Terrorist Twitters

The Federation of American Scientists has posted a draft report produced by an U.S. Army intelligence unit that looks at several uses of technology by al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations for communications include the use of the quick messaging system, twitter.com.


The short section titled "Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter: A Red Teaming Perspective" provides background on twitter and discusses its use by activists protesting at the U.S. Republican Convention:

"...extremist and terrorist use of Twitter could evolve over time to reflect tactics that are already evolving in use by hacktivists and activists for surveillance. This could theoretically be combined with targeting. Twitter was recently used as a counter-surveillance, command and control, and movement tool by activists at the Republican National Convention (RNC). The activists would Tweet each other and their Twitter pages to add information on what was happening with Law Enforcement near realtime."

The article concludes with three simple scenarios of terrorist use of Twitter.

The full report can be found at:

Sample Overview: alQaida-Like Mobile Discussions & Potential Creative Uses