They didn't want to actually be headless.

Corporate execs and governments with secrets to hide may lay awake at night fretting about the possibility that Anonymous will hack their systems and expose their secrets.

But there are things that keep Anonymous up at night as well . . . Like, say, Los Zeta, the powerful Mexican drug cartel.

According to Forbes, a Mexican newspaper called Milenio, says that Anon has cancelled "OpCartel": its plan to expose a cache of information about Los Zeta.

A YouTube video a month earlier from a hacker in a Guy Fawkes mask claimed Anon had intel on taxi drivers, police officers and journalists who worked with the cartel.

In Milenio, however, Anon supporters said the operation was cancelled because of the risks. One claimed, "They continue other operations but for now we hope to make clear that the cartel operation is false.”

That may not be the full story as  @Sm0k34n0n, a Twitter account that has been sending out OpCartel updates, claimed that backing down would make them complicit with Zetas, tweeting, “the #OpCartel plan will follow.”

Forbes says:

Whether it goes ahead or not, this could be the first Anonymous operation with real potential to lead to a loss of life. The security company Stratfor claims Los Zetas has already deployed teams of computer experts to “track those individuals involved in the online anti-cartel campaign.”

That’s bad news for anyone that, correctly or incorrectly, gets tracked down. Last August and September, for instance, Mexicans with connections to separate blogs and websites campaigning against cartels were killed.

Things that scare Betabeat: this op.