Facebook 'monitored by Al Qaeda' say Canadian military

Wired’s always diverting Danger Room military tech blog carries an unlikely but fascinating report about an internal Canadian Armed Forces memo warning serving personnel about social networks like Facebook.

According to the report, which was made public by Canada’s CBC news agency, the Canadian Defence Department is advising troops not to post personal photos or information on social networking websites because of security concerns.

It warns soldiers not to mention their military service in profiles or to appear in uniform in online photos because the networks are regularly monitored by Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Brigadier-General Peter Atkinson warned of the dangers of logging on from a war zone. General Atkinson said that while sites like Facebook can be invaluable for keeping soldiers in touch with their families, seemingly innocuous photos, videos and news reports can be the source for as much as 80 per cent of the intelligence that insurgents gather on operations.

And you thought you had problems with your boss finding those terrible stag night pictures.

Comments

[Kainen]

That is by far the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Facebooks ISNT myspace, each troop would have to have made each terrorist his friend, so the terrorist would have to have known who the trooper was first... see the problem forming here? Iteven implies that if you are in suchansuch provience and you say so, that the terrorists will terrorise your family. THIS REPORT DOES MORE TO CAUSE TERROR THAN ANY TERRORIS COULD. what a load of s**t

[High-low]

This is just another example of how socal networking sites are dangerous.
If it not safe to put any info on to the net now of days.

[Rob]

Love the idea that we could simply find ole Usama on Facebook.

Perhaps he has his own Al Qaeda 'Network'?

[Joseph]

re: each troop would have to have made each terrorist his friend
------
Not so - Facebook allows you to choose a totally public profile.

[Charles Crosby]

That means the American and British secret services are monitoring facebook!

[John Dooley]

Be careful what you say High-Low so are typepad entries.... boo. I assume the terrorists are posting pictures of their buddies on late night excursions too, so why not make friends and peace shall avail itself to all. Methinks a group "War what is it good for? Absolutely nothing" should be created.

[Iona]

Kainen: Facebook profiles can be visible to people who aren't your friends, depending on your privacy settings. You can make it visible to the people in your network or even all of Facebook if you so wish.

There are many layers of privacy settings and rather than the Defence Department navigating these to give recommendations on which settings to use, I can see that it would be more straightforward and secure simply to be cautious what you put on your profile.

[Norman Saunders]

I'm surprised that anyone finds this 'revelation' surprising.
We're not dealing with illiterate peasants here (they use them to strap bombs to!) but to sophisticated, determined, murderers.
It seems they're more sophisticated than our 'intelligence' networks anway.

Hmmm. Lemme see. Al Whatshisface. A non-existent entity - creation of the US propaganda war profiteering machine. As long as there's a bogeyman - like the legendary Lochness monster or the Abominable Snowman - Americans are pooping in their pants with utter fear as a result. Even if there WERE such a creature called Al Qaida, one thing is clear: if we count the bodies, Al's roadkill is but a smidgeon of the actual silent partner of Facebook - the CIA.

Lastly, since the CIA collects 100% of the information on FaceBook, creating a permanent profile of any and everyone on Facebook, it is pretty obvious who planted this disinformation article.

[Dru Nichols]

Just take the time to figure out what you're making public and what you're not. My understanding is that MySpace is much more accessable than Facebook, although I may be wrong.

[Andy]

"Facebook profiles can be visible to people who aren't your friends, depending on your privacy settings. You can make it visible to the people in your network or even all of Facebook if you so wish."

But, on the flipside of that you can also make your profile ONLY available to your friends via the privacy settings, which would then meaan that no-one would be able to see those pictures, videos. sensitive information other than your profile picture and BASIC detaails. Facebook allows for more privacy than myspace, AND in order to be able to find anyone on facebook in the first place you have to know the persons name to search for.

[Gavin Jones]

Being an Irish citizen having Al Qaeda look at my social networking site doesn't really bother me, but the fact that the Irish Revenue Commissioners are having a peek before they audit you is daunting (http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=IRELAND-qqqm=news-qqqid=30733-qqqx=1.asp).

If that isn't bad enough you should also have a look at who exactly are the main investors in Facebook, one such company is called In-Q-Tel which happens to be a venture capital firm established by the CIA in 1999. Big Brother is watching!!!!

[concerned CF member]

People have added me on facebook when I'm not sure who they are. These guys are smart, theyre not gonna log on as Osama Bin Terrorist. If you have 400 hundred friends on facebook, I doubt you really KNOW all of them. Besides the report theyre talking about was more concerned with background information (files documents) that were visible in photos of members.

[Sylvianella]

Have you never heard of hacking????

[Peter K]

So why don't we put some fake profiles on there, photoshop some pictures, fake wall posts, etc...? Imagine if Facebook accidentally "leaked" Prince Harry's whereabouts in Afghanistan for instance? We could have lured these punks out of their caves and machine-gunned them silly.

If reading Facebook accounts for 80% of the military intelligence that Al Qaeda gather for their operations can someone please explain to me why we haven't managed to slot these clowns yet?

[fernando torchia]

the canadian defence department advise
is not to compromaise intelligence information on social website because concern appear on line with regard to service personal identites is a clear message to the personal not to divulge such personal information on the basis that terrorism network are aware of such info so to compromise a security
military plan

[Al Zib]

Don't worry ... Al Qaeda is safely under my bed, where I can keep an eye on them... Of course they are! Bush told me they were! I believe Bush. He is the new great physicist. Its obvious; empirical evidence! Buildings no longer topple--they disintegrate straight down! You saw it with your own eyes on 9-11 TV. (what a Genius!) ... wait!...yep! yep! Al Qaeda is still under my bed!! stop worrying, already.

[Rick Deckard, South Africa]

...Upon reflection, perhaps not as 'far-fetched' as some of you may think? Any little snippet of information can be useful to an enemy. A popular WWII slogan comes to mind "Loose lips sink ships". Ditto for gung-ho battlefield home-movies posted on Youtube?!