This morning, I opened my Goodl Reader to read an excelent post in the Blog Herald regarding the US Army memo stating that Twitter can be used as a terrorist tool. I could not agree more with David Krug’s final statement on the post:
Remember anything could be a terrorist tool. Even mainstream media. Fear is all about not embracing reality. More people die from cancer yearly than ´terrorists attacks´ in a decade. Let´s not forget that.
On one hand, I will agree with the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion’s assessment that
“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,” (from news.cnet.com)
And the Army needs to be aware of the potential threat that this may pose. This is their role as a Military Intelligence Battalion to expose these kind of threats, to monitor, and to forward this information to the good guys–whose job it would then be to capture or kill the enemy cabatant. This is what they.
The important thing that we often miss, however, is that Twitter can also be an effective tool for the good guys as well.
In my opinion, we use a huge amount of resources to discover the threat–but we rarely use the same tools for our advantage.Â
If your interested, you can find the full report on the Federation of American Scientists website.
Stephanie says
I know I have been out-of-touch, and have had to play catch-up with your entries, but could you limit the thought proviking entries to one a week? Just kidding. I have enjoyed catching up on your blog, and I truly appreciate you giving me things to think about. I don’t use Twitter, but find it interesting that others think it is a negative thing. My outlook is that simply breathing will eventually kill you. I guess that could be expanded to technology too. Eventually every kind of technology could be used for evil. Too bad that is how some use it.
Thank you for giving me a reason to stop for a few minutes and think. Sometimes I get so busy with life that I forget to think about others outside of my house.