Terrorist Tweets!

A blog post in Gizmodo states that an Army Intelligence draft as commented on by Wired says that miniblog social media like Twitter can and possibly is being used by terrorist cells. This is laughable on the surface, because anything can be used for anything. Didn’t you know that Twitter can also be used for drug traffickers, gang warfare, vice, bank robberies, piracy on the high seas, children talking back to their elders, mischief, sloth, breakage, and settling of contents before purchase? Just about anything can be used for anything bad.

However, the fact that Twitter is used quite often with high-end cellphones, with their texting, GPS, and real-time camera capabilities, does lend credence to military’s fears.

The report states that tactical maneuvers could be planned out much like many of the protesters at the Republican National Convention used Twitter to organize, plan, and assemble (interesting that the Army would link peace protesters with terrorism, but that’s another matter for another day.).

Scenario 1: Terrorist operative “A” uses Twitter with… a cell phone camera/video function to send back messages, and to receive messages, from the rest of his [group]… Other members of his [group] receive near real time updates (similar to the movement updates that were sent by activists at the RNC) on how, where, and the number of troops that are moving in order to conduct an ambush.

Scenario 3: Cyber Terrorist operative “A” finds U.S. [soldier] Smith’s Twitter account. Operative “A” joins Smith’s Tweets and begins to elicit information from Smith. This information is then used for… identity theft, hacking, and/or physical [attacks]. This scenario… has already been discussed for other social networking sites, such as My Space and/or Face Book.

What do you think?

By the way, on Twitter I’m Flyswatter. Nice to meet ya.