.

...

Why not infiltrate them, honeypot them ... ?

Maybe that's why the accounts weren't actively shut down before -- they're something like low-hanging fruit when it comes to surveillance.

Re:Dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not infiltrate them, honeypot them, phish them, throw in some trojans, etc? They could have caused a lot more trouble. Are these even the 4chan Anons from yesteryear? Where is the chaotic element?

Because "Anonymous" is an amorphous idea and not a group, often appropriated as a name and mantle by brigades of total idiots.

Re:Dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

An article at The Independent reminds everyone that this information has not been independently confirmed, and that Anonymous is certainly capable of misidentifying people. It's also worth exploring the question of why Twitter hasn't already disabled these accounts, and why intelligence agencies haven't done anything about them, if they're so easy to find.

I don't remember any such disclaimers when Anonymous "outed" a bunch of nonexistent people and celebrities, as well as random trailer park dudes, as members of an "organization" that cosplays as garden gnomes.

Re:Dumb

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

They could have caused a lot more trouble. Are these even the 4chan Anons from yesteryear? Where is the chaotic element?

They largely aren't. 4chan is a shell of its former self. Don't get me wrong, it can still be a terrible place, but it's not nearly as bad as it used to be. I'd guess a lot of the former members either grew up, got busy with other stuff in life, or moved to other sites.

Re:Dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Anonymous never even started with 4chan, which is a horribly bad misconception. It started off on another imageboard.

Anonymous on 4chan was a joke. A green-headed faggot that was retarded and made fun of in comics and flash animations.
Then it become the whole hackers on steroids crap from another imageboard and spread to 4chan because imageboards == 4chan obviously. Stupid news.
But then it actually did spread to 4chan in mid 2006 and led to chanology crap in 2007, which actually ended up with the whole Anonymous thing leaving 4chan again because they were universally hated across the site.

But by that time, Anonymous had taken on the role of Anonymous Discussion in early 2006, a discussion methodology forced on its users by moot because he listened to whiny raiders from world2ch. (mainly menchi, someone who directly tried to kill the site TWICE and he listened to HIM over people he associated with! )
After forced anonymity crap happened, most of those people left the site and went back to SA, forums, made their own imageboards, or IRC.
The only people left on the site then were people too stupid, newer posters that flooded the site from habbo raids, and world2ch idiots.
That was when 4chan truly died. It went from a community-driven site to a content-driven site. And the latter sites are always inferior because it has too many conflicting interests, which is true if you have ever looked on 4chan, any large board, there are always conflicts in the communities with interests, especially the east vs west divide.
Of course, some people disagree and say it only changed slightly and that it only really died in 2010. But equally, there are people that still think the site is fine in 2015 when it is an absolute disaster. Even moot left it. Hopefully hiroyuki won't screw them over and actually fix the mess moot turned the site in to through horrible ideas and listening to stupid minority groups that are overly vocal.

Anonymous has never been 4chan. It was universally despised by practically the entire site, and pushed out of it back to the awful imageboards it came from.
Anonymous, equally, is a bit of a lie. It is a global heading used by many sub-groups (for that very reason, to be anonymous)
These groups don't WANT to be known directly. Practically the only ones that did were the attention whores, and you all know of them. Groups like LulzSec for example. Attention got them infiltrated and destroyed.
Being Anonymous means there is more noise to filter through. Actions associated with them become muddied through the actions of all the other sub-groups.
This is why there are people that do seemingly good things and others that do bad things. There is no global, singular Anonymous. Never has been since about a month after it started.

tl;dr itIsAMystery.gif

Having followed their exploits for a while now...

[Anonymous Coward]

I will wait for the book on this chapter of Anonymous.

We don't have the full picture and no news organization has ever fully covered all the nuances in real time.

After the fact though.. probably in about a year or two.. this story should be interesting to read about.

I am willing to bet that, this is just another nail in the coffin of ISIS.. along with them pissing off : (not a complete list)

1- the US
2- the UK
3- the French
4-the Russians
5- Anonymous
6- the Netherlands

If they are as into complicated suicide and public embarrassment as they seem to be ISIS's next move should be to piss off China and India. That way they will effectively pissed off 80-90% of the worlds population against them.

Whack a mole...

[Anonymous Coward]

ISIS, giving moles a bad name

On The Dark Webs

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's dark. So hard to see. I see spots right now, I tell you.

Racists waited for Westerners to get killed

[mi]

Did they really have to wait for ISIS to strike in Paris? The group's earlier:

• Killing of POWs ...
• ... and Christians
• Selling women to slavery
• Destroying ancient relics

was not enough? If Anonymous had this capability of hurting ISIS' (impressive) online propaganda, why did they not use it before the attack on Paris?

Re:Racists waited for Westerners to get killed

[tnk1]

Its not really racism, it's mostly that no one feels invested in it unless it happens to them. Sure, they may think to themselves, "let the brown people blow each other up," but what they are really saying is, "no bombings here, not my problem."

Re:Racists waited for Westerners to get killed

[PPH]

We have drawn a line in the sand.

Cross it and we shall draw another.

Re:Racists waited for Westerners to get killed

[Jason Levine]

We have drawn a line in the sand.

Cross it and we shall draw another.

If only we could make it work like this.

Re:Racists waited for Westerners to get killed

[mi]

it's mostly that no one feels invested in it unless it happens to them

Given the wide scope of their earlier attacks — from Sarah Palin to Tunisian government — they do "feel invested" in whole lot of locations and happenings. It is just that the ISIS — easily the most evil organisation of the 21st century so far — that avoided their wrath despite having a large collection of very juicy online targets.

Whether it is racism or whatever, that Anonymous hasn't done anything until now — despite, evidently, having the necessary capabilities — is not showing them in good light. Better late than never, of course...

Re:Racists waited for Westerners to get killed

[Tharkkun]

Did they really have to wait for ISIS to strike in Paris? The group's earlier:

• Killing of POWs ...
• ... and Christians
• Selling women to slavery
• Destroying ancient relics

was not enough? If Anonymous had this capability of hurting ISIS' (impressive) online propaganda, why did they not use it before the attack on Paris?

Before Paris it was the responsibility of the countries in the middle east to police their own. Now it's clear they can't contain it, even with aid so the rest of the world will be dragged into it.

Re:Racists waited for Westerners to get killed

[Tharkkun]

Did they really have to wait for ISIS to strike in Paris? The group's earlier:

• Killing of POWs ...
• ... and Christians
• Selling women to slavery
• Destroying ancient relics

was not enough? If Anonymous had this capability of hurting ISIS' (impressive) online propaganda, why did they not use it before the attack on Paris?

I just want to add the the USA doesn't sit here and beg other countries for help. We deal with our problems.

Re:Racists waited for Westerners to get killed

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to add the the USA doesn't sit here and beg other countries for help. We deal with our problems.

*cough* Gun massacres *cough*

Re:Racists waited for Westerners to get killed

[Jack Griffin]

It's not racism, it's the monkeysphere!
No-one wants to admit it, but the monkeysphere is the reason for a lot of these types of problems. It really should be part of the school curriculum.

Re:Racists waited for Westerners to get killed

[Anonymous Coward]

That's generally the right thing to do. You don't go apeshit about someone else bombing a third person. If everyone did that, then it would take a single act of violence by one person in the world for EVERYBODY to go warcrazy. Talk about a chain reaction.

The correct, civilized approach is that you don't respond to provocation until you are provoked yourself. At best, you appoint a small group to act as a police force.
 

Book: The Starfish and the Spider

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't "that easy to find." Anonymous is a starfish. Governments are spiders.

Let's roll.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Anonymous Takes Down Thousands of ISIS-Related Twitter Accounts In a Day

ISIS beheads thousands of Anonymous members in a week.

> why intelligence agencies haven't done anything about them, if they're so easy to find

Saudi Arabia, USA and their minions run ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. It is essentially a sunni wahabite death squad, hell-bent on exterminating shia muslims and related sects, like the alavite, as well as kurds and christians.

every one has their say, but,.,.,.

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end of the day, I am glad for the existance of Isis, why, because of their cause alot of individuals have been brought together to combat them..
Russam US, France, Most if not all of the European nations, Israel, Annon, I mean the lst goes on,,
But none of this "unity" woudl ever exist if ISIS were a bunch of pussies..
Dont get me wrong,
I agree their inception is BULLSHIT and yes they deserve to be retired, to be clear this is in regard to the group ISis.
the horrible attrocities they have committed against humans and man kind in general (woman kind too), they deserve to be exposed and removed..
I hope there is a nonviolent way to accomplish this goal,, Regardles of the situation Violenbce for violence is just naught acceptable..
Im so angry about the situation I cant type correctly.. :(

Bottom line, i am glad they are around to bring some form of unity between us, but fuck them for the bullshit they caused.
Down with isIs

Re:Why intelligence agencies haven't done anything

[matbury]

Intelligence agencies aren't supposed to do anything that you or I should hear about. They're supposed to collect intelligence, in this case signals intelligence (SIGINT) secretly, analyse it, compile reports, and quietly hand it on to the people who are supposed to act upon it.
 
But you're probably right that this traditional role of intelligence has likely been usurped by indiscreet politicians and civil servants looking for media attention and not really bothered about the effect of their actions.

Oooooohhh..... SICK BURN!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Take down their Twitter. That'll show 'em who's the /v\@$+3r and who's t3h L4/v\3Z0r fo scho.

Where was Anonymous a year ago?

[chubs]

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad for anyone willing to take on ISIS. My question is why did it take the Paris attacks clue in Anonymous and the rest of the world to how bad ISIS is? Hundreds are now dead or injured in Paris, but thousands of civilians have been tortured, raped, beheaded and crucified by ISIS in the middle east. Paris was absolutely a tragedy, and I don't mean to make it out to be any less so, but let's not claim it's the most brutal thing they have done in the last year and a half. I fully realize that state players like the countries making up N.A.T.O. can only have limited involvement in a crisis that doesn't directly involve a member state, but that's not what Anonymous is. They could have responded to the atrocities that have been committed against Yazidis and Shiites? It just feels to me that so many people finally taking action, Anonymous included, are sending the message that western lives are worth more than others.

Re:Where was Anonymous a year ago?

[BarbaraHudson]

Unfortunately, much of the world still doesn't have a clue - they don't want to take in refugees who are fleeing ISIS because "terr'rists." Look o further than Chris Christie saying that he wouldn't even let in an orphaned toddler. That's beyond messed up.

NSA's going to be so pissed

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, let's cut off a communication stream our guys can monitor. Great job!

They haven't taken them down...

[GeekBoy]

Because intelligence agencies use them to infiltrate terrorist groups and to network through terrorist organizations to the guys calling the shots. By shutting down these channels they are actually making the job harder for intelligence groups as they push terrorists to use more obscure forms of communications like the PSN which are harder for analysts to track. Not that terrorists aren't getting wise and doing this already but not all terrorists are as clever and we certainly want to keep them and their communication mechanisms lazy.

Re:They haven't taken them down...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because intelligence agencies use them to infiltrate terrorist groups and to network through terrorist organizations to the guys calling the shots. By shutting down these channels they are actually making the job harder for intelligence groups as they push terrorists to use more obscure forms of communications like the PSN which are harder for analysts to track. Not that terrorists aren't getting wise and doing this already but not all terrorists are as clever and we certainly want to keep them and their communication mechanisms lazy.

Jesus fucking Christ... so let's leave their communications infrastructure in place so intelligence agencies can play fuck around and accomplish jack shit. This is a god damn war against a organization that is ruling over a large territory in the Middle East the size of many countries. At some point you either stop bombing them or actually decide to win this thing. Take them down.

Re:Having followed their exploits for a while now.

[tnk1]

That way they will effectively pissed off 80-90% of the worlds population against them.

That's exactly what they want. You think that is a suicidal tactic, but they believe God is on their side. They're trying to act to bring about the apocalypse. Why would they want any enemy to feel safe?

They believe that the little quagmire they have in Syria and Iraq will allow them to draw their enemies into a battle that they can't win.

The truth is, they may be right, especially if our answer is to keep bombing them without challenging their hold on the ground. You can't win a war without infantry. It doesn't have to be *our* infantry, but it seems that the fighters that are there have not been up to the task so far.

Report Button

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't realize that clicking the report button was hacking. Then again, clicking on a GUI is what these skript-kiddiez are good at.

It comes down to the old adage...

[Myria]

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Hackers as police

[Anonymous Coward]

So anonymous feels empowered to take down people's accounts because, in their opinion, they look like terrorists? Such a stupid idea.

IS their algorithm perfect? (umm, nope): THEN they are taking down the accounts of random people.
IS their algorithm better than NSA/CIA? (umm, not likely): THEN they are contaminating the ability of the government to work.
IS anonymous impacting terrorism? YES, but only be adding an annoyance factor, and in pushing the bad guys to use better encryption or alternative communications.

Re:Hackers as police

[king neckbeard]

You assume that allowing the NSA/CIA to work is GOOD for national security, when their track record suggests the opposite.

Re:Hackers as police

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, then let's get rid of NSA/CIA and have nothing at all.

The spy agencies...

[gurps_npc]

do not want to close them down, they want to monitor them and cross reference them till they can identify the ISIS members. We care far more about that than the minor PR advantages they gain from their existence.

Twitter, etc have financial concerns and will not put that much money into identifying them, especially when the governments don't push it. But they will be happy to take them down if we do the work of identifying the bad actors.

Re:Why?

[prefec2]

There is nothing "left" about Twitter. Twitter is a tech company selling your information to the highest bidder just like Facebook. However, as far as I noticed, every reasonable person only tweets something public and no private stuff (exceptions are people who marketeer a personality which they claim is theirs).

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

[Anonymous Coward]

After a devastating attack on their Twitter, the Islamic State all but admitted defeat this morning. "Bombings are one thing, we're used to them. But this... it's senseless", says a member of the organization, who was surprised by this uncalled-for attack. "I've spent the last five hours trying to log back into my account,", says Mohammed A. Mohammed, "but it says I'm entering the wrong password. Some of us have gone back to email, but I don't really see the point. If this isn't fixed by tomorrow, that's it for me. I'm leaving this dump and taking a plane back to Britain."
A meeting to discuss the terms of the surrender is to be held in an undisclosed Playstation game. Anonymous sources say Anonymous is prepared to "pwn the noobs lol" during the meeting. If ISIS provides a good healer, a joint raid is not outside the realm of possibilities.

Re:They recruit through SJW networks

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats, you've completely lost your mind.

Hashtags?

[Anonymous Coward]

So... If closing Twitter accounts doesn't do much, because ISIS relies on hashtags, shouldn't anonymous start spamming ISIS hashtags?

Re:Hashtags?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhhh..... Put your mask back on.....

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like yet another resentful, toxic right-wing lunatic.

About time you did something ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... reasonably useful instead of just being assholes.

Re:ISIS has help desk to aid terrorists w/encrypti

[Anonymous Coward]

5 5 5 5 FIVE GODDAMNIT! It doesn't work. It's probably that systemd crap again. F I V E.

"Anonymous"

[Anonymous Coward]

Aka the NSA

pointless and potentially negative effect

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact they haven't been taken down previously tells me a lot of government people are pissed that Anonymous are destroying their easy information picking targets for little to zero benefit as they will just create new ones.

Re:pointless and potentially negative effect

[PPH]

This isn't Ultra vs Coventry. ISIS knows we know about their Twitter accounts. They are public, and therefore known for a reason: these are the recruiting contacts for new fighters. The actual tactical command and control is done elsewhere.

Sure, ISIS can just create some new accounts. But while they are doing that and rebuilding their contact lists, they can't get their propaganda stuff out as easily. If Anonymous wants to screw with them, fine.

Re:Having followed their exploits for a while now.

[Killall -9 Bash]

China already has a muslim problem. You don't hear about it because it's more or less contained. China is not very gentle or apologetic in how they use their military to handle Jihadists.

Fuck it guys, let the hostages go

[Rinikusu]

Anonymous is on the job now. Man, they really showed us.

Re:Haha nice try

[Anonymous Coward]

That's amazing, chuckymonkey already had to go dark!

"Know to intelligence" - why is this a theme?

[gilgongo]

FTA "It's also worth exploring the question of why Twitter hasn't already disabled these accounts, and why intelligence agencies haven't done anything about them, if they're so easy to find."

It's not just Twitter accounts, it seems to be a common pattern whenever most perpetrators of hate or terrorist attacks are analysed - at least some of the those involved have been under surveillance, known to law enforcement, or otherwise under suspicion already. I can understand this being the case once in a while, but it seems like pretty much every time.

Why is this? It is fear of false positives? Wanting to use known suspicious actors to reveal accomplices? Lack of police resources on the ground? What?

Re:"Know to intelligence" - why is this a theme?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because everyone is under surveillance. It is a true statement that is meaningless.

Re:"Know to intelligence" - why is this a theme?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I can understand this being the case once in a while, but it seems like pretty much every time.

Because hindsight is 20/20. Intelligence agencies almost always own the information about an attack before it is committed. But they don't have enough reason to believe that attack is real vs. teh 300 other ones they also have indications of.

Re:"Know to intelligence" - why is this a theme?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because their job is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Unfortunately they have decided that they would rather just collect all the hay (blanket surveillance of everyone), which detracts from actually finding the needle (stopping terrorists).

Signal to Noise?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it so interesting that this group can simply query the internet and find all of these accounts. It worked soooo well for (misidentifying) the Boston bombers.

Is their method peer reviewed?

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

But what other kind of Conservatives are there?

Is that you Barry?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty easy actually, better to keep tabs on the enemy by letting them continue to use accounts that we know about rather than drive them to ones that we don't.

Keeping "tabs on the enemy" isn't quite the same as actually defeating them.

CIA created ISIS

[tekrat]

Dude;

When you consider that the CIA created Osama Bin Laden (by training him, and providing weapons when he was fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan); and the CIA created ISIS (by creating false intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq), the CIA is simply a terrorist organization that pretends to be working for American interests.

We're better off without you frankly. The world would be a lot healthier without your meddling. Stop trying to make Dick Cheney even richer than he is.

Thanks!

Re:CIA created ISIS

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Saddam Husain?

Re:CIA created ISIS

[Tharkkun]

Dude;

When you consider that the CIA created Osama Bin Laden (by training him, and providing weapons when he was fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan); and the CIA created ISIS (by creating false intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq), the CIA is simply a terrorist organization that pretends to be working for American interests.

We're better off without you frankly. The world would be a lot healthier without your meddling. Stop trying to make Dick Cheney even richer than he is.

Thanks!

Ok. The CIA didn't create ISIS. ISIS is the response to thousands of years of constant repression by dictatorships in the Middle East. Killing Saddam may have accelerated ISIS from rising but once he died it would have happened anyways. Both Syria and Iran have seen the same thing happen. This isn't Al Qaeda the terrorist network. This is thousands of people sick of the Middle East. But now they have people who are listening to their cause. Recruits are coming from all over the world who are not muslim or arabs. Regular people you meet on the streets or had a drink with yesterday. That's who ISIS is looking for. They want to form a new country. They ripped across what is now Europe centuries ago during the Crusades. Neither the CIA or America existed back then. But now that they expanded their fight to outside of the Middle East it will be the end for them. It's been predicted for many years that WW3 would be in the Middle East. It's coming. It will be fought on the ground, in the air, electronically and socially.

Re:CIA created ISIS

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever stupid official(s) in the Bush administration decided to let the remainder of the Iraqi Republican Guard survive post-Saddam is probably most to blame for daesh. And a lot of other misfortune.

anon didn't learn their lesson from #OpCartel ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just like that time Anonymous took out Mexico's drug cartels.

Re:Help please

[Anonymous Coward]

The blank is in your tiny bigoted right wing mind. Fucking useless right wing fucks got us into this situation with their stupid war in Iraq. Fuck you.

Re:Having followed their exploits for a while now.

[powerlord]

... You can't win a war without infantry. ...

You CAN ... but you have to be prepared to take a very scorched earth policy.

If you're ready to just Glass the country, and prepared for the Fallout that will entail (pun intended), then Infantry becomes irrelevant.

I am not in any way suggesting that this is either advisable, or something that any sane person would do, but it IS a position where bombing does not require infantry to win.

Please do not post the following

[Marginal Coward]

If any of you happen to have taken over an ISIS Twitter account, please do not post the following to it:

\_( `.`)_/
    |
_ /\_

Although it is not - I repeat NOT - a cartoon of The Prophet Muhammad, some folks might accidentally mistake it for one and become deeply offended. So let's have a little respect and consideration for the religious beliefs of others - after all, wouldn't the ISIS folks do the same for you?

Taking down accounts a bad idea

[Applehu Akbar]

"...why Twitter hasn't already disabled these accounts, and why intelligence agencies haven't done anything about them...."

Because NSA analysis - and possible hexing with fake tweets - of working Daesh accounts is better strategy?

Re:Taking down accounts a bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

"...why Twitter hasn't already disabled these accounts, and why intelligence agencies haven't done anything about them...."

Because NSA analysis - and possible hexing with fake tweets - of working Daesh accounts is better strategy?

... or the fact that intelligence agencies are bound by the law (at least in theory), while law is one of the things Anonymous - by definition - couldn't care less about...

"disinformation?"

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe... maybe just the same as the other side's disinformation... which is to counter the other side's disinformation... and on, and on.

here's what i'd like to see happen this time. track down via any available serial number on any rifle/weapon used during the paris attack... hell, -any- attack, ever past in time.

and track down the seller of that weapon. and re-seller. and re-seller... and on and on, until we reach the originating manufacturer.

and we start questioning -why- we allow such weapons industries are allowed to create such a rich environment for their SH*T to be sold, and resold, until any sense of "motive/reason" is lost in all the GD political/religious/corporate/societal mess that it is. every GD day this happens, over and over.

Proxy War

[Etherwalk]

So it turns out "Proxy War" doesn't mean what Anonymous thought...

Re:Help please

[easyTree]

Three decades of covert war with the rest of the world got you into this.

Re:Correction

[Etherwalk]

There are plenty of intelligent, educated conservatives who just happen to have been taught some lessons that are really, really wrong. It's kind of like racist kids--they can still be bright, intelligent kids, they were just taught to be an asshole by their parents and haven't learned better yet.

Say nayers

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a whole lot of people who say 'nay' (or nay say), but I have no doubts that they will try and pick low hanging fruit from twitter and fb and other social media sites. They can try to obfuscate the name of the account, but it will be hard for recruits to find too. The collective bunch are not able to 'make it' in the west, so instead of 'trying harder' they run home, accept the rants of the crazies 'back home', then 'make the west suffer' because they weren't given the world on a platter. And sure, its all about wealth and riches, and hard work. If they worked hard 'back home' then they would be rich 'back home'. But their work ethic is shit. They don't want to learn. They don't want to work hard. They leach off western society, and then when things don't go well they wrap black flags around their heads, holler like banshees, pick up AK47's and start shooting people. As if that will fix their poor work ethic. And when 'the west' sends them off to hell by way of bullet or bomb or other means, other nutters fill in to join their cause. Rinse, repeat. But blaming 'the west' is an excuse. If you want an opportunity, its easiest if you make your own opportunities. There is a lot of land, they are overflowing with mineral resources. There are people in the middle east who have riches beyond counting. And everyone is fleeing. And its because of the war. How did it start again? Two sides are needed for a war. One side wanted a Jihadi empire. That's where it started. And they don't like people who aren't like them. And it all boils down to: "Respect existence, or expect resistance". They are completely unwilling to accept the first, and are unhappy because of the second. Its only beginning, and they will be stamped out too.

Well, the prophecy came true....

[shocking]

Daesh is about to get screwed by 72 virgins...

Don't call it "ISIS" or ISIL"

[Kargan]

That legitimizes them. They should be referred to as "Daesh".

http://www.ibtimes.com/isil-is...

Re:Don't call it "ISIS" or ISIL"

[Jack Griffin]

Don't even call them that. Call them The Tiny Penises, and every time you see them on TV, or someone mentions them at a dinner party, laugh out loud and say "It's the tiny penises!". Then make lots of tiny penis jokes.
Being tough guys with a tough sounding name is working in their favour. I suspect ridicule will assist in reducing possible future recruitment.
Akbal: "Hey Ahmed, I'm thinking of joining ISIS".
Ahmed "Haha you want to join The Tiny Penises?! Why do you have a tiny penis?"
Akbal reconsiders and joins goes back to playing Counterstrike instead.

Re:Don't call it "ISIS" or ISIL"

[Big Hairy Ian]

You spelled "douche" wrong!

Re:Don't call it "ISIS" or ISIL"

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Daesh: This is a term the militant group hates. French President François Hollande has used it since the attacks Friday, and first used it in September 2014. It’s an Arabic acronym for “al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham.” It can sometimes be spelled DAIISH, Da'esh or Daech, a popular French version. The hacktivist group Anonymous and President Barack Obama have used the term since the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris.

Can you explain to me how “al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham” turns into "Daesh" (and not DIIS or ADAIFAIWAS)? Specifically, where do the "a", "e", and "h" in "Daesh" come from (especially the e)? Additionally, can you explain why "Daesh" is capitalized the way it is, and not as acronyms typically are (i.e. DAESH)? Furthermore, since Slashdot is a predominantly English-speaking site, can you explain why you're encouraging people to use an acronym for an Arabic name that most people are not familiar with? Shouldn't you at least be encouraging the readers to learn Arabic before expecting them to embrace Arabic acronyms?

Re:Don't call it "ISIS" or ISIL"

[Kargan]

I can. It's actually pretty interesting, IMO.

http://www.pri.org/stories/201...

Re:Don't call it "ISIS" or ISIL"

[NoImNotNineVolt]

You can, but you choose not to?

I followed your link, but it didn't really answer any of my questions. It did, however, provide an audio recording (14m33s in length!), so I gave you the benefit of the doubt and wasted some more time listening to it. It didn't answer any of my questions either, so perhaps I can clarify them by repeating myself.

How does “al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham” turns into "Daesh"? An acronym is generally composed of the a concatenation of the initial letters of a phrase or sequence of words. That would result in either "DIIS" or "ADAIFAIWAS", depending on whether or not the initial letters of definite/indefinite articles are included in the acronym. It would not result in "Daesh" based on any common system of generating acronyms. Indeed, the "a", "e", and "h" in "Daesh" don't correspond to the initial letter of any words in the original name of the group, and there is no explanation of why they are found in this supposed acronym.

Why is "Daesh" capitalized the way it is, and not as acronyms typically are? For example, let's look at other acronyms. ISIS, ISIL and NASA, but not Isis, Isil, or Nasa. A key property of acronyms is that they are expressed in all-capitals. If Daesh is an acronym, why is it always written as Daesh and never as DAESH (as we'd expect an acronym to be written)?

Why should people use a foreign language to refer to a concept which is adequately represented using their native language? Since Slashdot is an English-speaking site, it seems unreasonable to support conversation in other languages, including Arabic. Learning Arabic in order to participate in discussions about this organization is an unreasonable burden, and communicating in a language in which one is not conversational doesn't seem reasonable either. When English-speakers are discussing this group among each other, is there any benefit from using a foreign language instead of English? Does this benefit outweigh the benefit of using the native English instead?

[I'd also mention something about the inherent absurdity in trying to create a Latin acronym from Arabic script, but Slashdot doesn't care for my non-Latin character set]

Re:Don't call it "ISIS" or ISIL"

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose we call them SCISM for So-Called Islamic State Militants.

Often people of the news say "blah has been destroyed by the so-called Islamic state terrorist..." etc, so it is already a common name. SCISM has a nice religious undertone to it which also reflects the reality of the situation. (The whole thing is yet another problem with a religious root cause.)

Re:Why intelligence agencies haven't done anything

[Anonymous Coward]

"Intelligence reports are useful only to the intelligent" - Robert Heinlein - The Last Days of the United States (short story)

Doesn't matter how competent the agencies are if the people in charge ignore/misuse/misinterpret the gathered intelligence.

Re:Help pleaseFTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

"five decades of covert war with the rest of the world got you into this"

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

'Bout time those miscreants did something worthwhile for a change.

Re:Help pleaseFTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

14 centuries of not wiping out an obvious menace got all of us into this.

FB propaganda = The division bell.

[TapeCutter]

Well said, We need to stop letting the enemy define this war as "us vs Islam" and make it crystal clear that it is "us vs death cults".

Catholics in England were not ostracized when the IRA were blowing people up, Christians in the US were not attacked in the street by strangers because of the behaviour of the KKK. ISIS are religious extremists whose victims are mainly other muslims. Muslims are our allies against ISIS in the same way Christians were our allies against the IRA and KKK. The refugees pouring out of ISIS territory collectively know more about ISIS operations than the Pentagon, they have lost everything to ISIS, we are at a crossroad, we can welcome them as "citizens the free world", or we can allow ISIS to kill the brave, enslave the weak, and indoctrinate the youth.

The 35 million refugees represent the "human intel" that the west has so dismally failed to cultivate in the arab world. Why are we treating our most valuable allies as a liability? - These are the very people who want to (and can) help us dismantle ISIS from the ground up, yet western social media is littered with calls to close our borders and push our natural allies back into enemy territory "where they belong".

ISIS territory is unstable and surrounded by a standing army of 5 million muslims who want them dead. They desperately needs the rest of the Islamic world on board before they have a hope in hell of achieving their stated aim of a global caliphate. Sadly, at least a third of my FB friends cannot contain the xenophobic instincts that we all have. They are doing exactly what the enemy's strategy predicted they would do, spreading anti-muslim propaganda that seeks to divide the world into "rednecks vs muslims".

Re:FB propaganda = The division bell.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sunni-islam is in a dire need of reformation if they don't want to become the enemy of the world. The moderates need a way to distance themselves from the radicals, but they are extremely passive about it. As long as they consider themselves part of the same ummah, people will consider any sunni as part of the same rotten bunch of apples. Sure, if the moderates reform they'll automatically become vilified by the salafists and the extremists, but that's exactly what they're supposedly claiming when punked for an answer. Yet, they do nothing. They just sit on their asses and perhaps post a "this is not islam" post on facebook. Way to stick it to the lunatics you supposedly don't count among yourselves.

Re:FB propaganda = The division bell.

[Critical Facilities]

Wish I had mod points. Very well stated.

Re: FB propaganda = The division bell.

[Anonymous Coward]

stop the bullshit. mohammedism is aggressive at the core. read their book of hate.
also they breed like mad and blame the resulting problems on the rich germanic nations.

their population pressure pushes them to germanic lands. here they will continue overbreeding and wont stop being mohammedics.

as soon as they are the majority in an area, they will instate sharia.

our communists hate germanic freedom so much that they invite them with open arms to france, germany, sweden and the like.

insane.

Re:FB propaganda = The division bell.

[voodoobettie]

So much this. I don't really understand how people equate refugees as being somehow linked to terrorists, other than running away from them and when I see Republican hopefuls saying to close their borders it makes me want to scream at them for their lack of compassion. ISIS don't have a hope in hell of building their 'global caliphate' but they are going to make life miserable for as many people as possible for as long as they can. What you said about the death cult is spot on, and I think it's a poor reflection of the state of our own society that we'd have fellow citizens thinking that it's a good idea to go and join up with a group that condones such brutality in the guise of righteousness. I hope that in taking down those accounts that Anonymous would at least make it hard for them to coordinate attacks and recruit new people to their ranks. (I don't have mod points either or I'd give you some.)

Re:FB propaganda = The division bell.

[Anonymous Coward]

The UVF and other loyalist paramilitaries were *also* blowing people up.

Re:Why intelligence agencies haven't done anything

[Tharkkun]

It could easily be the case that U.S. intelligence agencies are too incompetent to catch these terrorist affiliated social media accounts. U.S. intelligence agencies haven't exactly demonstrated a capacity to really make effective use of the big data they collect. Yes, they are quite good at intercepting and collecting data, but there are many indications that the NSA in particular doesn't really have the data intelligence necessary to effectively sift through what they capture. In the 'proud' tradition of the TSA, our intelligence agency's anti-terror data collection operations may be more security theater than actual security. That said I'm not sure a bunch of anons are likely to do much better.

How do you know? It's not like they share any of this information with the public? It takes years to infiltrate the enemy yet we just found and killed Jihadi John. If anything, it proves our intelligence is working. Nothing happens overnight.

Re:Having followed their exploits for a while now.

[Tharkkun]

... You can't win a war without infantry. ...

You CAN ... but you have to be prepared to take a very scorched earth policy.

If you're ready to just Glass the country, and prepared for the Fallout that will entail (pun intended), then Infantry becomes irrelevant.

I am not in any way suggesting that this is either advisable, or something that any sane person would do, but it IS a position where bombing does not require infantry to win.

Free glass for everyone? No more free steak giveaways! Imagine the price of all computer devices if the screens can be scooped out of the desert.

They havent taken them down

[Anonymous Coward]

because an enemy you now is easier to watch than one you dont and they dont want to have to say 'Hail Hydra' * every time they play whack a mole and new ones pop up.

*Then again maybe that is a drinking game at the NSA and they do !

No mistakes, right?

[Tony Isaac]

I'm sure Anonymous made no mistakes, taking down ONLY accounts that were truly connected to ISIS. The problem with vigilantes is that they shoot first and ask questions later.

Re:No mistakes, right?

[hyades1]

They've done an excellent job on other occasions when they published names. Case in point, outing the KKK. Another group tried to claim credit and defuse their work with false accusations, but it got shot down pretty fast.

Were you just too lazy to find out a little about the situation before you shot off your mouth, or do you just like to throw around the term "vigilante"?

Re:No mistakes, right?

[Gibgezr]

They've done an excellent job on other occasions when they published names. Case in point, outing the KKK.

No, I'm pretty sure they got that one totally wrong in the first take, and then partially wrong and just full of outdated info and bad geusses in the second attempt.
Recent article, one of many that explain this: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US...

Too Little, Too Late?

[dave562]

It is interesting that Anonymous is taking this on at the same time that the group is moving their operations to the dark net.

http://motherboard.vice.com/re...

It all seems all too convenient to the larger narrative that is shaping up around the need to crack down on encryption, Tor and other privacy measures. Here we have Anonymous serving as a tool of the powers that be, driving the "bad guys" to encryption through their vigilantism.

In an effort to do something good, they are inadvertently making things worse.

The fact that anyone serious about their trade craft has already been using encryption and stenography and other means for concealing their communications is not going to affect the narrative fed to the masses by the mainstream media. All they are going to hear is "Terrorists are going dark via encryption." and "If you're not doing anything wrong, you don't need to be using encryption."

Re:Too Little, Too Late?

[cs96and]

Outlawing encryption will solve nothing. The terrorists are not suddenly going to say "oh shit, we have to use un-encypted protocols now!"

Not the 72 virgins ISIS were expecting

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the 72 virgins ISIS were expecting

Re:Having followed their exploits for a while now.

[Gryle]

The Kurdish forces have been doing well enough. They lost some ground early on, but have managed to retake most of it. They've taken some other urban areas from Daesh as well.

Seems pretty obvious to me

[tehcyder]

From TFS:

It's also worth exploring the question of why Twitter hasn't already disabled these accounts, and why intelligence agencies haven't done anything about them, if they're so easy to find.

I imagine intelligence agencies are quite happy for ISIS supporters to identify themselves on the internet, and wouldn't want Twitter to disable them.

vs..

[sociocapitalist]

It's probably more useful overall to leave such things alone and monitor them for intel rather than shutting them down.

Re:Why intelligence agencies haven't done anything

[extranatural]

Well we can't know. Ultimately it's speculation, but speculation informed by what little information we does become public. Via leaks, congressional hearings, info-sec researchers, etc.

Edward Snowden and other's have made statements alluding to deficiencies in the NSA's capacity to make the most of the data that's already in front of them.

Bottom line, given the size and scope of the U.S. intelligence gathering machine, why have we not thwarted any large terror attacks?
https://theintercept.com/2015/...

Now for something completely different: reality

[Anonymous Coward]

Muslims are our allies against ISIS in the same way Christians were our allies against the IRA and KKK.

I wish that were true. But look at what happened in Turkey yesterday -- a NATO ally and a place you'd think and hope would be full of decent, anti-ISIS citizens: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/11/17/video-turkey-fans-boo-moment-of-silence-for-paris-attacks-then-break-out-into-this-chant

Truth

[NewYork]

If you're not from my caste, you're non-human to me;
http://wh.gov/iyhMK

Yeah!

[Anonymous Coward]

That showed those female-parent-fornicatin' ISIS scumbags. They may be be able to hack the heads off people and kill a hundred at a time but they're no match for the sheer terror of stopping people from sending banal, short, and largely irrelevant messages to the world. Pack up boys, the war on terror is over, we can all go home and relax.

Catch 21

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether to take them down or not is a delicate issue.
These accounts are likely used to recruit people towards them. They target normal people and brainwash them to join up with them.
The latter is terrible and should be prevent by all means, however if you close their accounts they are going to come back using other ones and you may loose information which allows to identify them and precious time.

A really intriguing issue is what the policy of twitter, facebook and others are regarding these accounts.
One may think that blocking these accounts would have reduced the numbers of people joining up.
How to decide what is more risky blocking them and loosing track or wait and keep them blabbering in the hope of nailing them down, but letting them gain ground in the mean time?

Digital pitchforks?

[marcelfilm2109]

Ssooooo...this is the ominous power of Annonymous?