Military using social media to connect to terrorists

The United States military is using social media to infiltrate terrorist networks, The Guardian reports.

U.S. Central Command awarded a contract to a California-based software company to develop an "online persona management service" that troops will use to control Facebook and Twitter profiles, the British newspaper reports.

CENTCOM, which runs the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wants the software to help troops create and maintain realistic online profiles to infiltrate terrorist chat groups and message boards.

"The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable CENTCOM to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US," CENTCOM spokesman Bill Speaks said.