Is Twitter Bad for National Security?

Twitter is one of the more recent social networking phenomena. Following the sucess of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, Twitter is a service that lets people follow each other and stay informed about them using what has been dubbed as 'micro-blogging'. The stated premise of Twitter is for users to answer the simple question 'What are you doing?' in 140 characters or less.

I don't think our enemies are going to gain any exploitable information from following my Twitter feed. Updates about how tired I am, my plans for the day, what I am having for dinner, or how much I love my wife will provide very little actionable intelligence. Al Qaeda isn't going to be able to do much with inane data like whether or not someone is stuck in traffic or how long the line is at the grocery store.

However, the value of the information provided on Twitter might be largely a function of who is providing it. If I send out a 'tweet' letting my Twitter followers know that I have published a new blog post- not much value from a national security or terrorism perspective. However, when the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee sends out tweets like 'Just landed in Baghdad. I believe it may be the first time I've had bb [short for Blackberry] service in Iraq. 11th trip here.' and then proceeds to tweet about the movements of his party through the Green Zone, flying by helicopter, etc.- now that is actionable intelligence with some strategic value.

For the vast majority of Twitter users, the social networking service is little more than harmless and frivolous data. Apparently though, there may be good reason to restrict its use by certain individuals or groups to make sure they don't accidentally 'tweet' the activation codes to our nuclear arsenal or the truth about Area 51 at Roswell.