Anonymous Isn't a National Security Threat, But the FBI Wants it to Be

The general consensus among authorities is that Anonymous is a threat, both from a criminal and national security perspective. The criminal aspect is easy for police to argue; taking down a corporation like Sony, however temporary and just it may or may not have been, is never going to fly with officials. At the same time, the national security aspect seems simple; after attacks on agencies like the CIA, police departments, and the like, it’s been pretty easy for the FBI and whatnot to characterize Anonymous in the court of public opinion as a group of dangerous Internet people. That rhetoric is bolstered by small things, like authorities calling LulzSec a “splinter” group, a term that’s reserved in regular media parlance these days for terrorists and what not.

But is Anonymous, whose singular aim seems to be targeting the arrogant jerks of the world, actually a national security threat? Moreover, Anonymous isn’t an organized terror cell. It’s a fluid group of skill netizens that hold similar ideals. In simple terms, it’s less a group and more an idea. Can an idea be a national security threat, and more importantly, is that something our authorities should be spending their time triyng to fight?

Writing in Foreign Affairs, Yochai Benkler argues that fighting Anonymous isn’t only a waste of time, it’s dangerous to our freedoms:

This is the wrong approach. Seeing Anonymous primarily as a cybersecurity threat is like analyzing the breadth of the antiwar movement and 1960s counterculture by focusing only on the Weathermen. Anonymous is not an organization. It is an idea, a zeitgeist, coupled with a set of social and technical practices. Diffuse and leaderless, its driving force is "lulz" — irreverence, playfulness, and spectacle. It is also a protest movement, inspiring action both on and off the Internet, that seeks to contest the abuse of power by governments and corporations and promote transparency in politics and business. Just as the antiwar movement had its bomb-throwing radicals, online hacktivists organizing under the banner of Anonymous sometimes cross the boundaries of legitimate protest. But a fearful overreaction to Anonymous poses a greater threat to freedom of expression, creativity, and innovation than any threat posed by the disruptions themselves.

Benkler’s piece is definitely worth a read, but his base argument is that while Anonymous is fighting, however chaotically, for Net freedom, authorities want to use Anonymous as a proxy excuse for tightening up restrictions on the Web, all in the name of cybersecurity.

Thanks to successful, effective commercialization of much of the Web, keeping the free-for-all, Wild West vibe at this point of the Internet’s life is a very real threat to business. Sure, cyberspace was once like Burning Man, with weirdos galore doing whatever they wanted and vigilantes like Anonymous were the only police anyone needed. It’s long since become Times Square, and it seems that Anonymous’ goofball antics — which amount to smashing out windows, throwing up graffiti, and the general Internet equivalent of loosely-focused rioting — are the final tipping point for the FBI and security people, who’ve come to feel that the Internet is no longer some nerd wasteland, but is a very real commercial and governmental space in need of policing. As has long been predicted, the war for the web is upon us, as Michael Joseph Gross outlines in an excellent essay for Vanity Fair.

Forget all that. Is Anonymous a credible security threat right now? Not right now. Aside from the fact that they’re only in it for the lulz, Anonymous isn’t some sort of politicized terror group bent on destroying the West. Sure, Anonymous has plenty of political elements in it, and is surely anti-authority, but I’m not convinced that it would ever produce a sustained anti-government campaign. Anonymous is, by its own wishes, a loosely-organized, fluid group. Outside of occasional attacks on whoever provokes their ire, Anonymous’ infrastructure isn’t set up for the type of sustained politicized attack that would make it a true national security threat.

But that’s the key right there: Anonymous is very quick to respond when its members feel their being fucked with, and that’s exactly what’s happening right now. The whole Sabu debacle obviously didn’t go over well and the FBI Tricked Me, and the memory isn’t going to fade any time soon. And for as much as a coup it was for the FBI to flip a relatively respected member of the group, and take down a bunch of other people with him, it’s not like Anonymous has any hierarchy to actually dismantle.

The main product of such a public embarrassment is to galvanize Anonymous supporters, which seems pretty counterproductive to what cybersecurity experts are trying to do. What’s better: Dealing with random attacks or focusing all of a shapeless group’s efforts on sensitive government agencies? I’m simply not convinced that the FBI could actually shut down Anonymous, and I don’t think that Anonymous is anything but a vague threat to national security. But if the war for the web is at hand, it certainly seems like a bad idea for authorities to be setting themselves up as a clear target.

Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @drderekmead.

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