Slashdot Mirror
How Anonymous' War With Isis Is Actually Harming Counter-Terrorism (metro.co.uk)
retroworks writes: According to a recent tweet from the #OpParis account, Anonymous are delivering on their threat to hack Isis, and are now flooding all pro-Isis hastags with the grandfather of all 2007 memes — Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video. Whenever a targeted Isis account tries to spread a message, the topic will instead be flooded with countless videos of Rick Astley circa 1987. Not all are praising Anonymous methods, however. While Metro UK reports that the attacks have been successful, finding and shutting down 5,500 Twitter accounts, the article also indicates that professional security agencies have seen sources they monitor shut down. Rick Astley drowns out intelligence as well as recruitment.
This is of course, a good cause. The best. If there was ever a way for Anon to redeem themselves, not just to me, but to the intel hawks in Washington that hate them; this is it. I don't think Intel is complaining, and If they are smart, they can use this to enrich, verify, and prune the intelligence they have now. If they are watching people that get Anon-rolled, then they will see results and reactions, or the lack thereof; all of which is good intel.
Yep. There is no legitimate argument against this behavior, because if you're worried about them filtering out positives you just watch what they're doing and then study up who they're doing it to. Anonymous is probably better at it than the security services, so in fact they're making things easier.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I suspect that the "anonymous" attacks are the intelligence agencies. My thoughts were that they can find thousands of accounts with maybe a 5% error rate. They cannot get a warrant with that, and don't want complaints of "you brought down my legitimate site" so they just have an "anonymous" announcement that they will do it.
Aside from the intelligence advantages of having people who are comparatively difficult to infiltrate in person voluntarily post lots of stuff to online services almost entirely within western jurisdictions; I have to wonder how much of the freak-out about ISIS' Twitter Accounts!!! is reasonable, and how much of it is a petulant reaction from western military and intelligence officials who have no real experience with not enjoying substantial media cooperation and the ability to keep things 'on message' as they prefer.
They certainly like to talk about 'radicalization' as though it is something that can insidiously corrupt anyone exposed to enemy propaganda, regardless of their prior circumstances; but what do we actually know about the impressionability of these 'radicalized' targets? Does it actually work on anyone; or primarily on people who were somewhere between deeply skeptical of, and overtly hostile to, 'the west' in the first place?
In the same vein, given that there are nontrivial numbers of people who are anywhere between skeptical and hostile; are we actually worse off if the sinister terrorist propaganda incites them to leave and go join the glorious struggle in jihadistan? Yes, having more recruits available makes our attempt to pretend that Iraq isn't a total clusterfuck harder; but it also means that the people who most actively dislike us are no longer living next door and brooding; but off getting themselves killed, or enjoying their medieval theocracy.
I'd certainly wan to avoid having people leave and then return; that is just asking for trouble; but are we actually worse off if the people who like us least have an exciting relocation option?
All what the secrets are doing is surveillance. All they want to do is monitoring. It is safe, and convenient. When will we starting taking real action? Like fight those guys? Anonymous came and did fight, did destroy those communication channels. Should we be sorry as there is nothing to monitor or be happy the bad guys have one less way to communicate?
Surveillance will not stop terrorism.