Technology Helps Everyone – Mumbai Terrorists Included

Today there’s an interesting report about terrorists using BlackBerry mobile devices during Mumbai attacks to watch the world reaction to their actions. I myself can hardly understand why people seem to be surprised about such things at all as it is quite obvious that in this world technology is accessible to just about anyone with enough money and it does not require any license or approval to buy a smart phone. After all, no one will ask you what you are planning to use the device for – good or bad.

The story is around the fact that in addition to standard ammunition like grenades and automatic weapons the terrorists heavily relied on use of their BlackBerrys that were used to monitor the international reaction to the Mumbai attacks as well as track the police response – all of that online via the websites of various international media outlets sharing the latest news with their audiences and terrorists as well.

This measure was an absolute necessity for the terrorists after the cable TV feeds to the two luxury hotels and an office block where they held hostage were cut by the authorities so the internet on their BlackBerrys quickly became the only way for them to know what was going on outside of the buildings they controlled.

But I think everyone should know by now that planning and carrying out such a large-scale attack will involve use of various sophisticated technology tools – both to plan and ensure that everything runs smoothly. So there must be no surprise here and the only thing we have to admit is that the terrorists are knowledgeable enough to be able to rely on the very same tools that we use in our everyday lives.

In addition to that, the terrorists also have enough financial support to be able to afford these tools (in addition to buying the weapons and explosives) as some of the Mumbai residents report that in India a Blackberry is a very expensive device that you can not buy with a contract which brings the price of 8800 series devices to over $1,000.

But again, it only proves that the terrorists are well-prepared to do their atrocities – same as we are prepared to do our jobs using the latest and greatest technology tools. So technology is nothing but a tool that empowers everyone to do what this person will do – good or bad – and we should not be surprised that those getting ready to cause harm will know how to use a smart phone in addition to knowing how to use an AK-series weapons.

But now that we do know that the terrorists were able to read every word we eagerly published online – be it in our personal blogs or Twitter streams or in online versions of the largest newspapers – we can not help but ask ourselves if every reporter covering the events in Mumbai from any place in the world could indirectly help the terrorists by informing them of something they’d better not know, like the intentions of the police.

And of course when everyone was eagerly engaged in a discussion over Twitter role in the entire situation we did not even think about the fact that our Twitter streams and our blog posts could be read by terrorists same as they were by people we intended them for – to share the news as we like to put it. But my opinion is that the availability of such tools like smart phones and Twitter do not really change the situation radically and it is only the matter of who uses them more efficiently – the terrorists or those fighting them.

Basically the problem in such situations is that information will leak invariably – via Twitter, personal blogs or via established mainstream media outlets. And encouraging us to stop sending tweets because they can be monitored by terrorists is very similar to asking newspapers and TV channels to stop covering breaking news like that in Mumbai to avoid leak of information that could potentially be beneficial to terrorists.

But I don’t really think Twitter is changing the situation very much, after all. I remember a very similar situation here in Russia during one of terrorist attacks in Moscow when terrorists held hundreds of people hostage in a theatre and countless TV crews were on site reporting news from around the theatre building non-stop – with some of the reporters later accused of making certain information public that should be kept strictly secret as such reports made it more difficult for commandos to set the people free eventually. This accusation was eventually used to pass a law imposing certain new regulations over media outlets that made their work more difficult in regular circumstances as they had to comply with the new, much stricter rules even in coverage of usual day-to-day events.

Similarly, the fact that Twitter streams can be monitored by terrorists does not mean that Twitter use should be restricted to only those authorized and knowing how to use Twitter in a safe and predictable manner. But of course if you happen to know exactly what time the commandos start the attack it will not hurt keeping this information to yourself instead of sharing it on Twitter – but that is nothing but usual common sense, I think. While for people lacking common sense no regulations will probably help anyway.

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