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US officials must monitor, learn from use of Web 2.0 in Mumbai
By WDavidStephenson | November 26, 2008
Once again, the first news of the Mumbai attacks came not through the media, but through Twitter. India is extremely sophisticated in use of mobile devices, probably more so than is the case in the US, and many Indians are active users of Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and other mobile social networks. It’s imperative that US officials closely track how Indians are using these services during the continuing attacks, and try to glean ideas on how they could be adapted to the US.
I can’t stress enough: people can and will use these devices and apps in a terrorist attack, so it is imperative that officials start telling us what kind of information would be relevant from Twitter, Flickr, etc. (and, BTW, what shouldn’t be spread: one Twitter user in Mumbai tweeted me that people were sending the exact location of people still in the hotels, and could tip off the terrorists) and that they begin to monitor these networks in disasters, terrorist attacks, etc.
Technorati tags: homeland security networked homeland security homeland security 2.0 War on Terror terrorism antiterrorism Al-Qaeda crowd-sourcing wisdom of crowds crowdsourcing smart mobs swarm intelligence emergent behavior mobile social networks Mumbai India collaboration
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