ISIS kill list targeting civilians is a game changer in terrorism
There are thousands of names on the recently released ISIS "kill list" and 151 of them are Canadians.
As of yet, there are no reports of any harm being done to the Canadians on the list, but these people across the country are currently finding out that their name is one that's being targeted by the al-Qaeda splinter group.
Adrienne Arsenault, senior correspondent with The National, says this list is one of nearly two dozen that have been released by pro-ISIS hackers over the past couple years, but what makes this one different are the targets.
"Initially they were very specific lists, they were aimed at military personnel, drone operators in the United States, transit police, some cops," Arsenault says. "Usually the list was like 70 or 80 people long, and then it got bigger."
According to Arsenault, a list released in April containing about 4,000 "random civilians" from New York was the first iteration of this kind of "kill list" from ISIS. Looking at the current list with the 151 Canadians, Arsenault says it strikes her as similar, "there's nothing about their profiles that suggest anything other than they're random."
As for the make up of Canadians on the list, Arsenault says it's mostly women from smaller centres across the country.
Mark Bourrie, a Canadian journalist and author of The Killing Game: Martyrdom, Murder, and the Lure of ISIS, calls what's happening with these "kill lists" and pro-ISIS hacker groups part of the proliferation of "virtual war."
Bourrie says such "propaganda" is released by ISIS when they're met with failure and meant to act as a distraction from such situations. Instead of focusing on the setbacks ISIS has faced, Bourrie says, like with what's happening right now, our communities talk about the list, "which will probably, almost certainly, result in nothing anywhere."
"We won't be talking about the fact that 500 ISIS fighters surrendered in Fallujah two days ago in Iraq, or that ISIS has lost half of its territory in Syria in the last couple of weeks — and that's the story that ISIS doesn't want us to tell and this sort of thing is the way that they take over the message."
This segment was produced by The Current's Sarah Grant and Sujata Berry.