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The Cyberwarfare campaign against ISIS is apparently somewhat of a failure. It has not had the desired outcome on their recruitment and pr-campaign machines. Apparently the enemy just keeps on setting up new accounts. So it's almost like a real world guerrilla warfare but in cyberspace (apparently it's not cool enough to just call it the Internet anymore).
... the results have been a consistent disappointment
... it has become clear that recruitment efforts and communications hubs reappear almost as quickly as they are torn down.
In the endeavor, called Operation Glowing Symphony, the National Security Agency and its military cousin, United States Cyber Command, obtained the passwords of several Islamic State administrator accounts and used them to block out fighters and delete content. It was initially deemed a success because battlefield videos disappeared. ... But the results were only temporary. American officials later discovered that the material had been either restored or moved to other servers.
Some of the effects are employed repeatedly over days. Locking Islamic State propaganda specialists out of their accounts — or using the coordinates of their phones and computers to target them for a drone attack — is now standard operating procedure.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/12/world/middleeast/isis-cyber.html?_r=0
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @06:10AM (3 children)
This is direct evidence of the lack of value in censorship. Censoring things doesn't make them disappear. It doesn't make people stop believing them. It doesn't even meaningfully change outside acceptance. It could even have a paradoxically positive effect on outside perception.
The key to combating undesirable beliefs is not to try to hide them away, but to make them completely open and ensure the rest of the world can also comment and partake in them without any form of censorship. Imagine ISIS - goes who literally want to go aloha snackbar on anybody that draws their holy dude. The internet would turn their absurdly backwards conservatism into the butt of a joke. Instead by trying to hide them from sight you strengthen their image. They are the unspoken evil that must never been seen or uttered. It gives them a mysterious allure that strengthens them.
The KKK's image was greatly damaged by publication their rituals and images of such. Here's [time.com] a retrospective of one of the later 'outings.' These spotlights didn't suddenly spark interest and recruiting for the KKK. No, it revealed them as a bunch of grown men running around in bed sheets calling each other wizards and pretending to have pseudo-mystical powers. Like grown men stuck in the mindset of kids. They were an extremely dangerous group no doubt, but their allure was their image - their mystique. Destroy the image and you destroy the group. Force it out of sight and you convert men running around in bed sheets to the secret beasts of the night.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Wednesday June 14 2017, @07:33AM (1 child)
Besides, why would you ever take ISIS recruitment centers down? either track the prospective recruits, or infiltrate, or honeypot the hell out of it and send recruits to fight against the wrong targets. Cyber is irrelevant until it seeps in reality.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Wednesday June 14 2017, @08:25AM
Good luck.
Interesting idea. Flood the web with recruitment disinformation.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 14 2017, @07:34PM
> The key to combating undesirable beliefs is not to try to hide them away, but to make them completely open
> and ensure the rest of the world can also comment and partake in them without any form of censorship.
Look at the stats of US politics: People hear only the side they want, and not the arguments from the other side.
Especially the kind of desperate losers which the likes of ISIS do try to convince: "You're under-educated, feel oppressed and will always be a nobody? Follow my ideas and you will make a difference! Don't listen to all the idiots who tell you I'm a bad influence directing you towards self-destruction! I'm gonna make you important again!"