Not a joke. The United States Army has identified Twitter as a potential terrorist tool in a draft intelligence report.

Produced by the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion and posted on the Federation of American Scientists website, the report looks at various web technologies and their potential uses by terrorists.

Speed is at the root of the problem according to the report which states that messages known as "Tweets" were sent out reporting on the LA earthquake last July faster than news outlets. It also noted that extremists used Tweets to report on police movements at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis.

"Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives," the report said.

"Extremist and terrorist use of Twitter could evolve over time to reflect tactics that are already evolving in use by hacktivists and activists for surveillance," it said. "This could theoretically be combined with targeting."

"Hacktivists" are politically motivated hackers.

"Terrorists could theoretically use Twitter social networking in the US as an operation tool," it said. "However, it is unclear whether that same theoretical tool would be available to terrorists in other countries and to what extent."

In addition to Twitter, the report is also concerned with GPS systems and voce changing technologies.

"GPS cell phone service could be used by our adversaries for travel plans, surveillance and targeting," it said, noting that just such uses have been discussed in pro-Al-Qaeda forums along with the use of voice-changing software.

"Terrorists may or may not be using voice-changing software but it should be of open source interest that online terrorist and/or terrorist enthusiasts are discussing it," the report said.

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