US Army Sees Twitter As Possible Terrorist "Operation Tool"

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!"

Bad US Army Intel.

Go sit in the corner. If it's taken them THIS long to realize that the internet is nothing but a gigantic communications tool... geez....

Re:Bad US Army Intel.

A hypothesis would be that they are trying to implement hooks to restrict 'free speech', the latter being a potential 'operation tool' for 'terrorists'.

CC.

Re:Bad US Army Intel.

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] )

Re:Bad US Army Intel.

Terrorist.

Extremist Ideologies don't fit in twitter messages

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:Bad US Army Intel.

What are you doing?

Husayn is trying to figure out these stupid remote triggering devices. Anything to avoid spending Ramadan with his wife's sisters!

Ali is watching Coalition troop movements. Bo-ring!

Kamel wishes the carpet bombing would stop soon. The cave is cold. And the other martyrs smell bad.

Akbar is thinking about the 72 virgins awaiting him in Paradise. They better not be fat like his sister Fatima, or he is going to feel very mislead by his imam.

Commander Tariq says his Mujahedin should stop using the Zionist tool Twitter and get back to fighting the infidels, or he will beat them like the cowardly she-goats they are.

Re:Bad US Army Intel.

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.

Re:Bad US Army Intel.

They've been mesmerized by the porn since 1993. "Wait, you mean you can communicate over the internet too? Wow, cool!"

Re:Bad US Army Intel.

I don't think anyone is stupid enough to have missed that the internet is a gigantic communication tool (for more than just porn). Obviously there are people in the military bureaucracy who have never heard of Twitter, and this report is going to be their introduction. What is its purpose? To inform decision makers that it is possible to create or use tools like Twitter to broadcast information point-to-multipoint, and how this capability can be abused by terrorist groups. I am sure that there are people in the Pentagon, due to their age or lack of experience with modern web apps, who have never considered this possibility and it's probably good they are made aware.

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? :P ), but those people are already beyond help. Does this mean that no one in the Pentagon had ever heard of Twitter? No. Does it mean that fighting Twitter is about to become a priority for the Army? Emphatically, no. What it means is that the Army intelligence service was trying to inform the chain of command about modern applications on the internet and their potential to be used as a weapon. And guess what? That's their job. So I, for one, am glad they are doing it. With full knowledge, I might add, of the past abuses of civil rights that the US intelligence community has committed.

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 /.'ers this is a "no shit" idea, but to people whose lives are primarily spent off the internet it would be valuable.

Re:Bad US Army Intel.

Wait until they find out that there's an ultra-portable, wireless tool that allows terrorists to interact by voice and instantly exchange notes, photos, and videos. They can even customize the devices with anti-US skins and Bin Laden ring tones.

Re:Bad US Army Intel.

Or what if they find out there are communication tools used by terrorists [wikipedia.org] that are grown inside the terrorists bodies, which can only be removed by surgical procedures?

Re:Moderator terrorists

Never have I been so sincere in saying this, but: I wish I had mod points. :D

Re:Bad US Army Intel.

Actually, the last one being the only effective one.

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.

Paper and pencil

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.

Re:Paper and pencil

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.

Terror...?

Maybe if you define terror as "really, really irritating."

Why Doesn't The Military Simply..

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

Lord help us all!

- Buying explosives. Thanks tom!
- Shaping explosvies.
- Milling bomb casing.
- Filling bomb casing.
- Rigging fuse. Hehe I made the + terminal blue instead of RED! That'll get'em!
- Putting bomb in suitcase. This new Ralph Lauren suitcase design is DYNOMITE! :D
- Getting in car. We sould really put some Al-Qaeda funds into something better than an 92 GeoMetro. This thing sucks.
- Leaving on Airplane. Phone off! ByeBye for now! Don't want to crash plane.
- Landed! The big apple awaits!
- Picked up food at McDonalds on third street. Mmmmmm McFlurry goodness.
- Bomb planted on 5th and James. They should make larger trashcans. Those things are TINY!1!
- Bored. Waiting at Starbucks. Prices are insane!

Ah, the magic funding-word.

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:Ah, the magic funding-word.

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.

Never mind the Ruttles

If this story is alleging that twitter is useful for something, then I call bullshit on the whole thing.

Bankrupting America for "perfect" safety

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.

This is it!

We finally have an excuse to ban Twitter and send him and his sockpuppets to Gitmo!

Re:You've got to be kidding me

And the US Mail can be used to spread Anthrax! That's biological terrorism or copyright violation either way!>

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

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.