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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!
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.
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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
*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
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...
Or to every address in my contact list.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Beyond the obvious fact that he may not have a web mail account, Twitter is a pretty smart choice. He was trying to broadcast to the world that he was alive. If he quickly sent an email to one or two people, it could have been lost or overlooked in a dozen ways. By getting a tweet through he was assured that all of his followers would see it.
I'd say he may have found the one instance where tweeting is actually a really good idea.
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.
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.
Yes, when you get a hold of some guy's phone for a couple minutes, you are going to set up your email account, log in, remember the email addresses of your friends, and send them mail.
Or you can go on twitter and leave a message that all your followers will see. And no, if you have been missing for months and suddenly post a message, they are not going to think "nah, this is twitter, it's probably fake, we'll just ignore this".
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?
Oh come one, SOMEONE is bound to have hotmail.
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.
"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.
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
Good explanation. I could imagine his family's spam folder being filled with
X Not Spam -- Get fr33 v1@gr@ n0w!
X Not Spam -- i am still allive, but in jail
X Not Spam -- She w@nt your r0d!
X Not Spam -- here is archi in kunduz. in the jail of commander lativ.