Could the popular micro-blogging website be a potential starting point for coordinating attacks on US soil? The US Army certainly thinks so. In an intelligence report prepared by the military, the services is among several technologies that the Army believes terrorists may be using.

The report also names mobile GPS and the mobile phone as other possible methods for communication among members of these groups. It also fingers technologies such as Google Earth and mobile phone number spoofing applications as other possible methods, although it isn’t covered (see PDF).

We should point out, as the Army does too, that there is not necessarily any evidence just yet that these techniques are being used. This is merely speculation of possible methods. However, some of it just edges on the border of the slightly ridiculous.

Take this quip for example:

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.

That’s about the most skewed description of Twitter as I have ever heard. The folks who did this report seem to fail to mention that this description applies to an extremely small portion of the userbase. It makes Twitter sound like some kind of haven for wackos. That’s unfair to the rest of us who just use Twitter like everybody else.

I’m sorry… but people using the service for purposes that are not sanguine are not going to last very long. Twitterers are a self policing bunch.

Yes, I understand that there is some type of risk involved here. But at the same time, I think the military is going a little overboard with some of its assumptions. I just can’t see Twitter becoming very useful to the bad guys when all they have is 140 characters to do it.

What Twitter could do in the meantime (if it has not already) is set up flags in its code to alert of suspicious tweeting. Tweets of gibberish, certain key words, etc, or even groups of people that are all only connected to one another and nobody else. There’s ways to weed these folks out.

I’m in contact with Twitter, I’m sure they’ll want to say something about this. But until then, I’ll keep twittering for the 99.9 percent of users who are normal everyday people.

 
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