Experts relate how terrorists have used cell phones, text messaging in crisis situations

The general public has very recently embraced the use of new social media applications like Twitter. Oprah Winfrey, for example, turned her fanbase onto the website last month. Traditional newspapers have lit up with stories about how blogs and tweets are changing the world.

But law enforcement agencies and researchers shared with HSToday.us how terrorists have used such communication as well.

The FBI's Los Angeles Office conducted an investigation into the methods used by the terrorists who perpetuated the Mumbai terrorist attacks last year--including how they communicated. The agency discovered that the terrorists were adept at talking to each other through various means, including applications of social media, to coordinate their actions.

On Nov. 26, 2008, 10 gunmen held siege to Mumbai for about 60 hours--killing at least 188 people, six of whom were Americans.

"They were well planned and well prepared. They were experts in communications as well," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko told a recent forum on crisis communications in Washington, DC.

"Every time the bad guys shot someone and killed them, they just picked up the cell phone and used that one, interestingly enough," Kolko recounted. "It became part of our investigation. Which phones were these guys using? Well, it turns out they were using phones from all over the world, which made it more complicated for us. As their batteries died, they would just use victim's cell phones."

People trapped in their hotel rooms during the siege, meanwhile, were sending e-mail and tweets to their friends and family outside of the terror scene, Kolko noted.

Gaurav Mishra, Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet at Georgetown University, scoffed at the notion that terrorists wouldn't understand how to use mobile communications and social networks to transit their messages.

"Technology is technology. The good guys can use it; the bad guys can use it too," Mishra told HSToday.us. "Sometimes the government is surprised when this happens. The government, for example, is surprised to find out that the terrorist had Blackberries? A Blackberry is Radio Shack technology. It's not extremely high tech. So governments need to assume terrorists would have access to the technology at least that most people have access to if they don't presume they have access to better technology."

Look for a comprehensive examination of the use of social media for mass emergency notification in the June issue of  Homeland Security Today.