CIA & Anonymous vs ISIS: Collaborating With the Enemy | Cyberwar

a series of terrorist attacks by the Islamic State activists fight back Isis you will be treated like a virus and we are the Cure and Ally themselves with governments individuals passing information to the US government uh is a long-standing practice but is the war in Isis causing a war with an anonymous I think you could almost call it a civil war it's that bad [Applause] [Music] for more than 2 years the so-called Islamic state has been Waging War in Iraq and Syria Isis members and Fanboys on Twitter and YouTube spread propaganda While others deface websites and penetrate networks for Intel one is hacker and British expat named janate Hussein was such a threat the CIA placed him number three on its kill list before drone strike in Syria eventually killed him in 2015 I first reported on anonymous's anti-isis campaign in the summer of 2014 but after the Paris attacks a year later the activist Collective issued a declaration members of anonymous have been taking down Islamic State websites flagging Twitter accounts for removal hacking targets and of course generally just trolling Isis but some members are actively collaborating with governments and that tactic has caused a major Rift in the collective it also raises questions about the Thin Line governments are walking when it comes to cooperation with online Vigilantes I'm at Speaker's Corner in London to meet nefis Hamid an expert on terrorism and Islamic radicalization Speaker's Corner has his history of freedom of speech people can get up there on their soap box and basically talk about whatever they want to including people who support Isis yeah they can't say they support Isis but they can basically support all the goals of ISIS they can support the caliphate they can reject democracy nafiz is a researcher who focuses on the psychology of terrorism and he's interviewed dozens of Isis sympathizers and Fighters across Europe I wanted to better understand the effectiveness of the Islamic State's online operations so let's talk about recruitment but specifically social media right so how does something like a YouTube video influence some kid who's in Birmingham to pick up and head to the Islamic caliphate um usually when someone goes online goes on Twitter and let's say makes an effort to reach out to someone uh who's either an Isis supporter or an active member of Isis they they follow them or they tweet them or something in in a very short amount of time they're just all of a sudden surrounded by all these supporters like sometimes thousands of people in a matter of hours will just start following a particular individual who just posted a video or made contact with someone in the group and then you just want to inundate that person's Twitter wall with all sorts of videos of what's going on in Syria and then in the midst of all of that horror that they're seeing coming from the Shia militias from the regimes from the from the impotence of Western countries to step in then they'll see an Isis propaganda video that shows an Iraqi soldier being beheaded or killed and that kind of gives them some kind of catharsis that gives them a feeling of Revenge and makes them seem like Heroes and it used to be pretty easy to reach out online and contact Bonafide Isis operators in Iraq or Syria in fact my chats with one alleged Isis operative from Canada landed me in court the Canadian feds wanted me to Fork over all of my community with phoh Muhammed Shan that case is ongoing and I'm still facing the threat of jail time these Isis operatives and for a little while they weren't that hard to find either they're just like a Twitter link Away really and they would even attach their you know whether it was kick or different encrypted chat network name and then you just download the app contact them exactly yeah it was super easy to talk to them it was kind of out in the open I think from an intelligence agency point of view this probably serves some purpose because you could monitor some of this stuff it might be a bit harder now to contact members of Isis online but a few years ago when they were still out in the open the US government decided to Fight Fire with shoddy social media fire we noticed that in 2013 there was an increase in Terrorist propaganda in English and no one in the world not just the US had ever done anything to try TR to address this Alberto Fernandez was a US Diplomat for more than three decades a fluent Arabic speaker he led the state Department's program to counteract Isis messaging online his group produced anti-isis videos in many languages I remember being baffled when their English language campaign known as think again turn away launched online in 2013 why don't you tell me about think again turn away think again turn away was basically a kind of a cheap zero budget effort to address the rise of Isis propaganda in foreign languages including [Music] [Music] English what the are you doing the state department has has genuinely created a sarcastic parody recruitment video for Isis that begins with the words run do not walk to Isis land and you are banking a lot on any potential militants understanding that that is sarcasm oh you know what I was just about to join Isis but then I saw your very clever video the criticism that people have had is ridiculous that somehow trolling with these people brings us down to their Lev level some way it does well the problem with this is that they've had free reign for years where nobody said a thing how did that work out what do you think about Anonymous and their operations against these accounts certainly the idea of having more entities going after the adversaries material is a good thing that's what Isis has right Isis has Isis people doing stuff and then has Fanboys all over the world you need a network to fight a network you need a swarm to fight a swarm and Anonymous is part of that swarm it should be yes I'm in Toronto to meet with an anti-isis activist who calls herself sneaker she joined a group called ghost sec in 2015 she basically Combs the internet and dark web collecting Intel on Isis when assessing whether that information should be passed to the authorities because Anonymous is such a Loosely connected group they're often divisions within the activist Collective and many anons condemn ghost sex collaboration with governments but sneaker sees herself as a member of both groups she was reluctant to talk to us at first but finally agreed to meet if we promis not to reveal any of her personal details and if she could wear that white mask you're seeing we just want to help some as many people as we can what what motivates you every day to get up and what you just want to hunt terce every attack that we've had whether it's Paris or Belgium or you know one of the US attacks um San Bernardino and not only the deaths but you know they're enslaving little girls the way they treat people in the caliphate including children is what does it I mean we have to do something so goac is working with the FBI and in the US government and and also with anonymous well we are Anonymous yeah we're part of anonymous but we don't have a formal arrangement we simply send them the Intel like any citizen you know who's fought something suspicious um and they might call so that's all we're doing how do you feel about some people on Anonymous who think you guys are just being rats to the government you know if we come across something that's going to thow it an attack save somebody's lives you want us to just sit on the information and not share it with the government I mean it doesn't make any send the government just isn't able to do as much as they should so we're just helping out and you do think you are doing something that they can't do well we know that for a fact so how do anti-isis activists get their information to the authorities Michael Smith is a counterterrorism adviser to Congress he once acted as the middleman between sneakers group and the government but infighting within GOC led to another split now Smith only deals with the newest faction known as ghost Security Group which confusingly sounds a lot like the original group's name they reached out to me because they were interested in finding somebody who might be able to determine whether or not some of the information that they were collecting could be utilized for counterterrorism operational purposes and honestly I thought well okay let's let's just see what it is that they're picking up on I knew that they were touting that they were instrumental in closing tens of thousands of Islamic stat managed accounts and Twitter and elsewhere in social media and very quickly they demonstrated that they were drilling down into these networks and ways that were helping to gather information about recruitment programs and in some cases even attack plots in various places in the world a notable example of that was a plot to strike in Tunisia around the 4th of July last year Tunisia but has it only been Tunisia and was that plot actually stopped well the plot was stopped certainly I received some indication that the information was useful in helping to identify a cell and some planned activity there um there have been other examples uh but I can't really get into the specifics of that so wait you get this information okay and then who do you pass it to do you have a speed di for the FBI well I I know people in different agencies and have points of contact and historically I would look at the information and say all right based on let's say Tunisia where is that going to be most appropriate in terms of the flow of information ghost security are they doing things that the government can't the NSA can't cuz they'll they'll claim they they [Music] are you're having trouble with that one well what's different with ghost Security Group is that they're not answering to uh Masters in government they can go out and do things that um perhaps would require uh a a lot more time and energy just to develop approvals and policies and and even just basic protocols for various agencies to pursue that type of activity so that's a great little situation if you're the US government you can let some guys go off for hackers and pretty much do what they want Unchained and then also get the intelligence from it well I I I guess in theory strange bed fellows is what I'm saying in 2015 Anonymous declared war on [Music] Isis the collective and various subgroups have since taken down ISIS websites and flagged Twitter accounts for removal some have even shared Intel with the US government but many Anonymous members think that these tactics violate the collective's core beliefs discording is one of anonymous' most influential voices he's an oanon and the brains behind some of the group's most iconic videos he skyped me from somewhere in Europe you joined in 2010 and you were around in 2011 which was really the Heyday what did anonymous mean then Anonymous then really meant uh sticking it up to the powerful people uh to the governments to the security contractors now Anonymous is kind of almost working with the government their some of their sexs are feeding things to the government I I think that is extremely dangerous to be working with the government because uh we will continue to wage operations against governments and when they're working with us they could try to prevent those operations by infiltrating us like they're doing now I would never give anything to the FBI because they arrested so many of my friends um and I don't agree with their method of operations so I know obviously you don't like this operation against Isis but can you describe to me how deep the division really is within Anonymous I think you could almost call it a civil war it's that bad um because the old the old Anonymous people um are really doing this for the Freedom of Information for the freedom of expression and these operation Isis people are running ineffective operations um to gain media attention but I mean if I can play Devil's Advocate is it really so bad that Anonymous is going after a group that you know Mass beheads individuals uses sex slaves of course no one likes I totally agree with you but iing Isis would be good releasing that information to the public instead of law enforcement then the world can know what they are up to on the internet but these censorship campaigns don't solve anything should Isis even be censored at all um no I mean nothing should be centered I am for an unregulated internet people can see how horrible it is what they do so they shouldn't be censored they should be opposed A lot of us officials talk about the Battle for hearts and Minds when it comes to counter terrorism well General David Petraeus was one of the chief architects of that exact strategy a military Legend with a scandalous fall he was commander of the surgeon Iraq commander of US forces in Afghanistan and then the director of the CIA cyberspace the internet this is a new battle space you know we had ground and then sea and air and subsea and space and now you have cyers space and increasingly there are battles being fought there these are battles of ideas and have to be joined anons like discordian believe that governments working with Anonymous are actively infiltrating the hactivist group General Petraeus doesn't talk much about the CIA and Anonymous publicly but he agreed to meet me at his Manhattan office to discuss this online war and I wasn't exactly expecting him to be candid there are people who said that there's been a lot of infiltration of a group like Anonymous it's so open anyone can just join was there a perspective in the US intelligence community that going after a group like Anonymous and getting inside of it was a possibility obviously not something I would ever discuss but nice try and what do you think about something like Anonymous going after Isis online and then passing information to the US government well individuals passing information to the US government uh is a long-standing practice this is why we have tip lines but we have to be very very careful because just as we did not allow vigilantism or illegal activity on the ground when we partnered with individuals who used to either either tacitly or even actively uh oppose us um you can't allow certain activities in cyber space you certainly can't promote them uh even just because they may be aligned with our interests or our objectives so they have to be used very very carefully I think if they are used at all and I think that the law enforcement uh organizations and the intelligence agencies have been very careful uh in fact in their relation ships with uh such groups some people with an anonymous that we've spoken to say that the US government isn't doing enough and it forced them to intervene do you think that that's true I don't think you'd find an argument in the US government about whether or not more should be done there are always limits however there's never been a general who had enough troops enough funding enough bandwidth now enough unmanned aerial vehicles and the same is true when it comes to cyberspace the online battle between Isis and Anonymous has created unusual alliances and deep divisions within the hactivist collective some anons believe collaborating with governments is snitching but others are willing to do whatever it takes to fight the terror group when you think about what I see every day of the heav everything is graphic and violent and they are getting worse and worse to scare more and more people we're there to show you these things to get help to report these things and uh get it offline so uh other people don't have to see it at all micro initially joined Anonymous to fight Isis and then he started his own group called control SEC he devised a way to crowdsource the reporting of suspected Isis accounts to Twitter on mass so the company can pull them down are you saving lives you think well we have prevented a terrorist attacks in Kia the target was actually the market in Jan they were cying to damage as much Jews and French people as possible we are actively infiltrating Isis and uh gathering information it's not just that that's just what you got see so in Tunisia when you knew the attack was coming what did you do with the intelligence we delivered it to the American authorities and they hand it over to the Tunisian authorities we actually read about it in the news what was that moment like well was an amazing feeling knowing that you actually damaged them that hard that they couldn't do what they wanted to do at what do you think of people who say that control sack are Anonymous fighting Isis this way you're kind of aligning with the military-industrial complex and the goals of the US government if you can help ensuring National Security and a company we know there is a threat I'm going to scream as loud as I can to get it out there and stop it if if I hear it's going to blow up in your to I will contact the ones who think go out and stuck back in the shortest amount of time so how far is anonymous Strang from its basic principles in its fight against Isis a hacker since his teenage years Greg whoos was part of a notorious software piracy ring until he was busted by the FBI after a stint in federal prison he became one of the original members of anonymous he sold school he was an Anon before the guy Fox mask was even a thing Isis are a natural of you know what Anonymous stands for if it stands for anything you know freedom is a big piece of it uh anti-censorship is another big piece of it you know at the same time what about that government collaboration because you're a guy who was a black hat hacker in the criminal World ran away from the FBI for a while and now the thing that you help found m is now collaborating with the very enemy that you once had a lot of anons don't agree with working with the government at all on this uh you know write it up to them being right which I think uh write it up to them being mad about all their friends who are in jail I mean you're a collaborator at that point yeah at that point you're a collaborator with someone who has shown themselves to be you know mostly the enemy to people like you but just because Greg opposes collaboration with the government it doesn't mean he opposes the direct confrontation with Isis so if you look at the stuff that control SE is doing GH SEC op ice Isis M what does it all mean in the end is it actually achieving anything so this is a question I get asked a lot what what do you hope to achieve what in the in the grand scheme of things did this do maybe there would have been more attacks in other countries cuz you know the recruiters online that were shut down by Anonymous would have reached people that were ready and willing if they had only been talked to if one bomb didn't go off because of what Anonymous did then Victory but the other angle is is the continuing activation of young people when you see acts like this you see the world world is currently in a terrible State there's a lot that needs to get done and you don't have to have 12 years of college and be a senator you don't have to be someone in a position of power you can be sitting at home and affecting the world Anonymous is challenging the online operations of one of the most prolific terrorist organizations on Earth trying to do real damage the campaign has raised questions about how the government cooperates with online vigilantes but whether or not its operations are doing anything to stop Isis the campaign has definitely taken its toll on Anonymous itself and some members are asking if the collective will ever be the same again

Channel: VICE News

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Keywords: Hack, hacker, Hacktivism, Anonymous, Cyberattack, cyberwar, cyber, Surveillance, spy, spionage, security risk, hack, cyber attack, cyber war, hacktivist, hackers, CIA, document leak, exposed, whistleblower, activist, cyber warfare, tech, tech news, united states, america, politics, documentaries, docs, interview, culture, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, film, short film, movies, ISIS, isis hacked, isis news

Id: MkMTZziqi7M

Length: 22min 19sec (1339 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2024