My husband is an IT project manager, and he doesn't think a whole heckuva lot about Twitter (to put it simply and mildly). So when he forwarded an article to me entitled Helping the Terrorists and written by author and BT's Chief Security Technology Officer Bruce Schneier, I rolled my eyes thinking it was going to be yet another one of those dire articles from IT security specialists about how social media sites like Twitter aren't secure and cyber-terrorists could use it against us.
I was wrong.
It was exactly the opposite. As one of the world's foremost information security experts, Bruce was actually taking a stand against all those doomsdayers who want to scare us back into the Stone Age because every piece of technology we use every day is helping the terrorists (including Google Earth, Skype, cell phones, open wi-fi, chat room, library computers, and cars), so by using these things we're in turn helping the terrorists. The purpose of his article was not to warn us against the dangers of technology; but to make us all take a step back and look at the big picture. We can't stop using Twitter, Google Earth, and wi-fi just because terrorists are using it, and I think he put it best by saying "Terrorist attacks are very rare, and it is almost always a bad trade-off to deny society the benefits of a communications technology just because the bad guys might use it too."
So, all I have to say is thank goodness we have this voice of reason to let us know that yes, it is OK to use Twitter, and no, you're not helping the terrorists by using it. You're helping them by not using it.
