Facebook, Twitter To Message Disaster Warnings in Australia

The Cairns region in far north Queensland Australia will be be conducting trials in the use of social network sites Facebook and Twitter to issue urgent messages about natural disasters in the area. This is something we have advocated here for some time now. The benefits of using social networking platforms in crisis or emergency communications are numerous and we’re missing some incredible opportunities in this area.

The Cairns Regional Council’s Disaster Management Unit will set up Facebook and Twitter sites that will include information on important weather events, cyclone watches and updates, as well as links to other relevant sites.

Mayor Val Schier says many young people access their social networking websites several times per day.

“We’ll be doing lots of the same sorts of things we usually do, like producing brochures and going out and doing community meetings and talking on the radio, but in addition to that this year we’re trialing two different things,” she said.

“We’re actually going to use Facebook and we’re also going to use Twitter as a way of communicating with young people.

“We’re really just trying to find ways of connecting with people. It’s really important that people get prepared for cyclone season, but also if there is an emergency happening that they’re kept up to date with what’s going on.”

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U.S. Intelligence Investing In Social Media Monitoring

The Danger Room has an interesting article you’ll want to read. According to the exclusive report, In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is investing in Visible Technologies, a software firm that is developing cutting edge technologies to monitor social media. I know many will cite privacy concerns however I believe if done correctly and with oversight, this could be an extremely effective tool.

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.

“That’s kind of the basic step — get in and monitor,” says company senior vice president Blake Cahill.

Then Visible “scores” each post, labeling it as positive or negative, mixed or neutral. It examines how influential a conversation or an author is. (”Trying to determine who really matters,” as Cahill puts it.) Finally, Visible gives users a chance to tag posts, forward them to colleagues and allow them to response through a web interface.

In-Q-Tel says it wants Visible to keep track of foreign social media, and give spooks “early warning detection on how issues are playing internationally,” spokesperson Donald Tighe tells Danger Room.

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9/11 Drill Down For Safety – Getting America Prepared

It has been eight years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington killed some 3,000 innocent people. How soon we forget. Fortunately, there are people like Len Pagano who haven’t forgotten. Pagano is president and CEO of the Safe America Foundation, located in Marietta. On Sept. 11, Safe America rolls out a project called, “9/11 Drill Down for Safety,” a series of emergency drills designed to teach businesses and families how best to respond to emergency situations ranging from natural disasters to terrorist thuggery.

Former Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta is the honorary chairman of the program, which has the backing of the National Association of Emergency Managers, the U.S. Medical Reserve Corps, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a host of corporate sponsors.

In a news conference at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Mineta said, “Safe America is championing this project because we believe we need to shift the attention from what government can or can’t do to what individuals and families can do on their own. If individuals are trained, they are just as likely to survive on their own than if they wait for first responders to arrive.”

Pagano estimates there will be as many as 200,000 people involved in the “9/11 Drill Down for Safety Program.” Among the drills will be efforts to test how special needs populations can be evacuated, determining the most effective way to communicate to high school and colleges students through text messages and looking at how to shelter people in a business location.

The drills will be as varied as the locations in which they take place. In Atlanta, UPS will simulate how to protect employees during a potential tornado. The Allstate Insurance office in Marietta will do an employee family preparedness plan. York, Maine will conduct neighborhood preparedness drills. In Washington, D.C., Howard University will carry out student pre-evacuation program planning. San Francisco will focus on day care centers.

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Safe America Foundation

Make The Pledge On Facebook

Twitter Could Help In A Disaster

Text messaging, Twitter and social networking Web sites could help families stay in touch in the wake of a disaster, a national safety group said Tuesday.
The Safe America Foundation announced a campaign to train families about alternate ways of staying in touch if traditional communication methods are not working. The Atlanta-based group is working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency on this “Drill Down for Safety” program to make people more aware of communication options during an emergency.

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Hondurans Receiving Threatening Text Messages To “Stay Inside”

Hondurans are trying to get word out by Twitter that they are receiving threatening text messages on their cell phones tonight, telling them to stay inside and not leave their homes tomorrow night.

“Now more than ever I will be the first one out the door,” Honduran Pedro Martinez told Canada Free Press tonight. Pedro Martinez is the pseudonym we gave to the young Honduran professional that Canada Free Press (CFP) walked through Twitter hookup last week.

“Tomorrow might be a bad day,” Pedro tipped off CFP on twitter. “People are infiltrating Honduras thru (sic) Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua with the intention to create chaos.”

Looks like deposed Honduran leader Manuel Zelaya, who has called for a popular insurrection in his own country so that he can be returned to power after soldiers removed him at gunpoint on June 28, is on the way back.

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Iranian Regime Turns Tables On Protesters Using Social Media

Millions of sympathizers around the world looked forward to seeing Iran’s protest movement using the Internet for the first online coup in history. Instead, the Iranian Islamic regime turned the tables: Its Internet police, arguably the largest in the world, pushed “control,” “halt,” “delete” and “send” buttons to activate a deadly weapon for suppressing the movement, as soon as it took to the streets to protest the June 12 election which was believed to have given Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a false victory.

By Sunday, June 28, when the Guardian Council was to hand down its final verdict on their complaints, the street rallies had petered out.

Part of the reason, intelligence sources report, was their organizers’ heavy reliance on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other social sites to orchestrate their protest movement. They did not at first appreciate that Iranian intelligence Internet experts, operating from secret headquarters established months ago, were using their communications to shoot them down.

According to our sources, that headquarters is located at the telecom center on Sepah (Khomenei) Square in Tehran. It was built for the Shah in the 1970s by the Israel construction contractors Solel Boneh and designed by Israeli intelligence and telecommunications experts.

The high-end apparatus, installed in late 2008 by the German Siemens AG and Finnish Nokia Corp. cell phone giant, gave Iranian intelligence the most advanced tools anywhere for controlling, inspecting, censoring and altering Internet and cell phone messaging. Those tools were being used weeks before the poll to identify penetrations by alien spy services, their local agents and dissident activists.

This system is capable of conducting “deep packet inspection” of every type of text and video communication in all parts of Iran on three tracks:

1. Like other advanced electronic spy systems in the world, this one uses such keywords as attack, weapons, cash, data, explosives, meeting, demonstration, resistance, protest, etc. to alert Iran within milliseconds to feeds of interest by computer or phone – mail, signals or visuals.

In a flash, intelligence analysts get a fix on the sender and the electronic addressee which are then placed on a surveillance list for further monitoring. Once identified, the sender or receiver and their connections are closely shadowed by field agents.

2. By “deep packet inspection,” the secret controllers can cause delays in online data transfers, which surfers may attribute to glitches connected with their providers. The more targets under surveillance, the more online transfers are slowed down.

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report that the day after the presidential poll and resulting street outbreaks, Iran’s Internet control and tracking supervisors took over the 10 leading service providers in the country. Their first action was to slow down incoming and outgoing cyber traffic from 1,500 to 54 kilobytes to make sure that not a single byte by Internet or cell phone to or from protest leaders escaped their notice.

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Police Departments Keeping Public Informed On Twitter

Public safety officials are finding the use of sites to be not only speedy, but also a convenient way to distribute press releases, Amber alerts, road closings and suspect descriptions.

Bruce Frazier, public relations specialist for the Dalton Police Department in Dalton, Georgia, said the way in which Lakeland police utilized Twitter is exactly what he envisioned when his department started using the site a few weeks ago. Read more

CIA, NSA Adopting Web 2.0 Strategies

While the United States intelligence community may have gotten a lot of publicity for its Wikipedia-like Intellipedia Web site, agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency are ramping up their use of other social and Web-inspired software as well. Read more

U.S. Will Ask Youth To Fight Crime and Terrorism Online

The US State Department announced plans on Monday to promote online youth groups as a new and powerful way to fight crime, political oppression and terrorism.

Drawing inspiration from a movement against FARC rebels in Colombia, the State Department is joining forces with Facebook, Google, MTV, Howcast and others in New York City next week to get the “ball rolling.”

It said 17 groups from South Africa, Britain and the Middle East which have an online presence like the “Million Voices Against the FARC” will attend a conference at Columbia University Law School from December 3-5.

Observers from seven organizations that do not have an online presence such as groups from Iraq and Afghanistan will attend. There will also be remote participants from Cuba.

They will forge an “Alliance of Youth Movement,” said James Glassman, under secretary of state for public diplomacy.

“The idea is put all these people together, share best practices, produce a manual that will be accessible online and in print to any group that wants to build a youth empowerment organization to push back against violence and oppression around the world,” he told reporters.

The conference will be streamed by MTV and Howcast, he said.

The list of organizations due to attend include the Burma Global Action Network, a human rights movement spurred into action by the ruling junta’s crackdown on monks and other pro-democracy protestors last year.

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Twitter Terrorists – Army Warns of Terror ‘Tweets’ Security Threat

Twitter Terrorists – Army Warns of Terror ‘Tweets’ Security Threat

Could Twitter become terrorists’ newest killer app? A draft Army intelligence report, making its way through spy circles, thinks the miniature messaging software could be used as an effective tool for coordinating militant attacks.

For years, American analysts have been concerned that militants would take advantage of commercial hardware and software to help plan and carry out their strikes. Everything from online games to remote-controlled toys to social network sites to garage door openers has been fingered as possible tools for mayhem.

NOTE: National Terror Alert utilizes Twitter to update our visitors on breaking news, terror alerts and other important events 24/7. You can follow us for the latest at http://www.twitter.com/ntarc

This recent presentation — put together on the Army’s 304th Military Intelligence Battalion and found on the Federation of the American Scientists website — focuses on some of the newer applications for mobile phones: digital maps, GPS locators, photo swappers, and Twitter mash-ups of it all.

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Terrorists haven’t done anything similar, the Army report concedes – although it does note that there are “multiple pro and anti Hezbollah Tweets.” Instead, the presentation lays out three possible scenarios in which Twitter could become a militant’s friend:

Scenario 1: Terrorist operative “A” uses Twitter with… a cell phone camera/video function to send back messages, and to receive messages, from the rest of his [group]… Other members of his [group] receive near real time updates (similar to the movement updates that were sent by activists at the RNC) on how, where, and the number of troops that are moving in order to conduct an ambush.

How Twitter could be a security threat – Terrorist tweets aplenty

Twitter is a micro-blogging service that has already gained a huge amount of fans amongst the tech community, and is currently trying to gain a foothold of popularity amongst a wider mainstream demographic. But that wider set of fans could include terrorists who would use Twitter to spread their message and even direct operations.

This warning comes from the U.S. army by way of an intelligence report 304th Military Intelligence Battalion. It was posted on the Federation of American Scientists website before Noah Shachtman brought it to the attention of the wider public on Wired.

The report identifies three new technologies as possible threats to national security. Alongside Twitter, Global Positioning System maps and voice-changing software are claimed to be “potential terrorist tools”.

Twitter is rapidly becoming an essential tool for many. Back in July, news of the Los Angeles earthquake rebounded around Twitter before the event was picked up by any news organisation. The Presidential candidates are also using it to keep up with their supporters. And in April, a man used Twitter to alert his friends that he’d been arrested in Egypt.

But these uses could potentially have a dark side, at least if you believe the scaremongering of the U.S. intelligence services. The report states:

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