Anonymous After ISIS

For Anonymous it was not unusual.  Thepress frequently refers to them as anarchists.   A few news outlets [ e.g. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/paris-attacks-anonymous-operation-isis-activists-begin-leaking-details-of-suspected-extremist-a6737291.html]  picked up the story of this unusual group of hackers as they tried to make information about ISIS Twitter accounts public.  Anonymous went after Assad in Syria long before anyone seemed to take an interest in what he was doing to his own people.

When I worked for the government, it was generally not good to say anything favorable about Anonymous.  They were, after all, hackers and hackers were bad.  The real reason we didn't favor them was they weren't our hackers.  They are hard to control and they sometimes get things wrong as they did in Ferguson.  Stuff happens.  We should forgive them for their sins and move on.  At least they are trying to do something to respond to ISIS.

Twitter has been in the middle of this for a few years, as has Facebook.  Various governments come to them and try to gets accounts closed because of "terrorist activity".  In those circumstances, it is hard for the social media sites to say no.  However, not everyone's terrorist is equal.  In Russia those terrorists can be someone who disagrees with the government.  In China they can be a religious group.  There are quite a few ISIS friends in all parts of the Middle East, as we found when theTurks interrupted  a moment of silence for the French dead with catcalls and whistles.  Some of those folks are probably on Twitter too.

Disrupting ISIS recruiting is a good thing, but not something governments generally favor,, and Twitter would be hard-pressed to do.  This is where Anonymous is at its best - doing things that governments don't favor but need to be done.  Maybe they can start posting the names of holders of these accounts and the people they are communicating with.  I'm sure we all would like to know if our neighbor is being recruited by ISIS.  We can take them off our Friends list,, bump them out of the carpool, and  call the FBI.