Twitter: Tool For Terrorists

[K. Darien Freeheart]

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,444089,00.html

A recently released report by 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, the AFP reported.

"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.

"Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives," the Army report said.

The blogging service and social networking site has previously sent out messages known as "Tweets" faster than news organizations during such major news events as the July Los Angeles earthquake and the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis.

"Terrorists could theoretically use Twitter social networking in the U.S. as an operation tool," the Army report said.

[Josh]

Faux Noise said it, so it MUST be true 

[K. Darien Freeheart]

Wired, then?

http://blog.wired.com/defense/t_is_for_terror/index.html

Note this quote...

"Twitter was recently used as a countersurveillance, command and control, and movement tool by activists at the Republican National Convention," the report notes."The activists would Tweet each other and their Twitter pages to add information on what was happening with Law Enforcement near real time."

Hrm... Noting the location of law enforcement is raising their hackles? http://www.trapster.com/ might be under fire next? then maybe http://mail.ioerror.us/mailman/listinfo/porcupine-411 ?

[Josh]

Kevin, that was a stab at the legitimacy of Fox News, not the story as a whole

[K. Darien Freeheart]

No, I get it.

If the source is disreputable, a new source is useful. That's all.

[error]

I'd love to build something like Twitter but I can't justify the expense of the interconnects on such a small scale.

[ColdSoul]

Is anyone using this to communicate on a activist level?

I think it would be great if someone decides at the spur of the moment to say do a protest or something they could either call the Porc 411 or they could use there twitter to let everyone know via there cellphone or pda that they were going to be protesting in a hour or something.

[AntonLee]

I'd wish I knew how to make a private myspace just for NH activism.  You could make backgrounds and glittery "thanks for the add!" too

[rowland]

Any tool as useful as this can be abused and there's nothing we can about it. If we outlaw Twitter only outlaws will use Twitter.