When Criminals and Terrorists Communicate In Real Time

theodp writes "CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen notes that the assault on the upscale Westgate Mall in Nairobi by armed gunmen 'was the first major terrorist attack in history in which the group that mounted the operation used Twitter to announce to the world it was responsible. The group then quickly tweeted what its rationale was for the attack and also gave operational details of the assault — all in real time.' During the massacre, a Twitter account purportedly used by the Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab tweeted, 'Like it or loathe it! our mujahideen confirmed all executions were point blank range!' The group also wrote, '#Westgate: a 14-hour standoff relayed in 1400 rounds of bullets and 140 characters of vengeance and still ongoing. Good morning Kenya!' So, what's in store for our brave new world of Social Media? 'The next logical step,' fears Bergen, 'will be for terrorists to cover their deadly operations using their own real-time live video feeds linked to sites such as Twitter, Facebook or YouTube. If that happens, terrorist attacks will become a form of theater in which terrorists not only get to write the play but also act as the primary producers of the coverage of the event.'"

Comments

But does it change anything?

[Xest]

I think the Westgate attack has simply strengthened Kenya's resolve to sort out Somalia, and has turned even more people against the militants.

If they start doing live feeds and start "controlling" reporting of the events they'll just make even more people hate them and make people even more determined to defeat them.

Terrorism is about as effective as torture.

Re:But does it change anything?

[gl4ss]

yeah so how does this differ from red terror of '60s?
not one bit.

publicity hunting terrorists hunt for publicity, newsflashs at 19.00.

Re:But does it change anything?

[Antipater]

I think you're partially right and partially wrong. Terrorism can be effective, but only when it creates fear in a populace (that's a tautology, actually). What creates fear is not hurting and killing people, it's hurting and killing people with impunity. If someone punches you in the face, and then you fight back and beat them to a bloody pulp, you're not going to be afraid of them. If someone punches you in the face and easily defends against your attempts to retaliate, then the fear starts.

The Westgate attackers were, afaik, all captured or killed. Had they struck, killed a bunch of people, and then faded away into the shadows, then I think there would be a lot more fear shown by the Kenyan people. Or if Kenyan forces are defeated in Somalia, and Somalian terrorists continue to attack Kenya, then I think there will be more fear. But the current situation, where the Kenyans have been thus far quite successful in driving al Shabaab from its bases and then in bottling up their retaliatory strike, brings to mind more an animal in its death throes than something to be feared.

Re:But does it change anything?

[ColdWetDog]

Actually it does differ. The 'Red Terror' (Socialist / Communist / ????) from the 1960's had a message they were trying to impart to the proletariat. Arise and shake off your chains. The Mujahedin / Muslim Radicals want to convert other non aligned Muslims to the cause (and then wipe out everyone else). There are different targets to the message and qualitatively and quantitatively different styles to the broadcast of the message.

I think most Westerners don't see that because blatant hate speech / incitement to violence is essentially heavily censored and things aren't so bad in (most) of the West as to have a huge pool of angry (usually) young men with nothing to lose.

TL;DR - YOU are not the target of these ads.

Re:But does it change anything?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Depends on the country, I suppose. It appears that some of the vids coming out of Syria are doing a good job of convincing young muslims not to go and fight/die in a crappy jihad. And they're doing an even better job convincing the parents to convince their kids not to go.

In this case, confronting would-be supporters with the raw reality instead of a romantic picture of people fighting for their beliefs or freedom, may well work against the terrorists, losing them those supporters. With some luck the terrorists will be marginalized like ETA or the RAF (both the German and Colombian one).

Re:But does it change anything?

[Xest]

But does that ever happen? Here in the UK when the 21/7 bombers got away they were on the lose a while before getting caught but I don't think there was any real hysteria, in fact, I caught a plane from Heathrow when they were all still on the run and whilst there were a few more police walking around I don't think anyone was particularly more scared.

I think even if they escape, or even the al-Shabab managed to defeat Kenyan forces and push into Somalia it wouldn't do anything to further their cause, it'd just leave Kenya with more allies working to protect them and defeat al-Shabab.

This is basically what happened in Mali, where the Islamist did threaten the capital, and all that did was piss off a sleeping dragon - France, to come and blow the living shit out of them.

About the only example I can think of of terrorism possibly working was the Madrid train bombings resulting in a different government getting into Spain and pulling out of Iraq, but there's still a question as to whether the Spanish people would've wanted that anyway.

There's a certain irony to it all though, terrorism tends to happen when people feel disempowered to affect real political change in the way they feel is at least an acceptable compromise, but all it does is give the victims of terrorism that exact same feeling turning them against the terrorists with even more zeal. If someone blows up your family, you don't say "Okay I give in, I'll give you everything you want", you instead pursue policies or actual physical revenge that makes the terrorists even more powerless than they were before they turned to terrorism, it ultimately creates a cycle where the terrorists are always the disadvantaged and become ever more so as the cycle progresses to the point they're either crushed or forced to pursue their agenda peaceful through politics.

The IRA, the Tamil Tigers, and now FARC and the PKK. It's always the same. It'll happen to the likes of al Shabab eventually one way or the other too.

Re:But does it change anything?

[meta-monkey]

I'm Catholic. In modern times, listen to the popes. Listen to Francis speak about Syria. Listen to him implore the world to end all violence and wars.

We actually are a religion of peace and non-violence.

Re:But does it change anything?

[TheCarp]

Actually its more likely to mobilize people against islam, and alienate even some of their own foillowers. For the most part, people only like war in theory. People really love hypothetical wars. They like idealized violence. Violence against Emanual Goldstiens is ok, as long as emanual goldstien is not a real man whose eyes they have to look into and whose children they have to hear scream.

I mean, the terrorists probably don't think this way, but most other people do. Exposure of their atrocities will, in the end, not help them. It will drive away all but their most radical supporters.

Re:But does it change anything?

[julian67]

"Terrorism is about as effective as torture."

Actually terror often works. An incident like this is explosive and dynamic and sudden but actually it is usually meticulously planned and done in the context of a campaign of attritional and unending activity, political and social as well as paramilitary or military.

Lenin and his Bolsheviks unleashed terror on their own population and by doing so destroyed all serious opposition and the party gained absolute power for 70 years without any further serious internal challenge. Mao's party in China exterminated many millions in subduing the population and has never lost power. In modern times it showed itself perfectly willing to kill thousands of civilians for simply protesting. Western forces in counter insurgency campaigns in Malaysia, Kenya ,S.E. Asia, Afghanistan and elsewhere destroyed villages and tortured and murdered civilians, en masse on occasion, in campaigns which we prefer to term pacification but which are no different to what armies have always done - terrorizing a hostile or indifferent population while denying the enemy resources and support.

Many modern newly established or re-established post colonial states have been founded or governed by people who were at one time, by any definition, terrorists. Just look at the history of Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Israel for examples. There are lots more and this is easy to see and understand if you can set aside distaste, personal and political preferences and loyalties and examine the actors, the acts and the results. A man who was cutting throats or bombing hotels or arranging murders and kidnappings can become a prime minister or president and be perfectly respectable, even honoured.

Terror and terrorism are used by both established powers and states, and by groups seeking power or radical change or disruption. Everyone knows it can work and nobody does it expecting to be loved by their opponents or victims. If your propaganda is effective then you can terrorize and murder people while observing events from the vantage point of the politcal moral high ground.

How is it not effective?

And?

[Minwee]

Aside from the question of who gets to act as producer, how is this different from using CNN to do the same thing?

Re:And?

[SirGarlon]

At first I was thinking it's no different -- television and radio have been abetting terrorists forever by sensaltionalizing on their attacks and keeping the stories in front of the public for weeks -- but then I realized there is a difference: editorial control. Independent media can filter and spin the message in the way that serves the media's interests (keeping people glued to their televisions). The terrorists want that control for themselves, to serve their own agenda.

The worst kind of criminals

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

communicate in real-time faster than anybody else: it's called high-frequency trading.

Now we see the problem

[dkleinsc]

If that happens, terrorist attacks will become a form of theater in which terrorists not only get to write the play but also act as the primary producers of the coverage of the event.

CNN and other news outlets are simply demanding to be in charge of the coverage themselves - the terrorists showing and explaining their own actions is a challenge to their oligopoly! Also, it makes it impossible for the US State Dept to go to the major media outlets and politely ask them to adjust the coverage to something more to the current administration's (whoever the current administration happens to be, this isn't Obama-specific) liking.

Major media outlets don't really hate massive disasters and horrific violence, because both of those drive up ratings. In fact, if there's nothing major going on, they'll do their best to take a relatively minor affair and describe it as a massive disaster, for precisely that purpose.

False moral equivalency

[PseudoCoder]

(@$$holes gaming the system to make a few more bucks) != (@$$holes trying to subjugate the entire western world under the banner of Islam)

Jihadists' menu of alternatives for non-believers of Islam:

1) Convert to Islam

2) Pay jizyah ("infidel tax")

3) Separate your head from the rest of your body and put it on camera to remind others why you should opt for 1) or 2).

Re:False moral equivalency

[g0bshiTe]

Man if my wife saw a credit charge to someone under the label "jizyah", do you know what hell I'd have trying to prove that's not a pr0n charge?

Re:First time in history?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

And the Mumbai guys were coordinating over BBM... Probably the last time RIM was on the winning side of anything.

Re:choosing sides

[pixelpusher220]

Basically they're saying instead of watching OJ's bronco from the air, we'll get live feed from INSIDE it. Reality TV for criminals. I see slashdotting's on the horizon.

Shutting off feed in 3, 2, 1

[mbone]

This will work the first time, maybe. After that, the feeds will be shut off quickly.

I could see real-time terrorists being fed a honeytrap version of social media, tailored for them, with certain... inaccuracies for their enjoyment. THAT would be a sensible employment of the NSA's computer power.

Good

[Hatta]

I'm not seeing a downside to this. It's not like they are getting good PR out of it. Anything that gets information out of the control of the main stream media, and lets people make up their own minds is a good thing. It's OK for us to listen to their message, and condemn them when we decide that it is evil on our own. We don't need CNN to do that for us.

Terrorism == theater

[mbone]

True terrorism (as opposed to guerilla actions conveniently labeled as terrorism) has always been theater. How else are masses of people going to get terrorized?

Good.

[TheCarp]

Seriously. Good. I hope they do more of this. If they keep going it will backfire on them faster than a semtex shockwave through the bodies of apostates in the sears tower (hey there NSA: stop reading, start leaking).

I know these guys, some of them, are scholarly and study terrorism. They read books by IRA members, and all that good stuff. They didn't learn some big lessons.

The single biggest lesson the US military learned in Viet Nam was this: Civilians hate real war. Nothing has so turned people against war and against supporting it like seeing the real true brutality of it all over their TV screens and front page.

The US military learned that, which is why, by the time the gulf war happened, reporters were being shuttled around to get to the scene right after the bodies were moved, and real brutality over.

Also.... one disagreement I have with the article is that this is such a huge change, or will change terrorism. It has ALWAYS been a media stunt. Terror attacks are not serious existential threats, they are media grabs. This is just taking it to its next logical step.

s/Terrorist attacks/Military intervention/g

[Gothmolly]

"If that happens, terrorist attacks will become a form of theater in which terrorists not only get to write the play but also act as the primary producers of the coverage of the event."

As opposed to:

"If that happens, military intervention will become a form of theater in which governments not only get to write the play but also act as the primary producers of the coverage of the event."

The CNN coverage of the Iraq invasions could be seen as the same thing as in Nairobi - it just depends on what side you stand on.

Live terrorism channel. Great.

[Dr. Spork]

I wonder who will be the first to buy ads on the live terrorism channel. In the 80's, a friend of mine wrote a short story about a future in which anyone could have their own television channel, with real-time viewer tracking. Money would pour in real time into their bank accounts in proportion to how many viewers their channel had. Then somebody had the idea to do a live murder spree and police chase on their channel, which made them very rich, very quickly. So, yeah, we're getting close.