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!"
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....
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.
Maybe if you define terror as "really, really irritating."
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
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
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?
Just wait for the plan to send soldiers in to the net.
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.
- Buying explosives. Thanks tom! :D
- 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!
- 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!
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.
Homeland securit bans use of all telephones. Cites device could be used for communication.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
'Nuff said.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
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."
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 are for this article itself.
I know he supposedly has a lot of sockpuppets, but calling Twitter a possible terrorist operation tool is a bit much, isn't it?
If this story is alleging that twitter is useful for something, then I call bullshit on the whole thing.
/. is a terrorist haven! All you have to do is browse at -1 on all Apple/Google/Nintendo stories!
[Slashdot Comments We Liked]
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.
Surely this list is an enumeration of ALL communication possibilities? Twitter has communication possibility, therefore deserves to be on the list amongst:
* Smoke signals
* Pigeon Carriers
* Coded Letters
* Invisible Ink Letters
* Text Messages
* Mobile Phone Calls
* Emails
* Slashdot posts
* Twitter
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
We finally have an excuse to ban Twitter and send him and his sockpuppets to Gitmo!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
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.
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?
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.
..US intel agencies have prepared another draft document that identifies other potential terrorist tools
Shovels-they can be used to plant bombs
Wheelbarrows-transport the bombs
sneakers-terrorists could be using sneakers on their feet to make it easy to walk around on the ground
clothing-terrorists could be wearing clothing so they could "blend in" with the civilian population and sneak around
talking to people-terrorists could infiltrate and meet each other and "talk"-communicate-with other terrorists
cars-terrorists, having blended into the civilian population, might use "cars" as transportation so they can go meet other terrorists and "talk"
grocery stores-terrorists might make use of grocery stores as part of a long supply train in order to get "food" for themselves and other terrorists in their secret underground cells
public drinking fountains-water is a necessity for terrorist operations, so they might make use of public drinking fountains and garner unauthorized water supplies
money-terrorists could make use of cash money in order to purchase supplies that they could use for terrorist operations, such as sneakers, clothing, shovels, wheelbarrows, food, etc
pencils and paper-terrorists might make use of easily available pencils and paper on the rogue "underground" black market, and use these devices as a communications medium. The report also suggests closing the "department store loophole" in order to combat this threat
videogames-terrorists might make use of videogames as a cheap way to get assymetrical warfare training, and to indoctrinate and brainwash their cadre into risking armed violent attacks by portraying it as "normal" and something that the civilian population would support. Some notice has been made by "deep cover" agents that the game "America's Army" apparently is a favorite with terrorists
sporting events=sporting events have been identified as a favorite terrorist meeting area, where they can get together and "talk"-or communicate- and engage in psychological "pumping up" efforts in order to bolster courage before going out on terrorism operations. Long range surveillance has noted that they "Chant" various phrases like "Kill 'em!" and "De-fense! De-fense!" and will also engage in ritualistic "hooting" which appears to be a secret call sign that identifies terrorists to their appropriate cell members. Different cells have different names, and the chants change to identify them.
It has been noted that some terrorists are male, and some are female, and they can come in all ages, so the modern warfighter has to take note when they see individuals or groups that are made up of males or females or combinations of such.
Seems to me (these days) that the US Army is a potential terrorist tool....
We all know the guy's been annoying everyone on Slashdot, but a "terrorist operation tool"? That's waay overreacting. He just hates Microsoft, that all.
boobs are a myth!
I understand the -1 mod on the parent, but redundant? Off topic or troll I would understand but this is as if geeks already know that "tits are a myth" and as such the information is nothing new.
I'm sad to be a member of this community =)
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
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".
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
US troops attack Syrian [border] village. Co-incidence? October ain't over yet... a surprise flare up there, plus a bit of domestic false-flag, and lo! "Chips" is back in with a chance... remember when the UK Govt had tanks and machine-gun toting troops ringing Heathrow airport - just before the last General Election? Ministers went on telly looking serious, denying there was any specific threat but hinting darkly that "if you knew what we knew...". oh look, that was just before the crucial vote on participating in the invasion of Iraq. Anything happening over in the US at the moment, vote-wise? I don't keep up with y'domestic politics, you know how it is...
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
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.
Have you even tried to read Marx's Capital? The simple fact that you put it in the same sentence as the Unabomber manifesto shows clearly that you have not...
That you are judging the guy's analysis of the role of capital in the economy based on the actions of people who used his name, quite a few decades after he was dead, and in ways that would have make him puke, is pretty minor in comparison to your being writing about a work you have no knowledge of.
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?
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?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
i guess the US Army only have to worry about the terrorists whose plans can be described in 140 characters or less!
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! .
The history books will judge whether I'm right or wrong, not you, not I, nor anyone else. Modding me down is just misuse of the moderating mechanism for the purpose of disagreeing with me and I reject it just as I reject the neoconservative movement.
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.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
Yeah and any other form of communication.
Chill out.
GC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Have you ever tried to read the Unabomber manifesto?
Actually yes. That's why I can say with a lot of confidence that it does not make any sense to associate it with the Capital.
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.
Das Kapital is an analysis on political economy. While Marx surely did write about his approach to political change elsewhere, it is not in Das Kapital that he did that. That's pretty apparent from the first few pages...
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.
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.
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.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
In related news pencil and paper have been found having potential for terrorist use
Slightly OT, I know, but just wait until these geniuses get a load of 4chan lulz.
Seriously, what that fuck kind of worthless information is this? Text messaging is a pretty effective as a medium for terrorists for much the same reason. Or ham radio. Or cell phones. All of these can provide quick, (mostly) anonymous communication in realtime. BFD. Saying Twitter could be used as a terrorist tool is like saying the sky is blue, the grass is green, and the sun will blind you if you stare at it too long. Thanks for the news flash, fellas. Somewhere right now, a little old grandma is scared to death of Twitter for no good reason. Hmmm....
And by the way, I don't know if anyone else feels the same way, but I have no idea what the definition of terrorist is anymore. The term is bandied around to blanket such an array of topics, that I feel it has lost its meaning akin to calling every person you know as "human" as opposed to calling them by their names.
The obviousness of the article's main point aside, I want these jokers to clearly define what they mean by 'terrorist'. There is a very big difference between 'Anti-American' and 'Anti-American-Government', for example.
Come to think of it, it kinda makes me wonder who we are fighting in the "War On Terror". Hmmmm...
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
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...
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...
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So Dick Cheney's a Marxist?
Who knew?
Seriously, isn't it interesting then that neoconservativism's founders were all former Marxists?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Which leaves me wondering...what brand shoe do you wear on your left foot?