Not every terrorist is an evil genius.
A disgruntled New Zealander who joined the Islamic State in Syria issued a string of Twitter messages from various locations within the country — and left his phone's geographic tagging feature switched on, allowing an intelligence firm to track his movements,
Mediaite reports.
Mark Taylor, tweeting under the handle of Kiwi Jihadi,
apparently realized his error and deleted the posts this month, but not before a private Canadian firm that reports on terrorism saved all 45 of the geo-tagged messages and
listed each one by location.
"It’s a rookie social media mistake and one that intelligence and law enforcement agencies pray for when tracking criminals," Jeff R. Weyers, wrote for the intelligence analysis firm iBRABO, which discovered that Taylor was broadcasting his location via Twitter from October to December.
"Taylor isn’t the first jihadist to broadcast his whereabouts via social media," writes Weyers, "and in fact looking at the battlefield in Syria we see fighters from Canada, France, and other western countries making the same mistake."
Taylor's movements appear to correspond with some of the Islamic State's documented activities in Syria, and his tweets provide potential evidence against him if he is ever captured or attempts to return home, Weyers writes.
A deliberate homecoming seems unlikely, Weyers noted, as one of Taylor's latest tweets proclaims himself "here to stay in IS."
And while he's no longer blowing his cover with every tweet, he is still providing useful information to investigators.
"Even examining his most recent [T]witter photo update, Taylor shows again his lack of understanding of technology and intelligence as he broadcast out the facial image of another fighter captured in the background of his photo," writes Weyers.
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