washpost: How Anonymous got it right and wrong in Ferguson

[MinM]

...Coleman has a few theories: One is that popular attention to Ferguson has attracted new activists to the group -- not all of whom may know about the potential pitfalls of using IRC for sensitive communications.

Another, perhaps more concerning theory is that this may be a so-called "false flag" operation, she says. That's when government agents or others who oppose the group plant erroneous information or urge members to move forward without the full picture to hurt the groups' credibility, she says.

While Coleman admits she has no evidence for this latter theory, she argues it's well within the realm of possibility. Government agents or moles have been known to infiltrate activist groups and allegedly encourage the worst of their behavior in the past, after all. (See: COINTELPRO)

According to Coleman, some on the IRC channel raised concerns that the push to release a name this morning may have been a false flag. And, she says, it's not the first time members of the collective have suspected as much: In Operation BART, a project responding to fatal shootings by officers associated with the San Francisco transit system, some within the group believed a hacker attacked and leaked customer data from Web sites associated with the transit system in order to discredit the group...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/08/14/how-anonymous-got-it-right-and-wrong-in-ferguson/

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. I can think of another possibility too.

Sort of an Anonymous 'false flag'. Let's say they actually couldn't hack in to get the info, but felt the police were simply going to hide the name. They could simply grab a name at random from the force and post it. At that point, the force can simply deny that that is the officer in question, but unless they actually release the real name, people are going to still suspect that the police are simply denying for the sake of denying.

So even by releasing the wrong name, it puts strong additional pressure on the police to release the real name.

[tridim]

2. If Anonymous is infliltrated they aren't anonymous, and they never will be again.

And that kind of sucks.