Bluetooths Beam Terror Propaganda to Your Eardrums
- By Spencer Ackerman
- January 25, 2011 |
- 12:56 pm |
- Categories: Info War
Now it can be proven that Bluetooth usage is a sign of anti-social behavior. Terrorists are using the flickering wireless earpieces to distribute their propaganda.
Over at Jihadica, Nico Prucha has a fascinating breakdown of how Bluetooth is becoming a distribution mechanism of choice for Islamic terrorists, after an extremist forum called al-Ansar al-Mujahideen created a data package designed for indoctrination over mobile phones in late 2009. Everything from videos optimized for cellphone viewing to jihadist books are beamed with Bluetooth to would-be terrorists and jihadist aficionados.
It’s an extensive list of data. Videos get crunched into 3GP format, ready for most cellphones in use today, so straphangers can view the latest products from al-Qaeda’s as-Sahab media wing during their morning commutes.
Speeches from Osama bin Laden or terror-strategist Abu Mus’ab al-Suri are available, as are texts in Adobe or Microsoft Word extolling the virtues of killing civilians for religion. All manner of still images displaying successful terrorist acts or “the iconography of Jihad groups worldwide” are currently streaming, Prucha writes. (No word on whether would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad was transmitting or receiving such propaganda in his famous “shades-n-Bluetooth” photo.)
Bluetooths aren’t the most secure devices for transmitting data, since, like any wireless network, unsuspecting devices can piggyback and slow down connections. It’s easy enough to set up security features like establishing trusted devices for exchange, but one imagines the operational-security issues there are serious: your device falls into the hands of cops, spies or soldiers and your network is compromised.
Prucha writes that one of the data packages the extremist forum has developed includes a “specially designed operating system,” containing encryption software, that allows “these agitprop packages [to] be transferred to a mobile phone for re-dissemination via Bluetooth.” It’s all part of a general trend to “develop the jihadist media,” something that extremists have discussed when plunging into Facebook.
And it’s something for counterterrorist officials to watch. The White House just hired on a new expert in terrorist radicalization, Quintan Wiktorowicz, to advise Team Obama on how people go from discontent to mass murder. Now the voice squawking in someone’s earpiece may have something to do with it.
Photo: Orkut.com via Bluetoothdouchebag.com
See Also:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/01/bluetooths-beam-terror-propaganda-to-...
I have known this for some time... but couldn't tell too many people without them accusing me of being "crazy" #verified
File under: #disambiguation
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