Feature

Perimeter Security

Security and the State 2.0

Twitter sparked the Arab Spring; it helped Ahmadinejad cripple his political opponents; it gave a running commentary on the assault on Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound; it enhances the Israeli military’s situational awareness; it is a medium for terror cells to communicate and recruit.

Twitter fuelled the anti-cuts protests in London; it allowed the Met Police to warn the public of the violent ‘Black Bloc’ tactics; it coordinated humanitarian relief in the wake of the Haitian earthquake and Pakistani floods; it is the favoured tool of the US State Department to monitor democratic opposition in authoritarian regimes. It is quicker to Tweet than call 999 and as Ryan Giggs can testify, Twitter has now outstripped UK law. And it does all this in 140 characters.

Clearly, the meteoric rise of social media in international affairs, security and defence is riddled with contradictions and simplifications. While reducing the movement for democratic change across the Middle East to a prolific Facebook page is plainly myopic, it is evident that the emergence of social media platforms that facilitate real-time communication between disparate groups and persons has been a distinct advantage for decentralised, fluid social movements or terror organizations that do not place a high premium on hierarchy, operational security or formal leadership. This does not mean that states will inevitably suffer greater insecurity, but it does mean the opposition now have appropriate real-time situation awareness and can outperform the conventional and protracted decision cycle of government security forces. As a consequence, governments need to take Twitter, Facebook et al seriously, to learn their advantages and to adapt operations as necessary to fully exploit the potential of social media.

The Arab Spring
With President Mubarak resigning just 17 days after 26-year old Asmaa Mahfouz’s Facebook page encouraged 15,000 Egyptians to join her in Tahrir Square, it is easy to see why social media has been championed as the catalyst for change in the Arab world. As a mobilizing tool to rapidly communicate messages to vast swathes of the population, social media is peerless with Facebook alone boasting over 7 million users in Egypt.  Facebook, YouTube and MySpace are 3 of the top 5 most popular websites in the US while Twitter’s popularity sky-rockets with unique visitors growing 1382% from February 2008 to February 2009. Smart phones have made social media ubiquitous with information shared in unprecedented volumes and at unprecedented speed. Common agendas are formed and online communities constructed with individual citizens and bloggers wielding new levels of influence. Without the monopoly of information over the narrow channels of the traditional print and broadcast media, the state no longer has such a grip on public opinion and the direction of the news agenda. Despite these dramatic changes, it is dangerous to draw conclusions about the destabilising and democratising effects of social media purely on the basis of the Arab Spring.

On the surface, Twitter appears to have presented a similar challenge to the Iranian authorities during the 2009 elections, with the US State Department using the site as a source of intelligence on the anti-Government protests and a litmus test for public opinion on the ground. The Obama Administration went as far as requesting that the site delayed a server upgrade so that the Iranian opposition could continue to organize. Ayatollah Ali Khameini and President Ahmadinejad soon fought back however, denouncing ‘deviant websites’ such as Twitter. On state television, the Revolutionary Guard produced the programme ‘Gerdab’ that identified bloggers, accused them of immorality and encouraged their persecution, with the ruthless paramilitary group the ‘Basij’ willingly using Twitter to locate and attack pro-democracy protestors. In spite of the infamous YouTube video of Neda Agha-Soltan’s death logging millions of hits, the Iranian example demonstrates that far from being seen as the midwife for democracy and as inherently destabilising to the existing state apparatus, social media can be another string to the bow of the security state. As such, any analysis of the impact of social media cannot divorce the technology itself from the social, political and military context in which it is used.

Protests and the Police
It would be wrong to depict social media’s political footprint as unique to the Middle East. Long before attacking VISA and Mastercard during the Wikileaks saga, the Anonymous group had been employing social networks to organize protests in the US. Research undertaken at the University of Washington provides an insight into the group’s ‘Project Chanology’ campaign against the Church of Scientology in 2008. Explicitly discouraging the emergence of individual leaders, Chanology’s decision making process emphasized consensus and collaboration, with members volunteering for tasks based on their experience in a particular field. The horizontal structure of the organisation made it more resilient to the loss of individuals; it also engendered innovative political and tactical approaches by pulling together the expertise of individuals from a range of disciplines. Members’ identities remained anonymous, making them less prone to disruption by the robust Scientology lobby. Conversely, a strong group identity emerged as strangers were forced to use knowledge of Chanology culture and norms to establish each other’s credentials as legitimate group members. This dynamism and flexibility was replicated throughout the anti-cuts rally in London in March 2011. The tapestry of protest groups, including UK Uncut, used Google Maps and even an iPhone App to post live updates of police activity to avoid ‘kettling.’  Just as social media has made it easier to find people with common interests and for a network to crystallize around these issues, protestors’ situational awareness has also been enhanced, particularly through Twitter. Aware of the way in which this information could be monitored by the Police, the ‘Black Bloc’ anarchists intentionally published erroneous detail on Facebook on where they were due to meet and how they would operate.

However, as with the experience of the Arab Spring, the story of social media in domestic security is far from one-sided.

Responding to ‘Black Bloc’ violence, the Metropolitan Police tweeted that light bulbs filled with ammonium had been thrown on Oxford Street, pre-emptively quashing potential criticism of the security around the march. Championing its utility as both a public relations and operational tool, Chief Constable Richard Crompton stated ‘social media is coming to the fore – in London it gave officers the opportunity to put out clear messages and dispel rumours that would have been circulating among the crowds.’

Warfare 2.0

In the military sphere, much has been made of the advantages social media presents to terrorist organizations-the Mumbai attacks were planned using Skype and Google Maps. Just 10 years ago, the geospatial planning capability provided by Google Maps was the domain of boutique military mission planning software, while Skype today is in many ways a less constrained and more flexible solution to most platforms on offer to the military. The horizontal command structures of loose groups such as Al-Qaeda are naturally inclined towards the successful exploitation of social networks, which can offer rich pickings in terms of young, impressionable recruits and provide a channel to disseminate tactical information on activities such as bomb-making. The internet and the 24-hour media boom has made the military’s job in winning the battle for public opinion within its own borders, as well as that within the conflict zone, infinitely more difficult. Israel’s war with Hizbollah in 2006 is a case in point. On top of using Google Maps to determine the accuracy of its rocket fire, Hizbollah skilfully leaked information, images and video streams of the conflict zone via the internet, expertly integrating its social and mainstream media strategies. Several minutes after the successful targeting of Israel’s ‘Hanit’ warship, Hassan Nasrallah was on air on the pro-Hizbollah Lebanese television station Al Manar describing the attack in detail. Images of the missile assault were then released on Al Manar and crucially on YouTube. Luddites by comparison, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) floundered for a full day before dropping leaflets and (pointlessly) jamming Al Manar’s images of the incident.

Israel’s reaction to the patent failures in 2006 was to stand up the National Information Directorate to address ‘hasbara’ or explanation. As a result, during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in December 2008 the IDF posted 46 videos on its own YouTube channel. Illustrating the IDF delivering aid and Hamas launching rocket attacks, the videos received 6.5 million views and could have helped the Israelis garner international support. That worldwide public opinion turned against the IDF was due to the refusal to allow traditional media outlets into Gaza throughout the operation, thus rendering all of Israel’s news releases subject to criticism as biased. Rather than an error in its use of social media, in this instance the IDF was guilty of failing to integrate its social media and overall communications strategies.

With the right mindset, however, state militaries can, and indeed must, adapt to the new social media environment, as research at the US Naval Postgraduate School indicates. Social media can dramatically improve the coordination of partners within a multi-lateral intervention that may involve various national forces and humanitarian aid agencies. With information superiority now a critical battle-winning asset, the speed with which social media facilitates the transferral of key data to those that need it most would greatly enhance the operational capability of a particular force as Vice Admiral N. Brown testifies: [social networking] “made it much easier for me to manage the critical information I needed.” Admittedly, a pre-cursor to the successful exploitation of social media is a significant cultural change within the military, from a “need to know” to “need to share” policy on information-sharing, accompanied by the discarding of rigid hierarchical operational structures.   While this challenge is daunting, it is not to be shirked- as we can be sure that those that seek to subvert our security will not give up on the new technologies available to them so easily.

Patrick Underwood and Howard Welser ‘The Internet is Here: Emergent Coordination and Innovation of Protest Forms in Digital Culture’, iConference 2011, February 8-11, 2011, Seattle, WA, USA

Jeffrey G. Bennington and Ryan H. King, ‘Perceptions on Social Networking: A study on their operational relevance for the Navy’, March 2010, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California.

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