Daily Times

Sir: Bombs and guns aside, a smartphone can be a powerful weapon in the hands of a terrorist — but it can also provide intelligence services with the tools to track them down.

Three years ago to the day, the Paris attacks of November 13, 2015 remain one of the best known examples of a large-scale assault that could not have been planned without phones.

The Islamic State militant group gunmen and bombers who struck the Bataclan concert hall and other nightlife spots used them extensively to coordinate the carnage, said a former French anti-terrorist official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Just before entering the Bataclan, where they massacred 90 people, the attackers had sent a text message to accomplices in Belgium: “We´re going ahead. It´s started.”

But if smartphones have been a “game-changer” for militants, their use by the world´s extremists goes much further back than the Paris attacks.

“As of 2003, in Iraq, home-made bombs started being set off by the sending of an SMS as American convoys drove past. This caught on and was then repeatedly used by Al-Qaeda,” the ex-official told AFP.

These days, encrypted apps such as Telegram, Wire and WhatsApp can help militant communicate while evading police tracking — or at least complicate efforts to decode their messages.

For several years IS has published online tutorials in several languages explaining to militants how to choose the best software to evade detection in war zones.

For new recruits in developing countries, where smartphones are more common than computers, there are different strategies still.

“Phones are no longer phones — they´re computers,” said Laurent Heslault, director of security strategies at Symantec, a security group.

“They are far more powerful than what we had on our desks 10 years ago,” he added.

They have more computing power, more memory and connection capabilities. So, smart phones are very dangerous for us

SHAMEEM KHUDA BAKHSH

Karachi

Published in Daily Times, November 14^th 2018.