[InclinedPlane]

The only reason anonymous's security operations aren't more frightening is due to their culture and goals. They just want quick wins and publicity (for themselves and for the material they unearth). However, their capabilities are top notch (limited mostly by their hesitance to do anything that requires physical presence). If they were, say, employed by a hostile government or were motivated by greed or specific political goals they would be scary.

Anonymous's MO is to spew their exploits to the world and move on. This minimizes the damage of their intrusions. If they kept quiet and spent time soaking up information or leveraging breaches to gain more and more access the things they could do would be jaw dropping.

[Kadin]

There's no evidence, at least that I've seen, to suggest that "Anonymous" is anything approaching a cohesive organization. I think it's a mistake to refer to it that way.

Absent anything other than a common name, there's no reason to assume that the individuals compromising the "Anonymous" that recorded the FBI conference call has anything to do with the "Anonymous" who dumped Stratfor's credit card DB, or who leaked those Ron Paul emails.

[samstave]

Isn't the term we use for such actions "Grey hat"

[InclinedPlane]

That's probably closest, but I'm not sure any color of hat fits on anonymous' head.