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!"
Paper and pencil (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but I get tired of these messages. Terrorists could potentially use paper and pencils to communicate too. Lets outlaw that too. The hammer and the screwdriver are terrible weapons. Let us outlaw anything that has a potential. And please start with my hands because they are the most lethal of all.
Common sense; it is so rare, it is a god damn superpower.
When computers are outlawed-- (Score:3, Insightful)
SMS? (Score:4, Insightful)
You've got to be kidding me (Score:3, Insightful)
Just wait until the government figures out that terrorists use the US Mail for their terrorist activities. Whatever will we do then? Won't somebody please think of the children?
If there is a method of communication, the probability of these ubiquitous "terrorists" using it for communication are pretty close to 1. File this story under "duh".
FP?
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:5, Insightful)
CC.
Why Doesn't The Military Simply.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why doesn't the military simply save itself a lot of time and wasted effort and the rest of the people a ton of tax money and just simply report that any communications system from a wink or a semaphore to encrypted satellite communications could be used by bad guys, and that anything from a rock to a rocket could be a potential weapon?
Cheers!
Strat
Why not be honest (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, the magic funding-word. (Score:5, Insightful)
In chemistry, you can get funding for anything as long as you can relate it to cancer, no matter how tenuously.
"Terrorism" is the "cancer" of security folks -- magically gets them support and funding. Used to be Communism, but that is SO 20th century.
If we ever reach a state where we don't have anything to be afraid of, the security-freaks will have to invent something in order to keep their jobs. Oh, wait...
Re:Paper and pencil (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, my descendents could be terrorists. Does that mean my balls can be classed as terrorist weapons? Maybe Bush, Blair and Cheney should get down there and have a look at them just in case.
I mean what the fucking Hell is it with people who consider Twitter a potential terrorist tool? And they're complaining that it's being used for disseminating extremist ideologies? Oh no - Bad Thoughts! We must eliminate Bad Thoughts.
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine they are discussing those so-called "domestic terrorists" who believe such wacky ideas like "Don't Tread on Me", or that the Constitution is the Supreme Law, or that Human Rights are inalienable, or that juries have the power to nullify prosecution brought against innocent persons. ( http://www.pa-aware.org/who-are-terrorists/domestic-6.asp [pa-aware.org] [pa-aware.org] )
Free Speech = Terrorism (Score:3, Insightful)
'Nuff said.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:SMS? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You've got to be kidding me (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously, it would surprise me if twitter was NOT already being monitored en masse by the NSA. Not only is there the potential for catching actual terrorist communication, but merely analyzing the patterns in which tweets are sent could be a quick alert that some sort of sudden disaster is occuring... whether natural disaster like an earthquake, an accidental explosion in an industrial location, or a terrorist activity. It may be possibly to analyze the data to pinpoint the location of an event by where the tweets are sent from without having to even read the contents. Sure, there would be potential for abuse of such monitoring, but there would be potential for early warning which just may allow for cleanup and relief efforts to arrive that much quicker and better informed. It wouldn't be about the tool, it would be about who has access to it.
Re:Why not be honest (Score:5, Insightful)
It is that - just the Army doing their job. Evaluation of security implications means analysis of capabilities. Is twitter capable of being used for nefarious purposes? Of course.
If you bother to read TFA you'll see that the same analysis is being applied to several other ubiquitous technologies including GPS.
This sort of thing is very routine; nothing to see here, move along.
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Internets. Bombs. Fertilizer. Gasoline. Guns. Fear.
Re:Ah, the magic funding-word. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funding, of course, but also the "justification" for more power over the people:
"Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives", the report said
Extremist ideoligies such as freedom of speech, freedom to move about unrestricted, freedom from arbitrary search and seizure, and of course the most extremist of all ideologies: limits on government power and government revenue. These will all have to be monitored to keep the radicals from compromising the power pyramid, without which society would collapse.
Don't forget (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this mean that someone is going to misinterpret this report to mean Twitter is a terrorist organization? I'm sure (would it really be so bad if it got taken down?
When I worked as a software designer for Big Company, I remember they gave me a kind of cheesy pamphlet describing a day in the life of the target customer for our product, interspersed with market information. I bet to a marketer, everything in there was a "no shit Sherlock" fact, but to me as a developer it was new and valuable information. Same with this, to
Moderator terrorists (Score:4, Insightful)
That's right! And, what's worse, they have infiltrated the Slashdot moderation system! They are using Slashdot moderators to transmit their messages. Watch this:
If this post is moderated (-1, Offtopic) it means "skyjack an aircraft"
If this post is moderated (-1, Redundant) it means "bomb the Pentagon"
If this post is moderated (-1, Overrated) it means "spread anthrax over a large US city"
If this post is moderated (-1, Troll) it means "put child pornography in the internet"
If this post is moderated (-1, Flamebait) it means "send a suicide bomber to the subway"
If this post is moderated (+1, Insightful) it means "disband, they found us out"
If this post is moderated (+1, Interesting) it means "go to the FBI and tell everything about us"
If this post is moderated (+1, Informative) it means "sorry, we are wrong"
If this post is moderated (+1, Funny) it means "get a life, don't be a terrorist"
If this post is moderated (+1, Underrated) it means "terrorist? Oops, sorry, I wanted to be a theorist"
Re:Why not be honest (Score:3, Insightful)
More to the point, the US intelligence community doesn't seem to have a very good track record when it comes to using information. The US used bad information to validate invading Iraq, after not listening to good information about terrorists who would like to use airplanes as missiles to attack the WTC.
Basically, after those and other brilliant blunders regarding information, I do not believe that the US government has any clue where it's collective ass is, never mind how to scratch it when it comes to terrorist activities and communications.
All of that assumes that 9/11 wasn't an inside job.
The truth of the matter is that any unlawful attempt or actual infringement of citizen's rights is nothing less than treason against the Constitution of the USA as established and amended up to this time. Those who would break the laws as established in order to provide security against a threat that is not proven to exist are warmongers and worse, they are criminal warmongers. Treason is not a class D misdemeanor people. We're talking about people that should be hung by the neck until dead... after a "fair gitmo trial" of course.
All this concern about terrorists. Please, please won't somebody show that they actually exist before infringing my rights? OBL is probably having trouble breathing for laughing so hard at how the current US government has done all his work for him.
Bankrupting America for "perfect" safety (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't place the name or even the time period, but there's a quote floating around in my head about the dangers of seeking "perfect" safety. The analogy goes something like this: you could build a perfectly safe transportation system that carried zero risk, but by the time you were done building it, you couldn't afford the fuel to go where you wanted.
The exploitation of paranoia in our society has led us to spending over 5 trillion dollars on military and wartime budgets since 9/11. Are we any safer? The answer is, no; even the most hard line hawk must admit that there is no way to protect America from all future terrorist attacks. Even if it's preventing terrorist attacks now, it's only delaying them. Instead of a gang of Saudis, next time it will be a gang of Iraqis, pissed off for the same reason: infidel influence in their home country. So, we can continue meddling in Arab affairs -- you can see how well that has gone -- or we can remove our resources from the middle east, spend them on complete energy independence, and continue our far more effective foreign intelligence services. And then we could do something amazing: actually listen to what they are saying.
The best litmus test for me is to take press releases and news items from my own government, and imagine it was instead a Soviet-era communique from the state news agency. If it even passes the laugh test, I give it some thought, but most of the time, the thought experiment reveals the propaganda for what it is: completely transparent bullshit.
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:4, Insightful)
And not only that... (Score:4, Insightful)
You guys had better get cracking; this is a lot of stuff to ban! Them terr'rists are out to git us, and Wal-Mart, Target, Office Depot, Radio Shack, and other seemingly American stores are helping them out!!
The bigger picture (Score:2, Insightful)
Reading between the lines, its not Twitter as a terrorist operations tool, but rather, Twitter as a method to dispersing information faster than government sanctioned sources.
This being said, when the hell did the country of liberty and freedom become such a fk-ing police state?
What Could They Possibly Do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly. All this is is a single expression of the huge networking of computers we call "The Internet". Even if they found a bizarre way to shut down Twitter, confiscate the servers, etc, there is nothing that cannot prevent a competing service from filling the role. After awhile, it leaves only one option.
Go home. Internet's closed.
Re:When computers are outlawed-- (Score:2, Insightful)
When computers are outlawed, only outlaws will have computers!!
That reminds me that the US has (or had) tight restrictions on what kinds of computer technology could be exported to "countries we don't like". They were regulated under "Arms Control" because they could be used to do nuclear weapons simulations and difficult-to-crack cryptography. The limits were at one point low enough that some game consoles qualified for the restrictions.
Seems to me that then makes computers something that can be protected under the 2nd amendment. If they're regulated under "arms control" then they must be "arms" that are clearly covered by "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed".
And with the recent supreme court case that determined that it is indeed a "individual right" and not a "collective right" then I think we USians may actually get to keep our computers...
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:5, Insightful)
A hypothesis would be that they are trying to implement hooks to restrict 'free speech', the latter being a potential 'operation tool' for 'terrorists'.
Did anyone bring up anything about banning anything? Didn't think so. It is hyperbole to say the US military is about to ban free speech because they are studying twitter as a tool that can be used in certain scenarios by a terrorist. Part of their job is to study *every* potential tool that our enemies use. If they didn't they would be blamed as ignorant or out-of-touch.
The summary is short, but the issue isn't that they are stupid and don't realize that the internet is one big communications tool. They INVENTED the darn thing. It's the specifics of how it is used. Twitter is obviously a different tool than chat rooms, just like Facebook is different from the days of people having their own personal home pages.
another attempt to vilify free communication (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to me (these days) that the US Army is a potential terrorist tool....
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:2, Insightful)
I want to know how in the world they think anyone, especially terrorists, can plan anything in such a short space, there's only 140 characte
We didn't really need another reason (Score:4, Insightful)
But if anyone was looking for another reason why the military shouldn't be involved in law enforcement and domestic intelligence gathering, this would be a good one to add to the list.
The military shouldn't be a precision tool of foreign policy or engaged in law enforcement or peace keeping. Their job is to break things and kill people. Intelligence gathering by the military should be limited to supporting that core mission. Anything else is up to the CIA and NSA. That's why we have them.
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:2, Insightful)
So, to fix this, we just need to run all our idea's for new products and services by the government?
I'm sure they'll have good ideas on how we can improve them (like, "insert code at this point to redirect all data to a gov't server, and then the server will send most of it back).
And lord help us if the Army ever finds out individuals can set up private Jabber servers that encrypt all their messages, but that anybody can use (if the admin permits it).
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:3, Insightful)
Economy and investment (Score:4, Insightful)
The value lost by the economy as a whole has been great, but you don't think an American produced electric automobile industry would have helped at all? Or the effect of fully backed government programs to keep people employed with infrastructure improvements during the economic downturn?
Just a decrease of 20% in oil usage could have saved over a trillion, not counting the likelihood of lower oil prices due to decreased demand. And the war spending has been trillions, not billions. It's low historically, but only if you ignore discretionary spending and sections of the Dept of Energy developing nuclear weapons.
Coincidentally, the same administration responsible for liberating the credit derivatives market, which postponed the internet bubble, are the same ones spending money we don't have on projects that have ZERO return on investment. Once you explode a million dollar piece of ordnance, it pays with a different kind of interest twenty years down the road.
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:4, Insightful)
It must be quite obvious by now that this is NOT about protecting the US from 'dangerous terrorists'(TM). It's all about justifying the security and intelligence forces' jobs.
You're an idiot.
The GP is right, it is totally appropriate for the government and the military to be aware of the existence of services like Twitter and how they can be used. In the unlikely event that Twitter is somehow used in the execution of the next terrorist attack, I want the reaction from the government to be something like this:
"The terrorists used the micro-blogging service Twitter to communicate with each other and coordinate the attack. We have previously evaluated Twitter, and do not believe the service itself to be a threat; unfortunately, any communications medium can be abused by those with criminal intent."
I do NOT want the reaction to be something like this:
"The terrorists used something called Twitter to carry out their attack. Until we can learn more about this new threat to freedom, we have ordered Twitter to be shut down. The FBI has just completed an operation to seize all computers and other equipment used in Twitter's operation, and several members of Twitter's staff are being held for questioning."
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrorists are literally no longer terrorists if you are not afraid of them.
By that definition, US govt is more of a terrorist than an average terrorist. I'm actually more afraid of what could a government do to "try to stop the terrorists" than what terrorists themselves might do to me.
US Military Seen as Terrorist Tool (Score:2, Insightful)
The US Military is itself seen by many as a State Based Terrorist Tool that uses overwhelming military power to crush it's enemies and inflict countless murderous deaths against innocent bystanders, euphemistically called "collateral damage".
It's amazing that one State Based Terrorist Organization will be so afraid of others.
Look in the mirror and see the horror that has been inflicted around the world by the USA.
I don't support Terrorism whether it's by individuals or by individuals within groups or sponsored by State Based Organizations with an agenda. It's all the same: death and murder.
As Einstein said, we need to think differently at a new level to solve the problems created at the current level of thinking. Blowing people up might stop them but others get in line and the cycle repeats itself and expands...
How to stop it? What can you do to stop it? Revoke your governments power to wage war? What else?
Re:Paper and pencil (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're missing the point. No where in the article does it mention trying to ban Twitter (which would be completely ridiculous). What the intelligence report does is exactly what the Army Intelligence group is supposed to do, identify potential tactics that adversaries may use, and inform the decision-makers of those things. While an officer may understand and use email, the use of twitter, which focuses not on individual communication but mass distribution, is a different enough model that older colonels and generals may not have imagined it on their own. Informed decisions are always better ones.
I think this is really the most frustrating thing about the way the past 7 or 8 years have gone is that the obvious abuses make people have a knee-jerk reaction that even reasonable actions are wrong.
If they get any brighter... (Score:4, Insightful)
For petes sake. Any communications media can be a "terrorist tool".
Perhaps they should shoot all pigeons cause they can carry messages.
Hmmm what about those evil grandmothers that send cookies, they could be hiding terrorist messages...
and make sure to kill all goats in case someone ties a message to their balls. .....
*sigh*
Re:Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messa (Score:1, Insightful)
Have you ever tried to read the Unabomber manifesto?
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.
US Army Sees Phones As Possible Terror Op Tool (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah and any other form of communication.
Chill out.
GC
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messa (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messa (Score:5, Insightful)
You can log on to Twitter with an anonymous account from a cyber cafe and post a message like 'drinking coffee with friends'. This is a pre-arranged code. Someone else can look at your Twitter feed in another cyber cafe, without creating an account anywhere.
You can log on to blogger/wordpress/tumblr/myspace/slashdot from a cyber cafe and post a message like 'today i'm going to be drinking coffee with friends at 12:30 at Cafe Weiss Haus'. This is a pre-arranged code. Someone else can look ad your blogger/wordpress/tumblr/myspace feed in another cyber cafe, without creating an account anywhere.
To suggest Twitter is unique (& somehow dangerous) because of its ease of use is a fallacy. Those whose job is to prevent terrorist acts should not be foiling plots at stage where the "go signal" is being given.
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is that if you're internet-literate, reporting about Twitter is like reporting about the different sizes of paper your adversary might use to send a letter.
It's all the internet. What you use on the internet is much less significant. E-mail, IM, Twitter, it's all essentially the same. Twitter is absolutely nothing special. It could be torn down and replaced with something else tomorrow. A report which talks about "Twitter" would then be completely invalidated. But a report which simply talks about "the internet" would remain valid. That's really what's silly about this.
Re:Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messa (Score:3, Insightful)
But the parent, to whom you are responding, does not mention Das Kapital. He simply says that he believes "..both Marx and Kaczynski were spot on in their analysis..."
Further, you can associate the Unabomber's manifesto with Das Kapital in this sense: They are both documents that most Americans have not read and yet have strong opinions about.
For example when this weekend I heard that charm school country bumpkin Sarah Palin remark that Barack Obama was "going to bring Communism" to America, I really wanted to put my size 11 Sketcher (right foot) up her behind.