Kenya terror attack was planned on twitter.

Last week, terror stared the world in the
eyes for days, but the good news is that it
flinched; just that it took four days. It did
not stop at that; the terrorists, for the
first time on the continent, fed the world
with details of their carnage and the
warped thinking of their leaders. It
reminds one of how dangerous the world
has abruptly become.
One would have thought the terrorists
who championed the despicable act in
Kenya were ragtag religious extremists,
but given the simple sophistication that
the use of social networking site, Twitter,
demands, we know better.
The militants were online and offline.
While the Westgate Shopping Mall was
the location of its offline activities, Twitter
was their choice of online assaults.
Following no one but with thousands of
followers, @HSM Press, until it was shut
down, continued to tweet horror and
fear. The individuals handling the account
wrote in Somali, Kiswahili, Arabic and
English, further expanding their reach.
The account was opened on December 7,
2011.
Based in Somalia, Al-Shabaab maintains
an alliance with al-Qaeda. Their grouse
with Kenya was the presence of Kenya
Defence Force in Somalia and the
attendant consequence.
Al-Shabaab tweets would possibly have
attracted no attention, but they keyed into
the mainstream of what was happening in
Kenya by using the trending hashtag,
#Westgate. The tweets were as sordid as
they were despicable. The handlers gave
names of the terrorists who were holding
the country and the world hostage. They
informed people that the group was a mix
of people of different nationalities — U.S.,
Britain, Finland, Kenya and Somalia. It
was like having journalists from prime
media organisations, with the Al-Shabaab
terrorist in the mall to tell the news from
its own perspective.
Technology made it easier, given the
instant nature of Twitter and the huge
use of the micro-blogging site.
It’s to the credit of Twitter users that the
account was suspended following
complaints and reports to the networking
site. In a short while, a duplicate account
was set up by the terror dispensers,
reveling in the joy of the attention they
were getting and the momentary
‘successes of their endeavour.’
The new handle @HSM PressOffice
showed how tough terror groups have
come to mimic their offline experience in
resilience. The strategies of the terror-
loving group have been to change names
and open new accounts while continuing
their activities.
About five of the accounts of Al-Shabaab
were suspended while #Westgate lasted.
That the accounts managed to gather
followers in hours may be another reason
to view terrorism as a monolithic threat of
the current world order. A couple of
Twitter handles sympathetic to their cause
cheered them on and retweeted their
views.
Twitter terms specify that tweets must not
have specific threats of violence against
others. Users also may not engage in
targeted abuse or harassment.
Harassment, in this view point, involves
sending messages to a user from multiple
accounts and sending abusive messages
to others. Twitter needs to enforce this.
Al-Shabaab’s handle was suspended
earlier this year, following the posting of
pictures of a murdered French soldier,
threats to kill Kenyan hostages and
threats to the Somalia President, Hassan
Sheikh Mohamod, among others.
It is on record that social networks are
the favourite outlets for Internet-related
terrorism. Twitter, YouTube and Facebook
are the preferred means through which
terrorist organisations route their strategy
of releasing propaganda, recruiting
members, teaching members new
approaches in terrorism and capturing
intelligence of the target location or
group.
These avenues work for them because of
the low cost, easy accessibility and huge
reach of their messages. Nigeria’s
terrorist organisation, Boko Haram, has
consistently used YouTube to make
popular its announcements and
intentions.
The most recent is the denial of the death
of Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the
group who was believed to have died
following a mortal wound encountered
during a shoot-out with law enforcement
agents.
For them, it also holds the benefit of
allowing conversation with their audience
and gauging public mood on the subject
while watching with mockery from their
hideouts. Al-Shabaab did not only use
Twitter during the four-day Kenyan
encounter to broadcast, they also
engaged — a clear evidence of how
deadly it is when a warped mind is
deceitfully intelligent.
Videos, audios and texts in digital formats
are known methods of doing this. The
Taliban is known to maintain a Twitter
presence since 2011 and has a little less
than 10,000 followers. The Lebanon-
based terrorist group — Hezbollah —
also maintains a presence on same. Even
Hamas is known to give information
about its activities and milestones on
Twitter, in addition to creating fear by
blowing casualty figures out of
proportion.
Twitter’s censorship, so far, only covers
tweets in countries known to have laws
that such tweets have broken. Anything
outside that sees the San Francisco-based
company keeping mute.
Twitter responds, “As we continue to grow
internationally, we will enter countries
that have different ideas about the
contours of freedom of expression. Some
differ so much from our ideas that we
will not be able to exist there… Starting
today, we give ourselves the ability to
reactively withhold content from users in
a specific country, while keeping it
available in the rest of the world.”
There is still an ongoing debate on
whether this is a slur on free speech or
not. Social media networks owe the world
an obligation. It needs to permanently
delete content produced by terror
organisations from public domain but
archive same for assessment by defence
departments who may want to
understand and analyse the character of
these enemy groups.
Law enforcements may not be able to
learn much about operations of these
terror groups from their tweets alone,
because it is not used for operational
activity. It is simply used to keep their
activities alive.
In 140 characters, Al-Shabaab took the
attention of the world hostage; but Kenya
fought a good battle. The nation met the
Al-Shabaab militants gun for gun, tweet
for tweet. Sixty-seven lives have been
snuffed out untimely, about 61 others
still unaccounted for, and there are
currently thousands of mourners
following the siege.
The world is in shock, but the collective
resolve to end terror is stronger. Twitter
may not be about to block all users with
extremist views, but it needs to work with
security agencies. Mounting an attack on
the defenceless is repugnant, irrespective
of the motivation and reasons behind it.
What the world needs is more tweets of
kindness, empathy and compassion. To
tweet and boast about another’s death is
not just extremism, it is erroneous
zealotry.
My heart goes out to the grieving people
of Kenya.