Anonymous hacking collective Anonymous has promised to avenge those murdered in the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris last week by "declaring war on jihadists." And they plan to to do this how? Oh, by launching a string of cyber attacks on ISIS networks that … wait for it … shut down their social networks. Mmm … okay.

They made the announcement that they'd be kicking some cyber ISIS ass with the release of the following clip, which was uploaded to the group's Belgian YouTube account last week. A figure wearing the group's signature Guy Fawkes mask and a hood says in French in an electronically-distorted voice: "We are declaring war against you, the terrorists."

As a follow-up to the video, the group also released a statement on text-sharing website Pastebin, entitled "Message to the enemies of freedom of expression."

In it, they said that "Freedom of expression has suffered inhuman assault … It is our duty to react … We wish to express our condolences to the families of the victims of this cowardly and despicable act."

"'We will fight always and everywhere the enemies of freedom of expression," they added. "Freedom of expression and opinion is a non-negotiable thing. To tackle it is to attack democracy."

And they rounded it all out with a nice threat: "Expect a massive frontal reaction from us because the struggle for the defense of those freedoms is the foundation of our movement."

Okay then! It seems as if authorities targeting extremists may have found an unlikely ally in the fight against terrorism.

However, this isn't the first time Anonymous has hacked ISIS. They did multiple times throughout 2014, shutting down networks and blocking the flow of information between extremist parties.

They've also hacked government websites before, not to mention those of corporate and religious organizations. Typically, they do this using via distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults in an attempt to overwhelm their network, so that it is impossible to access the website under attack. In fact, someone posted "I like to eat poop" on our Facebook page and we could have sworn to God it was Anonymous. Those guys are everywhere. 

But today, they've made their first battle move of 2015.  They claimed to have downed their first extremist website  since the start of their internet war. In fact, they just posted a tweet on the account @OpCharlieHebdo boasting they had crippled the French terrorist website ansar-alhaqq.net.

It came with the hashtag #TangoDown and the message: "Expect us. #JeSuisCharlie."

The ansar-alhaqq.net page remains down, instead directs visitors to the search engine DuckDuckGo, which is the poor man's Ask Jeeves.

But ISIS had a few blows of its own to dole out today, when they allegedly hacked into the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the US Central Command, posting several ominous tweets, bizarro videos, and also leaking a confusing series of non-critical government reports to the public. Thanks?

So it appears there is a bit of a cyber war waging this fine Monday in wake of Anonymous' pledge to fuck with ISIS.

All this is fine and dandy, and it's nice that Anonymous is playing the role of social vigilante. But it's left us wondering: where were they during the Sony attacks? If they're so about preserving freedom of expression, why didn't they make moves towards North Korea or the Guardians of Peace for threatening human lives over 'The Interview'? Why not go after them and condemn those attacks too? Is 'The Interview' not a form of artistic expression that was condemned for its defacement of a culture and leader?

We hope that Anonymous realizes that its newfound, self-given role as defenders of justice and freedom will start to come under scrutiny and retaliation if they don't start standing up for a broader range of issues or expression injustices. We're interested to see how they pick and choose which people to stand up for moving forward.