ON THE ISLAMIC STATE’S THREAT AGAINST TWITTER

ON THE ISLAMIC STATE’S THREAT AGAINST TWITTER
By Michael S. Smith II

On 1 March 2015, Twitter accounts used to promote Islamic State propaganda tweeted links to a message featuring a threat against Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and the company’s employees. A copy of the original message is available here.

Based on a translation of the message provided to the DOWNRANGE team, the threat has evidently been issued in response to the ramping up in recent weeks of the campaign to disrupt DA’ISH’s exploitation of social media platforms. During the past 14 days, of the roughly 250 popular Twitter accounts used by DA’ISH propagandists and foot soldiers that were monitored by a dummy account established by the DOWNRANGE team, more than half were suspended, deleted, or, in a small set of cases, the managers of some accounts blocked the dummy account.

DA’ISH is not unaware that its use of Twitter results in a great deal of exposure to counterterrorism practitioners. As noted in a recent report, during the past month, DA’ISH influence operations agents have been observed distributing lists of Twitter accounts they believe to have been established to monitor the group’s online activities. In addition, a Twitter account was established by DA’ISH IO operatives to advise DA’ISH supporters to block accounts whose handles appeared in that account’s tweets.

Many popular accounts used to promote DA’ISH’s propaganda or to relay near-real time updates from battle spaces have been shut down. However, managers of these accounts continue to rapidly establish new accounts with large followings. Meanwhile, given that they typically post information which highlights @X account is the new account established following the suspension of @Y account, which was established following the suspension of @Z account, Twitter could easily track these transitions.

For months, the volume of activity of DA’ISH IO operatives on Twitter strongly indicated Twitter executives were more concerned with thwarting the use of their technologies to promote graphic pornography than terrorist propaganda.

Indeed, it would defy credulity if Twitter executives were to claim that, between July 2014 and February 2015, they had done all they could have done to deter DA’ISH from promoting via Twitter gruesome videos and images showcasing its vicious activities, such as the recent mass beheading of more than 20 hostages in Libya or the immolation of Jordanian pilot Mu’ath al-Kaseasbeh.

During that timeframe, Twitter was also a key instrument used by DA’ISH to both attract new recruits and encourage attacks in the West. Not to mention to help with enhancing the situational awareness of its foot soldiers waging jihad in Syria and Iraq against those countries’ militaries.

During a recent dinner conversation, I shared the following assessment with several ambassadors from the Middle East who were clearly frustrated about the ease with which Twitter has been harnessed by DA’ISH to advance its agenda: Given the scope of DA’ISH’s exploitation of Twitter, it would seem the inevitable filings of class action lawsuits initiated by (a) victims of terrorism and (b) families of young people recruited by DA’ISH and subsequently deployed for “martyrdom” operations, whose lawyers can demonstrate such events are linked to DA’ISH IO agents’ uses of Twitter, might be the push Twitter executives require to more proactively deter terrorists from utilizing Twitter’s publicly available technologies.

Yet perhaps propaganda that is calling for attacks on Twitter executives will serve to encourage the company to do more to prevent DA’ISH from continuing to employ Twitter’s technologies to advance its global agenda. Will the same be the case for al-Qa’ida?

If a man walks into a gun shop, and makes it clear he plans take a gun he wishes to purchase, loaded with ammunition he wishes to purchase down the street to fire shots into a crowded shopping center, and the owner of the shop sells him a gun and ammunition used to do just that, shouldn’t the seller be held accountable?