Twitter as a terrorist tool

Wired shares the news

Spy Fears: Twitter Terrorists, Cell Phone Jihadists

Could Twitter become terrorists' newest killer app? A draft Army intelligence report, making its way through spy circles, thinks the miniature messaging software could be used as an effective tool for coordinating militant attacks.

For years, American analysts have been concerned that militants would take advantage of commercial hardware and software to help plan and carry out their strikes. Everything from online games to remote-controlled toys to social network sites to garage door openers has been fingered as possible tools for mayhem.

This recent presentation -- put together on the Army's 304th Military Intelligence Battalion and found on the Federation of the American Scientists website -- focuses on some of the newer applications for mobile phones: digital maps, GPS locators, photo swappers, and Twitter mash-ups of it all.

I am going to share a secret with you: Any means of communication can be an effective tool for coordinating militant attacks. It's true that online tools like twitter (or even emails) makes it faster than old time tools like letters (or word-of-mouth), but so what?

Stopping terrorism is not done by cutting off communication between terrorist cells. It's done by removing the cause of recruitment for those terrorists, and by finding the terrorists before they strike.

I understand why the US military got to focus on these things, but I would find it much better if they tried to find the root cause of terrorism, and tried to handle that instead.

BTW, my own twitter account can be found here