Slashdot Mirror
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!"
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, only outlaws will have computers!! All this new fangled technology that old, white men don't understand needs to be banned!
I'm sure the bad guys haven't figured out how to send an SMS to several numbers on disposable phones. ~
Invenio via vel creo
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.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
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
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The US Army views things through a certain lens where the major thing they consider about anything is "How will terrorists use it?" The truth is, there are nefarious ways to use almost everything, even a pencil. You can't prevent bad things from happening just by thinking up how they may happen. If someone wants to badly enough, they can achieve grand things. That goes for good and bad. It takes the apathy of many people, or even someone who may charm angsty groupies, or whatever. Why spend time being afraid and worrying about what may happen? We can't possibly take preventative measures against absolutely every manner of causing harm or allowing ingress. This isn't news, it's just the army doing their... "job" I guess...
Twinstiq, game news
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...
I piss off bigots.
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] )
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Terrorists can use TXT messages too... and guess what... TXT messages are more secure than Twitter.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
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.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
The Internets. Bombs. Fertilizer. Gasoline. Guns. Fear.
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.
: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.
/.'ers this is a "no shit" idea, but to people whose lives are primarily spent off the internet it would be valuable.
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
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
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"
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.
I see what you're saying, but I think I can understand the Army's motivation in talking of such things and it's their whole fixation on finding the "unknowns", they don't want a "game changer" of a technology or strategy unleashed upon them totally unawares. I believe Rumsfeld was lampooned for his attempt to explain it in a press conference. Regardless it is talked about in higher circles than late night tv watchers and makes sense, to immediately assume this as a threat to democracy is a little ridiculous.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
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!!
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
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.
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.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
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.
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."
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
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.
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*
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
C) The guys in the Army were told to do a study on the possible uses of Twitter and reported what is could genuinely be used for. Unless you're saying that the intel report is somehow wrong?
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.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.