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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.
Is spelling Astley's name correctly 33% of the time an effort to irritate your readers into clicking the article? /.'s editors could be replaced with a poorly coded .php script?
Or is it just more proof that
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
We all knew this about a week ago, thanks very much.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It all comes down to whats more effective. IMHO shutting down recruitment has more value.
Also, so called intelligence didn't stop France attacks ... so the value of monitoring the sources is even more dubious.
I call that bull
If the so called 'professional security agencies' have been so successfully monitoring Islamic State's account why didn't they stop the people being recruited into the terrorist organization?
If the intellegency can't do their job just because Anonymous is shutting down public Twitter accounts and flodding Rick Astley video on hashtags, then they are not competent at their job. They have direct access to all these social media databases which Anonymous doesn't.
Anything that hinders ISIS in spreading their message is a good thing.
More like the NSA and other 3 letter organizations are being shown up by Anons.
Show me one place where their warrantlessly wiretapping citizens has lead to one terrorist being stopped or inconvenienced in the slightest?
Anonymous has basically shut down ISIS's recruiting machine. Show me where any of the Govt. organizations have been able to do anything that effective short of putting boots on the ground or short of flying drones over syria and bombing suspected terrorist camps (and killing innocents in the crossfire by the way.)
You can't do it.
It is the job of the professional security agencies to lie. It is safe to assume everything they say is a lie, unless proven otherwise!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I found this article more than a bit Astonishing.
Not that i think anonymous will have eliminated ISIS activity overnight, but it's not unreasonable to think that another reason intelligence sources are going quiet is because spamming their connections to the public is having a positive effect.
One guy: "‘When it comes to terrorist attacks, one of the big worries is that you could take down forums and cost someone their lives,’ a GhostSec spokesman known only as Digital Shadow told..." And it is the really the article author that is telling us, even Mr. Shadow simply said it was a worry.
I didn't think Anon was all that good before, something like the medicine is as bad as the disease. You could say they were close to terrorists themselves, as their releases hurt lots of good people, no matter how worthy their cause was.
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.
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.
We should let them talk so we can spend shit loads of money bombing them. Screw the media -- this is completely crushing ISIS' ability to coordinate and that exactly what we want. Letting them use any channel is just asking for trouble -- shut it all down!
But that assumes there aren't a bunch of asshats getting in the way the whole time. Which there now are. If anonymous wanted to be of use in the fight on terror they'd stay out of the way or do something passive.
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?
It's our so-called leaders, running around like headless chicken what's really harming counter-terrorism. And the press, which benefits from "something actually happening".
Why does the trivia of one passport which went through greece get so much coverage, instead of the fact that most perpetrators in Paris were living for a long time in France and Belgium (heck, a couple of them were *born* there)?
Those horrible deeds are in preparation since a long time, at least since the 2000s -- probably quite a bit earlier.
We should be posing the hard questions: why is such a radicalization possible, in the middle of our oh-so-tolerant and advanced society? What could we do about that?
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.
Rick Aston is this minute being waterboarded by CIA agents trying to find out the hidden messages in Rick Astley's hit meme song. All because of a fly that landed on the typewriter ribbon at the wrong time.
On one side jihad, on the other, rickrolling...
And so far, they're probably/hopefully, doing targeted investigations. The last thing we need is Anonymous to get so good at whack-a-mole that law enforcement just says "to hell with this" and starts data mining the entire database.
"The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!"
Actually this is our key advantage.
So the powerful hacktivist collective anonymous's most powerful thing is rickrolling, which for all we know could be done by hand. Seriously. I was hoping for some active hacking. Classic cavalry manuevers which can be done in cyber - get behind enemy lines and interdict supply, etc. These days that would be intercept email accounts, change the passwords, take down websites, etc. I suppose this move is, in a small way, doing some of that, but it seems like the brute forciest to the lamest of supporters ..
Then again perhaps these guys are smart. Actual interfering could get them on watch lists and enemy lists, etc. hmm. I'll have to think on this.
I miss GNAA.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Sigh. Like I said "it's making it harder than it could be", ie. Monitoring these accounts may have made everything easier, so if they lose that avenue their job goes back to what it was like in the past.
I don't disagree that a huge amount of this is security theatre - I find the UK's new security bill obscene, and increasing the size of the haystack when trying to find a needle is stupid. But if you've found an individual of interest, you'd be fool to ignore every avenue of investigation.
The fact that the police managed to track so many people down so quickly implies that the Paris terrorists were lax with the comms, so once the police identified them, it was easy to track others down. Or, the police knew about them, but whilst waiting to see who else they were lead to, the attacks to place.
Neither explanation is good for the authorities. The former shows that wholescale monitoring doesn't work. The latter shows that they monumentally fucked up.
At least Anonymous does not have a vested interest in perpetuating the conflict forever as a means of state control.
A large room in the NSA building, filled with serious men in dark suits sitting in front of hundreds of computers.
Every few minutes "Never gonna give you up" is heard from a random place in the room.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
When Anonymous or someone else floods a hash tag with thousands of identical links to the same video, the cpu resources to collect all the postings, filter the spam out, track the original posts and follow ups would require humongous CPU resources and server farms. So it is going to hamper our spooks' ability to ... wait .. oh oh!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
in order to destabilize syria has beeb a bigger problem for counter terrorism!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
How is this voted insightful, holy living fuck Slashdot you've gone down the toilet. Intelligence agencies foil terrorist plots all the time, but guess what mr insightful: they don't talk about it! Do you know why? Because that would harm existing operations! The terrorists only need to succeed once, whereas the people you are bemoaning as incompetent have to succeed all the time. I get that you probably want to sound your horn on important topics to give the impression that there's a lick of intelligence inside you, but the mods upvoting this rubbish? For shame!
Sheesh, the article is right. Rick Astley does drown out intelligence.
If they can't blow ISIS' computers up then Anonymous should play in the kiddie pool.
I miss GNAA.
I miss BSD it must be dead! But who can forget the loveliness of BSD But that was when slashdot actually was interesting.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
"the article also indicates that professional security agencies have seen sources they monitor shut down. "
And why would that be a problem? "Security agencies" don't seem to be aware, able, or willing to stop attacks.
France has now passed more laws using the Paris attack as an excuse, and they got it done quickly (like faster than the PATRIOT act).
Ponder that then read this.
https://theintercept.com/2015/...
And that's not the only example of FBI manufactured "terrorist".
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Those ISIS hate gay. Shouldn't goatse be more effective in trolling them?
Our right to privacy has been greatly infringed upon, but if you want to complain about that, put the blame in the right place: it's out elected officials who are behind allowing that to happen, along with sheep-like citizens who allowed it to happen, in spite of warnings from good people like you and I who warned them long and loud that once the mass-surveillance genie was out of the bottle, it would be hard if not impossible to put back in -- or are you one of those people who gave in to fear and allowed it to halt your higher cognitive processes, and let the bloody buggers start turning the whole country into one big prison state?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Okay, here's the BBC's version, then. Enjoy.
(We have the Metro in Stockholm as well. Same thing, only in Swedish, with yesterday's Swedish news and lots of ads.)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
While this is undoubtedly harming some existing intelligence gathering operations, it's probably more useful in providing other information such as how does ISIS's network react when attacked by another network actor. Think of Anonymous as the hounds chasing ISIS for the the intel community. Watching ISIS's online behaviour under attack is probably very useful.
Why not play Moonlight Sonata? The intelligence is just about as effective as it was for Coventry.
Have gnu, will travel.
All this attention, you are going to make me blush. Perhaps if you put this much effort into the opposite sex you wouldn't be living in your mom's basement with no dating prospects.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Thanks for scratching that OCD itch. It was bugging me that this one was sitting at 4, then 5, until it finally hit 6. It just bugs me when you post 4/6 then take forever to post the other two.
So, when are you going to stop posting 6 posts at a time showing all your technical incompetence and inability to understand basic English / basic computer concepts?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
And, APK, I have read that you very likely have Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Your point? I willingly admitted that I have mild Autism, you still persist in denying that there is anything wrong with you, despite the obvious evidence.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
If he put this much effort into the opposite sex, he'd be in prison for aggravated stalking.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
It is only libel if it isn't true, are you ready to submit to a psychiatric evaluation to prove you don't have NPD and OCD?
Also, just like you, I didn't claim it myself, I claimed I read it, which I did:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
But, keep beating that dead horse, we can all tell what issues you have, they are apparent to all those who aren't APK.
No need for me to respond yet again to your Greatest hits fails, I already did repeatedly, and even just recently, you just don't believe you can ever be wrong, so you ignore all contrary evidence.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
2) If intelligence agencies are watching Twitter accounts for covert intelligence, that is idiotic.
They are not looking to twitter from planning info. What twitter may be good for is establishing links between sympathizers. Several ISIS members or ISIS inspired people exposed themselves through the Paris attack. Who in the last several years ever offered them any sympathetic or encouraging words? That might be a person to look into post attack. Its things like this that can help develop a picture of a network. The FBI did this with organized crime, they noted all phone calls a known member of organized crime made, the other party went into the node. After years of data collection some fairly innocent looking people were found to have meaningful low profile roles in organized crime. It helped in dismantling the organization, really damaged their operations and logistics. Finding someone who quietly helps launder money may be more valuable than finding a shooter.
Or look at the British Ultra project of WW2, decryption of enigma machine based messages. Great value did not come exclusively from the German high command sending an order to a general in the field or the command of a u-boat pack at sea. Valuable intelligence was discovered by collecting, organizing and indexing lots and lots of small unimportant things. When a bunch of things that are small and unimportant can be combined into a mosaic something much larger and more important can come to light. This is how intelligence actually works, its not like TV and movies, its rather dull and boring.
Ostensibly, not a single one of us in this discussion is an analyst or other operative for an intelligence organization, so as such all we're doing is 'armchair quarterbacking', and worse, 'Monday morning armchair quarterbacking' when it comes to this type of work. I'm not sticking up for these people, but I will say it's easy to criticize what they are (or are not) doing when you don't have any real-world idea what the work actually entails.
A better source of info than operatives and analysts are historians. Take a look at the British Ultra project of WW2 where the communications of Germany were monitored. History shows us that the most mundane, boring and seeming inconsequential info can actually be quite valuable. A huge part of Ultra was organizing and indexing such info so that "random" bits of "related" info could be combined to build a larger picture, a mosaic indicating what an enemy was thinking or doing.
We also have the FBI efforts against organized crime where they created a graph of anyone who had telephone contact with a known member of organized crime. Lots and lots of noise, even criminals have normal household and personal business to conduct, but it did identify previously unknown members of the organization who were functioning in very low key positions. Some low key but important in a logistics sense.
You do have a point.
Maybe we should introduce him to some women, I can only see the outcome being better for all of Slashdot.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Than you should stop with the claims of libel. Unless you are going to prosecute the claims, you are opening yourself up to a libel lawsuit of your own. Unless you are willing to prove that I am libeling you, I can sue you for libeling me.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
... didn't call for killing non-Muslims, but rather treat them with respect and even protect their rights. You could convert, OR you submit to rule by a Muslim state. Submitting to rule of the state sounds bad to our modern secular selves, but back then it was a very progressive form of religious tolerance from a non-secular government ...
Actually the non-Muslims were treated as second class citizens, many of the rights of Muslim citizens were denied them, in judicial matters things were stacked against them, etc. And they had to pay an extra tax in order to be treated so. And it was not unheard of to be publicly humiliated for hours as part of the process by which one paid the tax.
The more civilized treatment of non-Muslims was somewhat correlated to the number of non-Muslims in the region, to the possibility of insurgency and rebellion. In North Africa and the Middle East, not so good. In India, much better at times.
Not sure why you were modded oblivion, when it is clear to anyone who bothers to look below the surface, that Saudi Arabia and the USA have been funding and training the ASad opposition, which includes ISIS for at least the past 5 years.
46137
Because we all know that our counter-terrorism actions have been so effective against ISIS up to now.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
Nobody wants to acknowledge any of that. It doesn't fit in their fanatical narrative and rhetoric. This business is too big to fail.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Do you see anyone else on Slashdot posting such childish, petty nonsense? No? That should tell you something.
NURSE! He's out of bed again!
You are real name is...
Hardly the writing of a sound mind...
by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23, 2015 @03:25PM
Do you have reading comprehension problems? I didn't post that. I wasn't even near a computer at the time, I was in my car driving.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
You call this speechlessness?
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You just have yet to actually come up with anything I haven't already responded to repeatedly.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Like anyone would steal your shit. I could write the same thing in a few lines of shell scripting. You aren't special, and your software doesn't do anything unique.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
(& nobody wants scripts today, they want GUI)...
Is that why you created a GUI version of copy, delete, and other command line tools?
Because a GUI is needed for updating a hosts file?
You really have a high opinion of yourself.
* Special enough to have the BEST on the planet find my ware safe in code AND to host & recommend it ->
So, now he is the best on the planet? Wow, your opinion of him keeps going up huh? Is he your boyfriend?
Then WHY do you & Fisted want to see my code so bad? "Ain't happenin'...", lol!
Perhaps because we don't want to take your or your boyfriend's word for it about the security of your product?
whereas by way of comparison, my code is written in the very functions those programs use BY HAND stupid - atomic string functions & all etc.)... ap
OMG, you wrote the code by hand! WoW, aren't you remarkable. Does your mom tell you how great you are when she brings you your hot pockets?
OH MY GOD, you use ATOMIC STRINGS! WoW!!! you must be so special!
Yeah..get over yourself.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Oh, and calling my a script kiddie, dispite your misspellings, just makes you look like an absolute moron. A script kiddie is someone who doesn't know how to create the script, but just uses it without the underlying knowledge.
This is how you should do your host file comparisons:
http://stackoverflow.com/quest...
Instead, you feel you need to create atomic string comparison functions by hand, like it is terribly hard. So everyone should just reinvent the wheel to prove how "leet" they are, so they can be "leet" like you. You act like Unix never existed, and persist in not using the tools provided which would make your software run faster and use less resources. It also would prevent mistakes in your comparison code, but I guess you already know that, and so feel that your source code should be hidden away to avoid being proven a programming idiot rather than god like you claim with "no proof"
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Sure.
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
There you go, now go eat your words, I am full from my lunch. Mmm Gyros.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Sure.
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Now, are you going to have ketchup with your word salad?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Anonymous isn't about anything but Anonymous.
Muslims didn't kill 65 million people in World_War_I;
Muslims didn't kill 85 million people in World_War_II;
The Arabic countries led by the Muslims were the most advanced scientists/engineers in the world, until they let the religious CRAZIES take over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
Religions are ~2000 years old;
Humans are ~200,000 years old;
Religion was born when the first con-man met the first fool;
Casteism
Good for /. ;(
worse for the women though. I don't even know what you are suggesting that they put up with
And just imagine if Anonymous actually stopped a major terrorist attack. They would be eliminating a major source of FUD that could have helped convince people to allow intelligence agencies to even further erode our privacy! You know.. to "protect" us.