The Anonymous Assault On ISIS Is Hurting More Than It's Helping

In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, portions of Anonymous decided to "launch multiple operations" against the jackass collective that is ISIS/Daesh. Dubbed #OpISIS, the group's self-declared "biggest operation ever" has predominately involved posting what the group claims are ISIS affiliated Twitter accounts to Pastebin. These "ISIS affiliated" users are then reported to Twitter using a "Twatter Reporter" script being circulated among some members of the collective. In a video, Anonymous crows that the group has been responsible for bringing 20,000 ISIS-related social media accounts offline:Except there's a major problem with the latest Anonymous campaign. A large number of the accounts they're suspending have absolutely nothing to do with ISIS. A review of the banned accounts by Ars Technica found that large number of the accounts were banned simply for using Arabic, with many ordinary Palestinian, Chechan and Kurdish users caught in the crossfire. Similarly, some of the banned accounts were trying to troll the religious cult. And there's indications that many in the group aren't even sure who they're supposed to be targeting:

"Meanwhile, some of the people coming to the IRC chat channel associated with the operation don't seem to really understand what's going on. One person logging into the channel asked, "Who's ISIS?" The people managing the channel also demanded that others only speak English in the chat and not "clutter up the channel with only mandarin or Spanish or something."

Twitter insiders meanwhile have commented off the record that the list Anonymous has compiled is a bit of a joke:

"A spokesperson for Twitter, who asked not to be quoted by name, told the Daily Dot that the lists generated by Anonymous are not being used by the company, saying research has found them to be "wildly inaccurate."

"Users flag content for us through our standard reporting channels, we review their reports manually, and take action if the content violates our rules," the spokesperson said, adding: "We don't review anonymous lists posted online, but third party reviews have found them to be wildly inaccurate and full of academics and journalists."

And while the group's behavior has been held up by Presidential candidates like Ben Carson as a "model" of how to deal with terrorist groups, this kind of indiscriminate, misinformed hysteria (like oh, trying to ban all Syrian refugees based on false media reports) arguably aids ISIS more than it hurts it. Well aware of this fact, some splinter Anonymous groups (like GhostSec) have started more quietly forwarding their findings to the U.S. government. Other members of Anonymous find cooperating with the government intolerable for obvious reasons:

"It seems rather foolish to me to be aiding our mortal enemies, who lock up and even torture Anons - in a fight against an evil that they themselves actually created. If the USA and Europe were willing to release our Anon POW's, and agree to stop attacking us - in exchange for our rather ample assistance against ISIS, well - that might be different. Until then, I say let NATO and the USA fight their own monsters. At least the resources they will need to dedicated to hunting ISIS can not be used to hunt Anons."

So as usual, the headlessness that helps keep Anonymous alive as an ideal often winds up being its own worst enemy when it comes to coordination and quality control. That's not to say that Anonymous members can't contribute intel, disrupt some online ISIS capabilities, or act as an occasional propaganda counterweight. The group is, after all, helping things out by rick rolling pro ISIS hashtags:

Our upcoming action: spamming verified ISIS hashtags with rickrolls. Will release the list as soon as it's compiled.

- #OpParis (@OpParisOfficial) November 18, 2015

But beyond that, given the lack of any centralized jihadhist mainframe to be DDoS'd, #OpISIS is limited in what it can actually accomplish. Effective international espionage requires a lot more tactical coordination than the leaderless, mythological meme appears capable of, and the kind of societal problems that are driving angry, disenfranchised young people to join the cult of ISIS go much deeper than the hacktivist amoeba's tendrils reach.

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