Twittering terrorists

From the same people who brought you The War on Terror^TM, comes the latest in terrorist tools: Twitter! Wired reports that an American intelligence outfit has been attempting to guess which tools might be used by terrorist to unleash death and destruction on an unsuspecting populace. GSM phones, chat software and digital maps are on top of the terrorist gadget-wish-list (apparently, the cell phone of choice for the wannabe jihadist is the Nokia 6210 Navigator).

The intelligence report is filled with some quality information. Did you know that Al Qaida has its own social-network site? I would very much like to have access to that one in order to read terrorist profiles:

“Status: On my way to blow up embassy
Listening to: Appetite for Destruction”

The report also highlights the combination of Skype and voice-altering software to mask terrorist conversations from surveillance by security forces. It even has some of the cell-phone backgrounds of choice for the discerning religious fanatic intent on death to the west (hint: no Paris Hilton wearing a skimpy bikini in any of those pictures). But perhaps the best part of the report is its depiction of Twitter as a potential terrorist tool. There’s no way I can truly make justice to the real thing, so here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth:

What makes Twitter unique is that the member can send Tweets (messages near realtime) to Twitter cell phone groups and to their online Twitter social networking page. They can also Mashup their Tweets with a variety of other tools including geo coordinates and Google Maps or other electronic files/artifacts. Members can direct and re-direct audience members to other websites and locations from “Tweets” and can engage in rapid-fire group social interaction. […] 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.”

Damn those vegetarians, always trying to sell their aggressive and radical no-meat agenda to the naive masses!

So,we will have to add Twitter to the many Web 2.0 tools for terrorism. After all, World of Warcraft is allegedly filled with jihadists intent on destroying our freedoms.

Twitter, bringing death and destruction 140 characters at a time.