Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
It makes it much harder for them to conduct their recruitment and other operations which depend on an online presence.
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.
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
"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.
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?
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
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.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
>> 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).
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.
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.
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.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
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.
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.
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?
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.
Because once a bomb is used, a replacement has to be purchased. Which means a LOT of money flowing from taxes to vendors.
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.
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.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Daesh is about to get screwed by 72 virgins...
That legitimizes them. They should be referred to as "Daesh".
http://www.ibtimes.com/isil-is...
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
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".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.