U.S. Army: Twitter Could Be Terrorist Threat

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Apparently, the U.S. Army believes that Twitter could represent a threat to national security.

A new Army intelligence report, currently being circulated in some spy circles, states that the popular social messaging service could be used as a tool for coordinating terrorist attacks.

The report is divided into two parts. The first part is based on rumblings from a few Al-Qaeda-affiliated online forums. One Islamic site discusses the advantages of "using a mobile phone camera to monitor the enemy and its mechanisms."

A second forum highlights the advantages of the Nokia 6210 Navigator phone, specifically, how its GPS function might be used for "marksmanship, border crossings, and in concealment of supplies."

This could easily allow terrorists to map out multiple routes, identifying targets as they move along.

A third forum discusses the use of voice-changing technology to hide one's real identity when making phone calls.

Still a fourth site shows cell phone wallpapers that wanna-be terrorists can use to express their level of radicalism.

The second half of the presentation goes into a discussion of how some terrorists might use some of these mobile apps with Twitter to enhance their effect. After all, "Twitter was recently used as a counter-surveillance, 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."

Terrorists haven't done anything like this yet, the Army report states, although it does note that there are "multiple pro and anti Hezbollah Tweets." It also lays out three scenarios where such tactics could be employed.

It certainly puts an interesting twist on social networking, and our entire online world in general.

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