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Spy Agencies Are Taking Terrorist Twitter Seriously

Fresh from two attacks, Canadian spies say they’re keeping a concerned eye on Islamic State fighters online.

Only a week after the head of a British intelligence agency accused Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp of being "in denial" over the prominent role social media networks play in the "command and control networks" of the Islamic State, Canadian spies are adding their voices to concerns over online jihad.

Fresh from two attacks on military personnel in Montreal and Ottawa, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) said in a statement to Motherboard that it's concerned about tweeting jihadists.

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"The sophisticated use by terrorists of social media and other communications technologies is an ongoing concern," spokesperson Tahera Mufti said, after being asked if the agency was monitoring prominent jihadists on Twitter.

CSIS is the second intelligence agency from a Five Eyes country, after the GCHQ in Britain, to formally say that social media jihadism is on the minds of their spooks. Five Eyes is the name for the intelligence-sharing collective that includes Canada, the UK, the US, Australia, and New Zealand.

The same CSIS spokesperson said the intelligence agency "can't comment on our investigative techniques," but that there "is no secret that terrorists are increasingly adept at exploiting the globalization of communications."

Over the summer, on their way to storming large swaths of Iraq and Syria, ISIS operatives engaged online with fanboys and the public in a well architected social media strategy.

A known Canadian ISIS fighter in Syria celebrating the Montreal attack online. Image: Twitter

Jihadists flooded newsfeeds with images of kittens with grenades, calls for recruits from the West to make "hijra" (a jihadist pilgrimage) to Sham, and beheadings, in a calculated move to promote themselves and ISIS online.

Those types of hashtag war strategies evolved as western involvement increased in Iraq. When Canada formally entered the bombing campaign against Islamic State targets in September, several homegrown ISIS fighters abroad tweeted messages calling for attacks on domestic civilian and military targets.

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The call to arms against Canada from one prominent fighter, who identifies as Abu Khalid al-Kanadi (on a now suspended Twitter account), was reportedly a partial inspiration for a deadly shooting at the Parliament in Ottawa last month.

"In the digital world, individuals can be exposed to—and contribute to—extremist activities without belonging to a local radical community," Mufti said.

ISIS fighters have used social media as an important recruitment tool. Active social media channels connecting westerners with fighters on the ground is the beacon of first contact for eager recruits looking to make the trip to Sham. As one infamous Canadian fighter going by the alias Abu Usamah told me, "what's the benefit of using social media if I'm not using it to recruit?"

Beyond the incitement of followers, social media is also being seen within the intelligence community as the transit lines of communication between Islamic State operatives. Mufti told me the internet in general provides extremists "a global reach to spread their propaganda, and to transfer knowledge and tradecraft to one another."

The sophisticated use by terrorists of social media and other communications technologies is an ongoing concern

Indeed, ISIS famously used Twitter to coordinate their operations in mid-June against al-Maliki forces on the ground in Iraq. At the time, it appeared that the combination of live-tweeting the execution of over a thousand Shia Muslim men, coupled with systemic military disfunction and ISIS announcing their operation online, intimidated Iraqi forces into fleeing their positions in anticipation of the attack.

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Likewise, the beheading video of American journalist James Foley equally serves to demoralize western audiences, like a kind of online war paint.

Besides tweeting images of their felines and victims, ISIS fighters are known for brazenly advertising the war machines they're using. Already onlookers have seen plenty of M4 carbines and armoured humvees confiscated from Iraqi National Army weapons caches tweeted by online ISIS operatives.

One military source from a NATO country with experience fighting the Taliban insurgency said the glut of information online jihadists leave behind on Twitter could be a boon to war efforts against ISIS.

"The military has intelligence analysts who would look at that sort of thing and would then draw conclusions based on the information that they saw, and would then disseminate that information to the soldiers who would then apply it," said the source.

For example, one Canadian ISIS fighter in Iraq told me he was putting Canadian nightvision goggles to good use during his operations. But according to the same military source, that kernel of intel can prove to be useful for enemy forces looking to exploit any advantage against ISIS.

"So ISIS has night vision—what can you take away from that?" said the military source. "It means that you yourself are now more susceptible to being seen at night because they have that capability. You may now have to come up with a plan that might mitigate that capability."

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Knowing ISIS has access to war tech that was previously the domain of western forces means coming up with a mitigating battleplan to account for those technological capabilities. For example, in Afghanistan, ISAF soldiers launched night raids on unwitting Taliban units that didn't have the same gear. In present day Iraq, that may not be as possible for offensive attacks.

As for right now, though Canadian and coalition war planes drop bombs on the Islamic State targets, you'd think the online rhetoric would weaken. Not so much. While beheading photographs seem less prominent (likely to avoid Twitter suspensions), when it comes to social media, the beat goes on for western ISIS fighters on the ground in Iraq or Syria.

One Canadian, suspected to be Ahmad Wasseem of Windsor, is still tweeting about recruits making the trip across the Turkish border into Syria to join ISIS and how he buried an enemy soldier alive, as well as posting images of new pistols with flashy silencers.

My suspicion is that along with the string of new bombings on the ground in Iraq, increased drone presence, and the addition of 1500 new American boots on the ground, the online war is beginning to heat up just the same—and the new intelligence interest in Twitter is an extension of that growing war.

With the stakes rising, spies will hunt militants down on Twitter, looking for any advantage they can get in an evolving geopolitical conflict that has no end in sight.