Anonymous' Operation Cartel
On 6 October 2011 a man identifying himself as a member of Anonymous posted a video on YouTube under the account MrAnonymousguyfawkes stating that Los Zetas had kidnapped one of their group members and demanded that Los Zetas Cartel release the individual. If he was not freed, the man in the video threatened to expose photos and the names of several people who collaborate with the cartel, such as police officers and taxi drivers. The man in the video stated that they were "fed up" with the situation in Mexico where people are getting kidnapped and experiencing violence.
The operation to expose information of people who work with Los Zetas, dubbed "Operation Cartel", was reportedly started as a result of an Anonymous member being kidnapped during Operation Paperstorm in Veracruz, a once peaceful city. On 29 October 2011 the Global Intelligence group Stratfor released a report stating that if Anonymous did go through with OpCartel, most certainly it would lead to more deaths and could leave bloggers and others open to reprisal attacks by the cartels. Meanwhile, a retired head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Puerto Rico, Mike Vigil, warned that "Los Zetas should take Anonymous seriously."
OpCartel also raised the concern that Los Zetas have experts in computer intelligence who are believed to track down the "anti-cartel" campaigns online, which helps experts understand the high rate of journalist executions. Additionally, the Mexican drug cartels generally have people monitor forums, news websites, and blogs to help them be in touch with what is being published and with what could affect their interests. The New York Times mentioned that Los Zetas has access to sophisticated tracking software due to the fact that they have infiltrated Mexican law enforcement agencies, and that online anonymity might not be enough protection for Internet users.
On 4 November 2011, Anonymous posted on the Iberoamerican Blog that the kidnapped member had been released and that they had confirmed his identity. They also stated that they would not be moving forward with releasing the information they had of several cartel members.
As a result, Anonymous self-proclaimed spokesman, Barrett Brown, believed that he was in fear for his life.
Read more about this topic: Los Zetas Cartel
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.”
—Henri Bergson (1859–1941)