Social media is a rich source for security services - if they can figure out how to use it

Jason Santos

           

            I use social media every day of my life. I can tell you that all of my friends do the same. Checking up on twitter, Facebook, Instagram and snapchat is a daily activity like showering or brushing my teeth. But it is a daily activity that connects me with people all over the world who value these social media platforms in the same way. What we all have in common is that we share private information with everyone and anything. This article brings up the question of security along with social media.

            The article talks about security issues concerning robots on social media (twitter). These robots are coded instruments that aid in the advertisement of the specified code. The government can use codes like these to help find and fight threats such as terrorism. The major question is can the government us social media to stop terrorism without condemning the 1^st amendment or should that even matter?

            We are at a point in time where terrorists are actually using twitter to organize and recruit. Imagine if someone tweets “I love ISIS”? This can be a serious threat and the government should be able to capitalize on this public information. But then again what if that was just a kid joking around? There is technology to tell whether that tweet is linked to actual terrorism. This technology may intrude on the people’s right to the 1^st amendment and because of that it cannot be used. But that is when we must ask ourselves, should we let something written before the age of the internet hold us back from protecting our people? The technology is effective, cheap and can protect more than just terrorism.

            The article mentions how a team of 5 was able to come together and find robots that were made to support terrorism. It took four weeks to find 39 robotic twitter accounts. It later motioned that 125,000 accounts were taken off of twitter because of links to terrorism. It was also mentioned that twitter is too big to secure everything. What they don’t tell us is how many accounts twitter has (four weeks to find 39 robots), how much time to find all of them? The article also says that technology that helps them today may not be up to date tomorrow. This is most likely an exaggeration but if technology is rapidly changing at this rate, is it worth the time and money to keep these programs running.

            In the end it comes down to whether people value privacy or protection more. Also how big can twitter actually get, too big to control? If so can social media be a danger to our society?