"What you need to know about Anonymous's 'war' on the Islamic State"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/11/17/what-you-need-to-know-about-anonymouss-war-on-the-islamic-state/

Summary:

Anonymous declared an online ‘war’ with the Islamic State. There have already been multiple Anonymous-linked operations against ISIS such as, #OPISIS and also @ctrlsec both of which can be easily found on twitter due to the Islamic State’s large presence on twitter compared to any other social media platform. People are encouraged to follow @CtrlSec and report as many of the listed Twitter accounts as possible so that Twitter will review the accounts and suspend them. #OpParis is also an account which occasionally reports a rough estimate of the number of ISIS related Twitter accounts that have been shut down. In 2014, Twitter started suspending a large number of Islamic State-linked accounts however, around this time, the Islamic State rapidly grew its online presence. J.M Berger of Brooklyn Institution has written about the efforts to identify and suspend Islamic State-linked social media accounts and has also outlined several potential risks and trade-offs if those efforts aren’t approached effectively.

The group Anonymous itself is not fully behind #OpParis or #OPISIS (Op stands for operation in this case). There is even further disagreement of how to proceed with the operations themselves. One idea was doxxing some members of the Islamic State. Doxxing is the action of the publication of private or identifying information about someone on the internet, typically with a malicious intent. This can easily be seen as to why this could be disastrous, for example, if they pick the wrong person it could destroy that person’s entire life. Another split was called GhostSec, which was once linked to Anonymous but split in part over increasing interest from government intelligence officials from information gathered on the Internet and the dark web.

Although Anonymous is getting a lot of attention over this matter, and rightfully so, they’re not the only people who are trying to address this problem of the Islamic State extremist presence. Such as, Paul Dietrich,  who directly talks to people that he believes are vulnerable to joining the Islamic State through the social media community. There are also government entities that are also trying to start anti-Islamic State campaigns on social media. A fairly recent campaign was coordinated by YouTube and multiple Muslim groups to create and upload anti-Islamic State messages to the site.

Impact:

This directly relates to first semester Contemporary U.S. History because an oncoming cyber war would include a digital arms race, like the nuclear arms race. Something of this magnitude may die down quickly or it could be a full fledged cyber war where even the most basic users would be fighting propaganda and other messages. An online Islamic State hacking group could also be a very large domestic threat to the United States. This has impacted my by showing that though Anonymous may be split, regardless of how they are split they are still trying to take action. I personally believe that this may be a good thing, however, “good” is so relative. This could also be bad for the United States. This is also personally impactful because currently, outside of history class, I’m taking a computer science course and I’m learning about all of these things in the computer world that I’m both slightly scared and excited at the same time about the possible outcomes of what may come next. The world isn’t ready for a cyber war, so hopefully there won’t be one.