On the limits of contemporary policy making
"Anonymous is becoming more and more sophisticated and could potentially hack into sensitive government, military, and corporate files."
Mutter about "precious bodily fluids" and it'd make as much sense.
Yes, I'm one of those techies with no charisma, who am I kidding, negative charisma, but very long and finely honed toes trained on sloppy language use. And by going to "cyberspace", the old git entered my domain. So there.
But the point is that this "We are legion" muttering crowd whereof he has so much trouble describing the threat profile, isn't a group. It's been said and derided before including right upthread, but the key thing is that, no matter how many of "the operatives" are hot shot pimply faced youths with a grudge, there really isn't any central leadership to the point that should one manage to dare try and arise the movement shatters and may or may not regroup, reform, retry.
It acts like a collective. Whether it itself could become concious is more than I'm prepared to say, but for all that it's very real for its comparative lack of traditional substance.
From a policy standpoint, it's got them completely blindsided. This is "something" that may or may not actually exist, has communication lines more tenuous than a terrorist cell, and shifts from corporate to government threat space to wherever next like a school of fish.
And they in their bones know that should "Anonymous" manage to capitalise on that they're dead meat. In the light of this Arabian Spring thing, moreso.
i think they're both right and dead wrong. I'll leave the details as an excercise, but I'll say this: The best defence against Anonymous is to, as a government, do what you're supposed to do; focus on the people and work on your integrity. Same thing in slightly different sauce for corporations, for that matter. But that may well be harder and less profitable than spinning a good scare story and set up some agency or other to fight the threat.
See Anonymous as a backlash against the Wars on Stuff, if you will.