[Air-L] Evolution of the Wikipedia page on the attacks in, Mumbai

[Julian Hopkins]

> "The terrorists were probably following eye-witness tweets and Flickr 
photo streams during the Mumbai attacks."

Actually, I very much doubt the terrorists had time to check Flickr and
Twitter accounts, or even to watch television (though that is more possible,
seeing as there would be televisions in every room). What is somewhat
possible is that associates on the outside could be sending them updates,
pictures, etc. gleaned from the internet. However, they may worry about
communications being traced back...

These communication possibilities must surely be on the minds of
counter-terrorist operatives, and one possibility would probably be to have
some sort of mobile jamming device for mobile phones to bring to such
locations - but then they also face the risk of cutting off useful
communications from hostages and the like. Such devices already exist, and
apparently helped save Musharraf's life when a bomb was not able to be
detonated by a mobile device.

Long-term, one can easily imagine certain locations having mobile-phone
jamming devices - I think they exist in some cinemas already, and I can
imagine some lecturers wouldn't mind having them in lecture halls :) On the
downside, they could also be used very effectively to disrupt dissent and
mobilisation - one can imagine the Burmese authorities would love to get
their hands on something like that.

Cheers,

Julian

++++++++++
Blog: www.julianhopkins.net
Skype: julhop
IM: jfprhopkins at hotmail.com



Message: 1
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 16:22:20 -0800
From: Larry Press <lpress at csudh.edu>
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Evolution of the Wikipedia page on the attacks
	in, Mumbai
To: "air-l at listserv.aoir.org" <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Message-ID: <4931DCBC.2070406 at csudh.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"; format=flowed

> And the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel , usually quite positive about
> digital media (the website is the no 1 on political news in Germany)
> criticizes the quality of the citizen journalists and writes about

Have you got a link to this?

> Another topic to think about : the need of having eye witnesses and
> instant explanations in the press:

This reminds me of the 1991 Soviet coup attempt, during which my 
colleagues and I used USENET News to keep information flowing into and 
out of Russia.  ABC requested an interview at the time, but to have 
granted it might have compromised the position of our Russian networking 
colleagues.

The terrorists were probably following eye-witness tweets and Flickr 
photo streams during the Mumbai attacks.

Larry