Anonymous War On ISIS: Online Collective’s Actions Could Be Doing More Harm Than Good, Experts Say
Anonymous has declared war on ISIS, but after taking down tens of thousands of social media accounts and disrupting the militant group’s online communications, some experts say the online collective is doing more harm than good.
The online activist group known as Anonymous officially announced its intention to take on ISIS this week in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris. Since then, the group has identified the Twitter accounts used by ISIS to spread propaganda and to recruit new members.
There is controversy surrounding the work Anonymous is doing against ISIS, however. There are already many intelligence groups aware of ISIS’s communications online, and these groups have been using the private channels as a way to gather information about the ISIS’s movements and potential terrorist attack targets.
Hackers vs. terrorists: Over 6,000 ISIS Twitter accounts taken down https://t.co/5AQuDD1o5t pic.twitter.com/Hnq7bIHcyq
— BGR.com (@BGR) November 22, 2015
Metro noted that these groups may be hampered by the work Anonymous is doing against ISIS.
“GhostSec is one of these. They regularly track down jihadist accounts and forums — but rather than shut them down, they infiltrate them and monitor their activity. According to their website, their mission is to ‘eliminate the online presence of Islamic extremist groups such as Islamic State (IS), Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra, Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab in an effort to stymie their recruitment and limit their ability to organise international terrorist efforts’. They pass all important information they gather about extremist groups to intelligence agencies, such as the FBI.”
The report noted that it is easier for GhostSec to monitor the terrorist groups on Twitter, but with the accounts shut down, ISIS is now moving to more secure channels that are harder to crack. And Anonymous is often using very low-tech methods to take down the Twitter accounts, a GhostSec spokesman known as DigitaShadow told Tech.Mic.
“When it comes to terrorist attacks, one of the big worries is that you could take down forums and cost someone their lives,” DigitaShadow said. “Anonymous has a habit of shooting in every direction and asking questions later.”
Anonymous is also taking a very imprecise plan of attack, DigitaShadow noted. When GhostSec looks for ISIS websites, they employ a number of Arabic translators to make sure they are taking down sites actually operated by the group, and not unrelated sites.
“Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate an insurgent site from an innocent Muslim site,” Digita said. “I’m afraid it’s a lot of friendly fire.”
That lack of precision may have been seen this weekend, when Anonymous published a list of alleged targets for ISIS on Sunday, claiming the group planned a worldwide assault. This included a target in the United States, the WWE Survivor Series event being held in Atlanta on Sunday evening. Other targets included Paris, Indonesia, Italy, and Lebanon. The FBI said it was taking the threat to the United States seriously.
FBI weighs in on U.S. threat reported by Anonymous targeting Atlanta WWE event https://t.co/L6A5XrSxEh pic.twitter.com/lyR06pfclT
— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 22, 2015
“We have … made the proper notifications as we continue to work closely with our law-enforcement and private-sector partners to keep our community safe,” the FBI said.
But at the same time, intelligence officials said they were aware of the threats and did not find them credible. It’s not clear if publicizing the information would hurt intelligence-gathering efforts, but some have suggested that it may lead ISIS to be more careful in its communications in the future.
As Anonymous continues its war on ISIS, it could continue to hamper other intelligence efforts, noted Tech.Mic writer Jack Smith IV, who wrote that the group will “trample on the methodical slog of the quiet hacktivists doing the slow work of real counterterrorism.”
[Image via YouTube]
