Ride the Lightning

Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Anonymous Declares War on Islamic State After Paris Attacks

November 18, 2015

In a YouTube video seen more than two million times when I caught up with it, members of the hacktivist group Anonymous have declared war on the Islamic State, after the radical terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attacks in Paris.

In the video posted the day after the attacks, a man wearing a Guy Fawkes mask read a statement calling the attackers "vermin" and warning the Islamic State to prepare for "many cyberattacks."

Speaking in French (and my high school French is long forgotten), the man said Anonymous would "hunt down" the attackers just as its members did after the terrorist attack in January 2015 on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. SC Magazine posed a story with a translation of part of the video:

"On Friday 13 November our country France was attacked in Paris for two hours, by multiple terrorist attacks claimed by you, the Islamic State.

These attacks cannot go unpunished. That's why Anonymous activists from all over the world will hunt you down. Yes you, the vermin who kill innocent victims, we will hunt you down like we did to those who carried out the attacks on Charlie Hebdo.

So get ready for a massive reaction from Anonymous. Know that we will find you and we will never let up. We are going to launch the biggest ever operation against you. Expect very many cyberattacks. War is declared. Prepare yourselves.

Know this: the French people are stronger than you and we will come out of this atrocity even stronger.

Anonymous sends its condolences to the families of the victims.

We are Anonymous. We are legion. We don't forgive, we don't forget. Expect us."

The attacks have reportedly begun, with a claim that over 3800 pro-Islamic State Twitter accounts had been taken down.

Reuters reported that Anonymous members claimed to have identified 39,000 pro-ISIS accounts and reported them to Twitter, which supposedly took down 25,000 of those accounts. Anonymous, through one of its Twitter accounts, has also said it would name members of the terrorist group.

Some foreign policy analysts have said Anonymous taking out Islamic State websites and social media accounts could hurt intelligence collection by military and intelligence agencies that track the Islamic State through its online activities.

Certainly it is possible that Anonymous' involvement could be a double-edged sword. On the other hand, Anonymous has no legal handcuffs. Will its involvement, in the end, be useful in the effort to wipe out what the politicians are now calling Daesh? I can't began to hazard a guess, but it will be fascinating to watch.

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