US Army Sees Twitter As Possible Terrorist "Operation Tool" 320
Mike writes "A draft US Army intelligence report has identified the popular micro-blogging service Twitter as a potential terrorist tool. A chapter titled 'Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter' notes that Twitter members reported the July Los Angeles earthquake faster than news outlets and activists at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis used it to provide information on police movements. 'Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives,' the report said. The report goes on to say, 'Terrorists could theoretically use Twitter social networking in the US as an operation tool.' Just wait until the Army finds out about chat rooms and email!"
Re:Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messa (Score:5, Informative)
Have you even tried to read Marx's Capital? The simple fact that you put it in the same sentence as the Unabomber manifesto shows clearly that you have not...
That you are judging the guy's analysis of the role of capital in the economy based on the actions of people who used his name, quite a few decades after he was dead, and in ways that would have make him puke, is pretty minor in comparison to your being writing about a work you have no knowledge of.
Re:Hey US Army (Score:3, Informative)
Terrorists can use TXT messages too... and guess what... TXT messages are more secure than Twitter.
Not necessarily. It's easy to identify the recipient of an SMS text message - it's whatever phone number the message was sent to, obviously. Of course, associating the phone number to a person may not be possible (e.g. if they paid cash for a pre-paid phone), but at least you know their phone number, which you can correlate with call records (under subpoena, of course).
On the other hand, since Twitter is a broadcast-style service that anyone can subscribe to, there could be hundreds of people subscribed to a particular feed, and no way to tell which one of them can understand the hidden message (using pre-arranged code words, etc.).
Suicide bombers don't much care about being identified after the fact. Most terrorists, especially domestic terrorists, want to live to see the results of their actions without getting caught.
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:5, Informative)
I held a military intelligence slot for a year or so, and one thing that was incredibly basic, is MI is about capabilities, not intentions. The whole reason Military Intelligence is not really an oxymoron is summed up in this rule. It's the job of Intelligence to be a staff, not command position, and to report capabilities to commanders. At highest levels, it's Intelligence's job to report capabilities to civilian oversight. Commanders or civil governments are the people who decide if somebody is likely to use a particular capability in a particular way. And all the biggest decisions are reserved to the civilian government.
A good military intelligence report to congress might list all the countries with H-bombs, how many they have, what Megatonnages they go to, how reliable their trigger mechanisms are thought to be, and so on. It won't say anything about whether Great Britain is less likely to use them against the US than, say, Pakistan. It's up to the US Congress to decide whether there is a real risk from some countries or not. That way, the military carefully avoids telling the government when to go to war, and it stays the civilian government's decision.
If some guy in MI does his or her job right, he or she notices that twitter works at faster speeds in some real world case or other than some of the other communications methods. He or she reports that up the chain because it's a capability. The command chain and civilians are the people who need to decide if there's anybody intending to misuse this technology, and what should be done about it. Congress might go "ZOMG, Osama haz Twitterz! W3R3 D00MED!" and screw everyone's rights. But the MI guy did his or her job correctly.
Re:Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messa (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever tried to read the Unabomber manifesto?
Actually yes. That's why I can say with a lot of confidence that it does not make any sense to associate it with the Capital.
I'd say that both Marx and Kaczynski were spot on in their analyses of the problems in their respective societies, but misguided in their approaches to change them.
Das Kapital is an analysis on political economy. While Marx surely did write about his approach to political change elsewhere, it is not in Das Kapital that he did that. That's pretty apparent from the first few pages...
Army newfags (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, what that fuck kind of worthless information is this? Text messaging is a pretty effective as a medium for terrorists for much the same reason. Or ham radio. Or cell phones. All of these can provide quick, (mostly) anonymous communication in realtime. BFD. Saying Twitter could be used as a terrorist tool is like saying the sky is blue, the grass is green, and the sun will blind you if you stare at it too long. Thanks for the news flash, fellas. Somewhere right now, a little old grandma is scared to death of Twitter for no good reason. Hmmm....
And by the way, I don't know if anyone else feels the same way, but I have no idea what the definition of terrorist is anymore. The term is bandied around to blanket such an array of topics, that I feel it has lost its meaning akin to calling every person you know as "human" as opposed to calling them by their names.
The obviousness of the article's main point aside, I want these jokers to clearly define what they mean by 'terrorist'. There is a very big difference between 'Anti-American' and 'Anti-American-Government', for example.
Come to think of it, it kinda makes me wonder who we are fighting in the "War On Terror". Hmmmm...
Re:Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messa (Score:3, Informative)
So Dick Cheney's a Marxist?
Who knew?
Seriously, isn't it interesting then that neoconservativism's founders were all former Marxists?