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!"
"Terrorist enthusiasts" (Score:4, Interesting)
So there are terrorist fanbois online now too? By definition, a terrorist is someone engaged in asymmetric warfare, i.e. one of their main advantages is stealth/secrecy, so it's hard to see how someone would be an enthusiastic promoter of it in public. "Terrorist enthusiast" is such an odd turn of phrase that almost all hits [google.com] are for this article itself.
Re:Terror...? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure this is just yet another cheap viral marketing scam by Twitter. Get restricted = seem cool, fashionable and necessary. I don't approve of calling everything (or indeed, pretty much anything) a terrorist threat, but in this case if the net result is no more Twitter... then Military, please go right ahead.
I'm sure Twitter could actually be useful if it wasn't run and marketed by a total bunch of jerks, desperately trying to get rich off a quick buyout.
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:2, Interesting)
Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messages (Score:5, Interesting)
As you say, Marx was an idiot - but if you look at him and most "Marxists" of various sorts who follow him, they were really verbose idiots. Sure, Engels got him to fit the Communist Manifesto in a short, punchy document with memorable slogans, but Das Kapital or the Unabomber's 35000-word manifesto were more typical. And most of the Islamic extremists are really verbose as well. Twitter and text messages are simply the wrong medium for ideological extremists to use.
Twitter may be fine for tactical operational messages or for non-ideologicals like gangs - "Lets go kill the Haitians!" fits just fine. Marxists can at least use Twitter to say "Let's go get beer"; even that doesn't work for the Islamics.
Maybe the white-power hate groups could fit their ideology into short messages, if they can type that well, but they're the FBI's problem, not the Army's. And even they'd mostly use it for things like "Goin to Wa||mrt - white sheets are on sale".
Re:Why is US army concerned about Terrorism in US? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messa (Score:5, Interesting)
the power of twitter, that is also the power of email, SMS broadcasts, and at least 900,000,000 different ways of communicating via the internet is that agents can all report information in short bursts.
A1: blues are heading west.
A2: greens are heading east. left 3 guards.
A3: target only has 6 guards. places everyone.
A1: in position.
A2: in position.
A3: It is 3:21 right now. Go at 4:10.
Now, this would be outright RETARTED to do this via twitter. Get some used Ham radio handhelds on ebay and use the local repeater for your agents during the event. If you use one of the oddball repeaters like the 1.2ghz or the 220 repeaters no hams would even know anything was going on until it was too late. Most of those repeaters dont even have hams listening 98% of the time and if you comms are very short you're golden. If you're well funded drop a repeater on a hill (that you also bought off ebay) and set up your own system.
It will take at least days hours before anyone reports all the "dirka dirka jihad" talk on some obscure frequency. The feds will probably never detect it, and all the gear is readily available.
Why even waste time with a toy like twitter?
Re:Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messa (Score:4, Interesting)
Two options.
A) The idiots in the Army are incompetent and really haven't thought this through as well as you have. They're just blowing enough sunshine up their superior's rear ends to get another promotion. This happens with quite a bit of frequency no matter where you're employed.
B) The guys in the Army are much smarter than we give them credit for and they're just using this to scare people into further believing in some vague terrorist threat and we need to further monitor all communication platforms for said threat. Then they can find the "real" terrorists like Hippys, Liberals, Ron Paul drones and other "Anti-American" types. Not that twitter is a decent communications platform for anything other than 144 character introspective, self-indulgent bullshit.
Re:If they get any brighter... (Score:1, Interesting)
Perhaps they should shoot all pigeons cause they can carry messages.
This was actually done in WW1. Pigeons that were seen near the front lines would draw fire for exactly this reason.
Re:Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messa (Score:2, Interesting)
Have you ever tried to read Marx's "Paris Commune"?
Marx had a lot of problems with the next generation of Communists while he was alive--but don't think for a second that Marx was opposed to brutality, oppression, and murder. Far from it. Force, for Marx, was a tool to satisfy the proletarian revolution. No surprise that they turned out to be selfish and bad people. Marxism itself is selfish and bad.
Furthermore, Marx's economics are about as silly to the economist as squaring the circle is to a mathematician.
W. T. F. Seriously. (Score:3, Interesting)
I know this is slashdot and all, but seriously... wtf is the matter with all these moronic posters here talking about "paranoia" and how stupid the army is that they don't "get" the Internet.
First of fscking all, the army knows what the Internet is good for, considering they're basically the ones who had the thing built for the very purposes we all use it for today (well, maybe not porn and shopping). Of course they are aware of its utility as a communications tool!
Second, the only paranoia here is emanating from you poor bastards who are worried that Twitter is gonna get banned. The army isn't paranoid that Twitter might be used by terrorists. They're pointing out the fact that its real-time broadcast ability makes it a really useful information dissemination tool. Hence the examples about how quickly it was used to inform about the earthquake, and its effectiveness at broadcasting police movements.
All this report is saying is that Twitter may become some terrorists' communications medium of choice. No talk of banning it. Nothing said about all Twitter users being terrorists or anarchists. This was just an intelligence report pointing out that maybe Twitter is something they should expect the enemy to be using for conducting operations. That's all. Not surprising. Not unreasonable. Not paranoid.
Re:Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messa (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you ever tried to read Marx's "Paris Commune"?
I have not tried. I have read it.
Marx had a lot of problems with the next generation of Communists while he was alive--but don't think for a second that Marx was opposed to brutality, oppression, and murder. Far from it. Force, for Marx, was a tool to satisfy the proletarian revolution. No surprise that they turned out to be selfish and bad people. Marxism itself is selfish and bad.
You make it sound like he was an extraordinarily original person for not opposing force, and for thinking force to be a tool to implement his plans (which are not layed out in The Capital, which---as I have already said---is simply a political economics treatise).
I cannot but smile at the fact that you seem to believe being selfish and "bad people" is somehow characteristic of marxism! For one thing, neither personality trait is in the least correlated to a particular theory of the role of capital in the economic system. By those standards, the CEO of Lehman brothers should be elected Marxist Pope.
Furthermore, Marx's economics are about as silly to the economist as squaring the circle is to a mathematician.
I am a mathematician, and I do not find the attempts at squaring the circle that took place before it was proved it was impossible silly at all. Those that came afterwards, on the other hand, I find mostly silly.
I doubt a honest and knowledgeable economist finds Marx's economics silly. Of course, it is already quite a non trivial task to find one to check...
Re:Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messa (Score:3, Interesting)
If you use one of the oddball repeaters like the 1.2ghz or the 220 repeaters no hams would even know anything was going on until it was too late. Most of those repeaters dont even have hams listening 98% of the time and if you comms are very short you're golden.
The problem is that with the amount of repeater abuse these days, most radio amateurs *are* monitoring the repeaters they are responsible for constantly. I don't even have particularly clever kit, but I can DF someone abusing the repeater within about a minute. You'd only need to give two messages like the ones above before we'd have you...
Re:Bad US Army Intel. (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Despite your eloquent response, you are missing the point.
I don't have any problem with MI investigating technology, that's their job. But why is this "Amazing" tidbit of information being reported to the general public? Ever ask yourself why the civilian population should care, or even know what MI is reporting?
This is being publicized for one reason- to garner more public support for government 'wiretapping' of various services. This is simply more ammunition to use in the pursuit of Big Brother's Total Information Awareness campaign.
Re:Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messa (Score:2, Interesting)
Which leaves me wondering...what brand shoe do you wear on your left foot?