Anonymous sets the record straight regarding its battle with ISIS

Hacktivist network Anonymous has been taking down ISIS related sites and Twitter accounts in a bid to prevent the terrorist organization from spreading its message online. Anonymous has declared ISIS a virus, and itself the cure.

However, cyber blog Krypt31a has described Anonymous's recent actions as Whack-a-mole without a plan, spurring a representative of the hacktivist group to issue a video reply setting the record straight.

Anonymous states that #OpISIS isn’t in fact a continuation of the earlier #OpCharlieHebdo, as some have said, but has its roots in something entirely different and with a different motivation.

Although partway through the video things go off on a tangent and there’s rambling talk of Chinese proverbs and traditions, eventually the purpose of #OpISIS is revealed:

It is perhaps for this reason, and this reason alone, that it is important to set the record straight as to what exactly it was that sparked off #OpISIS, so that those who think, or claim that they are in the know -- when in fact they know nothing -- can perhaps be enlightened with regard to what makes Anonymous -- and certain moral factions in particular -- think.

As an Anonymous insider and a long-serving member of the small but capable strike team that hit a series of ISIS websites in the immediate aftermath of #OpCharlieHebdo as January 2015 began to draw to a close (an event that was initially reported only by the far from mainstream Counter Current news website), I am in a position to reveal that, like so much that Anonymous is involved with, one of the primary motivations behind the attack was to expose government lies about what the Cyber Caliphate had been getting up to, the fact that the US military in particular had been lying to its own people about what ISIS had been doing, in addition to keeping them misinformed about the extent of the Cyber Caliphate’s online capabilities, was one of many factors that was to determine the first stage initiation of #OpISIS by the Anonymous RedCult strike team.

Of the many other motivations subsequently broadcast across cyberspace through the creation and proliferation of the RedCult’s own unique series of videos, another primary motivation reminiscent of #OpChanology, the now legendary online campaign by Anonymous against the Church of Scientology, was -- and is -- the fact that Anonymous sees the internet as its own principle domain and that anything that infringes on the domain in an oppressive way is a fair and legitimate target for Anonymous.

In other words, Anonymous owns the internet, and if it doesn't agree with your actions, it will come for you.

Photo credit: Vincent Diamante