U.S. Army Says Terrorists Could Use Twitter

It seems the U.S. military isn’t as big on Twitter as the rest of the blogosphere.

Most people who Twitter do so several times a day. There’s no point Tweeting unless you’re going to make use of the fact that you can update from your mobile phone and therefore, from pretty much anywhere with mobile signal.

It seems the U.S. Army is a little worried that terrorists will realize just how useful Twitter is for keeping your cronies up to date with your movements (because everyone needs to know that you spent seven hours watching paint dry) and an intelligence report now details the different ways in which terrorists could use the microblogging service as an operational tool.

According to ComputerWorld, the report points out that Twitter is already used members to post or support extremist ideologies and perspectives. "For example, there are multiple pro and anti Hezbollah Tweets,” the report said. “In addition, extremist and terrorist use of Twitter could evolve over time to reflect tactics that are already evolving in use by ’hacktivists’ and activist for surveillance. This could theoretically be combined with targeting."

Aside from listing the ways in which terrorists could use Twitter to coordinate near real time attacks, the report from the U.S. Army’s 304th Military Intelligence Battalion also cited several examples of real Tweets sent from by unknown users, likely U.S. military personnel.

"Drove off base today down Route Irish [Baghdad airport road] in an ’NTV and didn’t get blown up fun fun"

"Today is my day off. 115 already in Camp Bucca Iraq."

Read the full story on ComputerWorld.