Ridiculing the Ridiculous: Terrorist Tweets
A group of soldiers with the US Army’s 304th Military Intelligence Battalion [link to https://icon.army.mil/anon/304/304_anon_index.cfm no longer works] have managed to top previous military research on terrorist use of World of Warcraft.
Realizing that mentioning the word “terrorist” can allow researchers to acquire funding to play the popular MMOG, they turned attention to the popular, if architecturally unscalable micro-blogging system, Twitter.
Surpassing the threat-analysis skill of super-spy Chad Feldheimer from the recent documentary “Burn After Reading,” they mention not only the threat of “socialists,” “communists,” and “anarchists,” in using Twitter to “communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences,” but the wider and more up-to-date threats from “religious communities,” “atheists,” “political enthusiasts,” “human rights groups,” “vegetarians,” and last but not least, “hacktivists.” They notably left out delinquent teenagers, so one presumes they don’t use systems like Twitter.
The Military Intelligence group also discovered that people can use GPS in phones like the Nokia 6210 [link to http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2008/02/11/the-nokia-6210-navigator/ no longer works] and Nokia Maps to know where they are. This could let terrorists who want to illegally cross a border know where that border is, or to know that a certain large triangular stone thing is the Pyramid of Cheops (category: Attraction).
The report’s cutting edge thinking also discusses how terrorists could use voice-changing software such as AV Voice Changer Diamond to make prank phone calls and effectively hide under an abaya.
The full report, marked “For Official Use Only,” can be found here. It also redacts with a dark gray splash of ink the email address of sarah.e.womer@ugov.gov, from whom you can get a copy of the report if you do not have access to INTELINK, Cryptome, or the Federation of American Scientists.
I think the report speaks for itself. I just can’t make this stuff up, apart from the bit about hiding under an abaya.
I am shocked to discover that both Barack Obama and John McCain are joining the Terrorist Chatter on this new-fangled Inter_Web thingummy. What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people using Twitter and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think the American people would love to see an expose like that.
Nicko,
I’m not sure. Do the girls of twitter go wild? Does excessive tweeting lead to excessive drinking? Because if not, we might get an exposé of fat guys in pajamas. Who wants to watch that?