Anonymous collective the new face of online hacktivism: CSIS report

OTTAWA – Canada’s spy agency says the online collective Anonymous isn’t just a thorn in the side of the powerful, but the new model for digital hacktivism.

Anonymous has carried out cyber-attacks against governments, corporations and others in the name of free speech, Internet liberties and, more so in the last year, anti-capitalist causes.

A newly declassified report from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says although hacktivism — a blend of hacker smarts and social activism — has existed for years, it is only now that conditions have allowed such groups to bloom.

“The global reach of the Internet, the availability of numerous open source/free attack tools, and the flourishing of social networking venues facilitates the organization and carrying out of cyber-attacks by hacktivist groups,” says the report.

“Anonymous is the face of modern hacktivism.”

The cyber-activist collective’s success lies in its ability to communicate its message to a world audience, says CSIS. “Its media capabilities are impressive, but are more of a reflection of the greater availability, and effective use, of media-making software than ‘deep pockets.'”

The Canadian Press obtained a declassified version of the secret January intelligence assessment, Anonymous: An Overview, under the Access to Information Act. Portions of the document were deemed too sensitive to release.

The report says the impetus for the assessment was Anonymous’ November 2011 threat to “remove Toronto from the Internet” in response to the city’s plans to oust Occupy protesters from an encampment.

Anonymous captured more headlines in Canada earlier this year with threatening demands that Public Safety Minister Vic Toews resign over a federal bill that would give police and spies easier access to information about Internet users.

Anonymous followed through on the threats, posting a series of videos featuring a disguised female voice discussing alleged details of Toews’ past.

A senior RCMP officer told the Commons committee on procedure and House affairs in April that the force’s investigation into the matter was ongoing.

Last December, Anonymous claimed it was behind an attack against national security think-tank Stratfor. The collective says it has aided Iran’s Green Movement. And it took on Visa, Mastercard and PayPal for refusing to handle donations to WikiLeaks, the site run devoted to disclosure of classified documents.

CSIS notes that despite the arrest of its members in Australia, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey and the United States, Anonymous continues to launch operations in countries including Canada, mainly against government and corporate targets.

“Deeply anti-authority and libertarian at its inception, it was only in 2011 that the group adopted the more stringent anti-capitalist, animal rights, environmentalist (with frequent references to Aboriginal rights) and anti-law enforcement/security service attitudes more commonly associated with left-wing activists,” says the CSIS report.

Composed of individuals and cells that share the same basic ethos, Anonymous is first and foremost a social movement, the spy agency concludes.

That characterization is encouraging, said Alexandra Samuel, director of the Social and Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University in Vancouver.

“A lot of the time governments have failed to distinguish between social movements that engage in civil disobedience and criminal organizations,” she said in an interview.

“And there’s a world of difference between people who are hacking websites in order to steal credit card numbers and launder money or whatever, and people who are hacking websites as a form of political speech.”

When there’s a threat to public safety, it’s appropriate for authorities to investigate, she said, but they must tread carefully.

“This is a social movement and I think we want to be careful that law enforcement isn’t sort of subverting what is really a new form of people engaging politically, even if at times it’s in a way that is quite alarming.”

She disagrees with CSIS’s notion that social media have fostered hacktivism, saying one could also argue the opposite.

In the late 1990s, hacktivism — such as website defacement and denial-of-service attacks that shut down websites — was the only way of carrying out mass actions online, she said.

But with the advent of social networking and global online petitions, there are other cyber-outlets for political engagement. “You can do things that are provocative with Facebook and YouTube, and that have that kind of in-your-face spirit, without breaking the law now.”