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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."
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.
Per this article (http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/6698137-how-abducted-reporter-kosuke-tsuneoka-used-twitter-while-in-captivity) they released him because was muslim... So his tweets had nothing to do with anything....
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.
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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.
They were right. Good Luck!
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.
Well, it says "in part" because he was a Muslim. Probably more in part due to the Japanese government knowing exactly where he was being held so they could apply pressure accordingly. It's not random that a guy goes missing on April 1st, makes a few help me tweets on September 3rd and is then released a day or so later.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
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?
Spaceballs-ish.
Evil will always triumph over good. Because good is dumb.
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