Slashdot Mirror
Journalist Tricked Captors Into Twitter Access
itwbennett writes "Kosuke Tsuneoka, a Japanese freelance journalist held captive in Afghanistan since April 1, was released over the weekend. His freedom came a day after he sent two Twitter messages from a captor's phone. 'i am still allive [sic], but in jail,' read a message sent at 1:15 p.m. GMT on Friday. It was followed a few minutes later with a second message, also in English, that read, 'here is archi in kunduz. in the jail of commander lativ.' The message referred to the Dasht-e-Archi district of Kunduz where he was being held. On Tuesday, speaking in Tokyo, Tsuneoka revealed how he managed to convince his captors to give him access to the Internet. 'He asked me if I knew how to use it, so I had a look and explained it to him,' said Tsuneoka. 'I called the customer care number and activated the phone,' he said."
"I don't think they realize they were tricked," he said.
The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Step 1: Tweet
Step 2: ???
Step 3: FREEDOM!
Twitter, instead of, you know, email. Because it's more likely to be real.
I thought prisoners were only allowed one phone call in jail!
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
I don't think his captors were aware of the tweets he made.
That is some Odysseus-grade cunning right there. You've done your species proud. Please have lots of grandkids and then tell them about this repeatedly.
It's not spelled out, but it's in the article:
Simple social engineering, he befriended the guard, and showed the guard how to better use his "keys".
All that said, I agree it's still a leap of faith to conclude that the Twitter access freed the journalist... for all we know, he was already on the way out by way of negotiations with the captors, and the Twitter incident was ... incidental to the real release reasons. Poorly written article indeed.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
"...his captors were [not] aware of the CONTENT OF THE tweets he made."
They thought he was helping THEM. He was helping himself.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
The low ranking soldier that he managed to trick did not know how to use his fancy new phone; had only heard of the internet and didn't know how to use it or what it was capable of; and had certainly never heard of twitter before. The low ranking soldier had no idea that the prisoner just sent messages to the entire world while showing him "how to use the internet". The low ranking soldier was probably instructed not to let the prisoner make any calls, and as far as he knew he didn't.
You could say "how is this trickery if he did it right in front of the guard?" and to you I would say "the best magicians do their tricks right in front of their audience"
...how was he actually rescued? I see correlation between his tweets and his release but no causation.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
Is this a subtle joke that went over my head? And if not, who modded this garbage "insightful"?
The "trick" is explained in the story (note: while slashdot summaries are often atrocious, summaries are not expected to contain all of the information.) He didn't trick them into giving him access to the internet (nor does it say anywhere that he did) but rather tricked them into letting him use twitter.
Twitter was how he communicated that a) he was alive and being held captive, and b) where he was. If that had no role in his release, this was a remarkable coincidence after more than 5 months of his disappearance.
*waves hand in front of someone* I am the rightful owner of this userid and password. Now THAT would be tricking someone if it worked. :)
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
Mr. Tsuneoka, the last thing we need is more confusion about the Internet, especially amongst new users. Please stop spreading misinformation, and apologize to those you've misled! In the future, give only meaningful, accurate information to help users understand what's going on. Explain that Twitter is a social network that allows users to reach many the general public, rather than just journalists. Help educate the world!
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
1031'6"E, 4155'2"N.
You've got me going around in circles...
http://michaelsmith.id.au
If I ask you for your userid and password, did I get them by tricking you? NO.
Well that depends. If you said you needed it to fix a problem with my fstab (or clean up my registry for winxp users or whatever), but actually what you did was install a rootkit, then yes, you tricked me into giving you my password.
If a journalist says they're just going to help their jailer activate their phone, but then uses it to send for help, then they tricked their captor.
The real Kilgore Trout would have a more expansive definition of "trick" than the needlessly narrow one you are using, and especially not one that presumed it can't be a trick if the one being tricked would have to be dumber than a box of rocks to fall for it.
The enemies of Democracy are
The phone, a Nokia N70
That's a Symbian smartphone. Disclaimer: this info was based off what the journalist said.
There seems to be a lot of doubt spreading 'round. I'm not sure what motives there are, however. The Afghani scumbag certainly didn't have any motive to play along with the stunt.
Please help metamoderate.
Who knew that if you are having a heart attack or in a Taliban prison that Twitter is now the only thing you need.
Thanks Slashdot!
They were right. Good Luck!
I agree it's still a leap of faith to conclude that the Twitter access freed the journalist...
How much VC funding has twitter spent? $50M or so? Gotta get some good press out there in order to recoup that investment.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
And to think so many people devalue the benefits of jailbreaking...
Oh, and you losers in Gurgaon...
Thanks! Good job! We love ya!
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
How many more journalist will you get killed by putting these stories on /.?
Yes, I find it humorous that some Taliban soldiers don't actually know what the internet is.
It makes me wonder about all the other modern advancements they are unaware of. Space craft? Aircraft carriers? Oprah? No wonder they are so willing to fight a war against enemies who have such vast amounts of technology at their disposal. If they knew how disadvantaged they were, maybe they would just stop.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
...how was he actually rescued? I see correlation between his tweets and his release but no causation.
Its just a coincidence that someone who was released had previously sent out a tweet. My understanding from reading elsewhere (yahoo news) is that the ransom was *not* paid. However since the victim was a muslim the kidnappers felt they could not kill him, so they let him go.
Twitter was used for something useful! Stop the presses!!!!
Tricking his captors into letting him send a Tweet is nothing compared to tricking VC's into giving twitter $50M.
"If I ask you for your userid and password, did I get them by tricking you?"
If I gave them to you when you asked, you did not get the password and username by tricking me. But if I wasn't aware of the potential consequences of doing so, I am tricked into doing something I shouldn't have done.
The Afghani soldier just got a Westerner to activate an internet-enabled Symbian smartphone for him.
Depending on whereslashdot's failed to distinguish UTF-8, that's either in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the coast of Italy or on a glacier near the Chinia/Mongolia border. Either way dude, slashdot's a US-centric site, so don't expect us to be much help.
Gee yeah! So Star Wars is real, right? (Get out of your basement more, sparky)
The guy says in TFA that he quite explicitly explained what the effect of him posting something on Twitter would be:
"They asked what that was. And I told them that if you write something on it, then you can reach many Japanese journalists. So they said, 'try it'."
So then, where's the trick, again?
The point I was making is that the reason the article's logic, what rsborg called "a leap of faith," is so poor is that twitter needs to be seen as something more than just a bunch of twits - that the article may even be the result of pay-for-play to promote the company as something more important and valuable than it really is.
It's like saying "Suits are back!"
Funny thing, your oddly moderated woooosh! of a post would fit in twitter's 140 character limit.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Good minions and henchmen are SO hard to find these days....
I find it humorous that some American soldiers don't actually know who Allah is.
It makes me wonder about all the other parts of the Koran they are unaware of.
That all sounds nice and sensitive and empathetic, but how many other stone age mythologies should they study? Should they be knowledgeable of the differences between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam? Or the peculiarities of the Wahhabists or the Druze?
FYI, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Guru Granth Sahib, and Kitab Al Hikma are all sacred texts of large religious groups in Iraq/Afghanistan and their immediate vicinity (apart from the Torah, Old and New Testaments, and Koran). And this does not include other religions of the region which either lack canonical texts (Jainism) or for which multiple canonical texts exist (Buddhism). Also, the study of certain other ancient texts (e.g. Avesta, Book of Breathings) should be avoided, since knowledge of their content would prevent sympathetic attitudes towards some of the above-mentioned texts. American forces are posted in several states in Central Asia - how much do you know of the religions of that region?
IMHO, knowledge of local religions and their vitriolic schisms is as likely to harm as to help in soldiering.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I'm being held in the castle Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh!
Ah, reasoning and deduction from the Twitter generation.
dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
The alien grabs the laser pistol from hip of Captain America. "What is this strange device?" the alien mutters as he clumsily attempts to inspect it. "It's for cleaning your teeth", replies Captain America. "You point it towards your mouth and pull on the little lever." Profit. Enjoy.
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway This is the road to hell
Step 1: Download gay porn to phone
Step 2: Accuse phone owner of homosexuality.
Step 3: Volunteer to clean up the phone while your captors stone the phone owner.
Step 4: Read up on slashdot, dilbert, check facebook, solve an online sudoku, you have plenty of time (stoning is damn slow).
Step 5: Tweet your location
Step 6: ???
Step 7: FREEDOM!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Youth is more radical then their parents... youth just tend to the get confused about what radical means.
Radical ain't limited to the right... or even the left. Radical just means being extreme in your views. Unable to see the others point of view, convinced your point of view is not only the right one but everyone who disagrees is therefor wrong and unworthy of being listened to.
Youthful muslims are indeed more radical then their parents. BOTH ways. Some are strongly against the culture they got from home, others lean far more strongly towards it. Just as a young white person may be strongly socialist or strongly capitalist when their parents hover somewhere in between. Kids try to find their own identity and lack the capacity to moderate this. See german kids from well to do families joining the rotte armee faction (sorry for mispelling). Or young people hating environmentalism after it had an increase in popularity some years ago.
Go to any university and you will find plenty of extremes and very few moderates. It is the passion of youth. Radical young muslims has nothing to do with the qualities of Al Quada's recruitment. It is young people seeking their own identity without wisdom of the years to see the danger in extremes. Any extremes. I remember well the hippies who idolized India and completely forgot to implement the kast system of their beloved new faith/world view.
No difference between some holier then thou muslim youth and some vegan fanatic who protests outside KFC or an anti-abortion nutter. All these groups bring forth terrorists.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBbAZVw3_7A
Thought thinks itself.
Tricking his captors into letting him send a Tweet is nothing compared to tricking VC's into giving twitter $50M.
You're right: his captors had guns.
"They asked what that was. And I told them that if you write something on it, then you can reach many Japanese journalists. So they said, 'try it'."
So then, where's the trick, again?
The part where he used twitter to do something useful. That was quite a trick.
Heck, if they're playing WoW 18 hours a day there won't be any time left for them to plan to blow people up or kidnap them.
I'm a bit late to this story (read it yesterday), but here's a link to the Mainichi Daily News which has an article on the same subject. I did not read the IT World article so I don't know how much overlap there is.
Mainichi news article.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The guy says in TFA that he quite explicitly explained what the effect of him posting something on Twitter would be:
"They asked what that was. And I told them that if you write something on it, then you can reach many Japanese journalists. So they said, 'try it'."
So then, where's the trick, again?
Making reaching many journalists seem like a good idea to his captors without shitting himself or getting shot?
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
That depends. If you ask me for my banking ID & password so you can deposit money, and instead you clean me out, then you tricked me.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Wow, it's a historic moment - the first actually useful message ever sent on Twitter. And the first one anyone ever cared about.