US Army doesn’t understand Twittering

You have to love oxymorons. My school could rarely come up with one when pushed and went for lame examples such as ‘the bitter sweet pain of love’. I always preferred the term US intelligence.

Piss take aside, I’m slightly baffled by one story on the BBC’s News Beat about the US Army being worried that terrorists will use, “Twitter to plan and organise attacks”.

So, terrorists are going to use Twitter as their secretive messenger. This will be the same Twitter that allows everyone in the world to see the stories when they happen, then? The same Twitter that allows you to follow what certain people are writing?

If they are then the terrorists are quite dim. Even if you have a code, surely it cannot be that hard to break with the fleet of supercomputers at the disposal of the US armed forces. Can it?

Maybe I’m missing something here. Maybe there is a risk from Twitter. But there has to be easier methods of communication. Fair enough, new communications could be lost in the volume but the second you find one terrorist, surely you’d follow their friends and followers.

Fair enough, according to the BBC, Twitter only occupies one chapter, but this is the one catching the news agenda.

The chapter notes that reports of the LA earthquake in July last year appeared on the service before most news agencies got hold of it. It also notes that Twitter has been used to rally protests in the past, for example at US Republican National Convention in September.”

According to the BBC report, authorities in both the US and the UK are increasingly worried about the potential for terrorists to use the latest communication technologies including sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and gaming networks. All of which are open and identify those that are following particular people.

So, where does this leave our protection then?