News Source: http://www.searchmarketinggurus.com
Published: Oct 28, 2008 - 03:20 pm
Story Found By: storyspinner 1668 Days ago
Category: Social Media
According a a report by the Agence France-Presse news agency, the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion contains a chapter entitled “Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter,” which expresses concern over the increasing use of Twitter by political and religious groups.
18 Comments
Comments
Wow glad we got geniuses like these guys giving us this info. Did they leave anyone out? I don’t see lesbians or aliens in that list.“Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences,” according to the report.
I think the last line of the Fox article said:“Terrorists could theoretically use Twitter social networking in the U.S. as an operation tool,” the Army report said.Emphasis mine. That’s not the same as saying it is. Could theoretically. As could email, IM, cell phones, and any other mode of communication.Since the Fox page is pulling a whole bunch of stuff out of context and we’re not reading the whole report, I think this is just sensationalism at work and would ignore it. Not to mention that I ignore anything that is published on a page that has underlined word ads...blech.
I guess they are getting jealous that the "news" is getting spilled through these types of mediums, take for example the 6 bloggers at teh China Olympics, or the muslim-american in jail right now in Iran.... this stuff is hitting the "airwaves" faster than they can "control" it. before they can put their "sphinn" on it so to speak.You know there were alien ufos in Texas last night, it was on Twitter :)
@Jill great point... seriously though, if they want to do the things they do, they aren’t going to announce it on twitter.... i mean, that’s just ... um stupid! LOL
No, but I could see them using some sort of special secret code words or something on Twitter. (Which they could use on zillions of other online venues and other media, of course.)
Psst! teh is a secret word, run for cover.
Well at least the obvious http://twitter.com/terrorist and http://twitter.com/terrorists don’t have many followers. :P
What part of "protected updates" have you all overlooked?The terrorists probably wouldn’t have public discussions or announce anything except to their own protected list of followers until the big day.Here’s a simple scenario: Imagine someone named Suessman publicly tweets "Fried green eggs for breakfast in LA" and shortly thereafter the sleeper cell with the script monitoring Suessman on twitter gets the message and LA goes boom. However, that message could be posted on any blog or forum in comments or even on YouTube. It’s not a question of will twitter, blogs or forums be used, but when, if not already. All the government simply wants is to tap into all the tweets, just like they do your emails and phone conversations, so some computer program can automatically analyze all the tweets looking for potential threats.Don’t worry, bots already scan every forum and blog and send content analysis reports already.However, those nasty private emails on blogs, those could be used for bad purposes as well but you don’t hear anyone whining about those because they’re probably already being tapped and tracked in real-time as they are transmitted via HTTP over your ISP.Twitter presents a special problem in that it seamlessly blends the internet and phones and the discussions aren’t really threaded which makes intent sometimes complicated to figure out.Additionally, a small group could create lots of twitter accounts that could appear to interact randomly with nonsensical content but it’s ultimately a finely tuned and coordinated conversation.Get over it, you can’t stop it, it’s probably already happening.Stealth, that’s the name of the game.Maybe I watch way too much 24...
As Bill says, there are plenty of ways to use Twitter in this way, as you can blogs or forums. Times have just changed with the technology, before people would use mediums like classified newspaper ads.
So communications apps can be used for both legal and illegal activity? Someone tell Rick Romero...
Interesting conversation, as for the source, um...fox ’news’, hardly the citadel of truth and accuracy.I’m just watching another scare tactic bbc piece right now about data and tracking and identity theft, complete with sinister shite yourself music too :-)Bad people will use technology to try and achieve their ends, just as will non bad people. Do we limit the speed of cars to 5 mph because some people have used them to run people over? Do we illegalise sharp knives coz some people use them to jook people? As IB said above, govnts read our stuff daily, private tweets and streams still go out over a pipe, encrypted or not, they can be (and quite probably are) routinely decrypted and scanned as they fly around cyberspace. So a private tweet stream could in theory, be collated and observed IF the will existed and their was sufficient contributory intel. Yet the reality is that it’s probably very unlikey.I think we all need to wake up to the fact that if people want to conspire and find ways privately to do bad crap and stuff, then they will, regardless of what you do to try and prevent them.Sphunn coz its interesting, espeically in these days of kick arse social monitoring tools :)
Twokes have been known to cause mayhem and panic, especially in this industry at conferences when people are cut off from basic lines of communication and trust Twitter profiles :)
"Terrorists could theoretically use Twitter"Is there anything they theoretically couldn’t use?
I’ve heard that terrorists (as well as socialists, atheists and illegal immigrants) could potentially use cell phones to communicate with each other, so I threw my cell phone down the toilet. Better safe than sorry, right?
I thought that was what drug dealers used, cell phones?
Robb, polls show Fox news is the least biased on reporting the elections. Being fair and balanced is a tough business but you can’t call Maddow, Olberman and Matthews bastions of truth, now, could you?Anyways, for those of you who are thinking linearly, terrorists don’t need their communications to be SECRET, they just need their communications to be QUICK and COORDINATED.As someone else also said, they can coordinate a conversation that appears to be about art, or science, or whatever, and it’s really just a secret message to meet somewhere.I love the art they have on the walls at XYZ coffeehouse, I might actually buy something today around 3pm. lolIt’s not all straightforward b*mb talk.
I always knew Twitter was evil... :)
I guess with our technology now...anything can be used as a weapon..^^ well almost.