I follow TechCrunch's Micheal Arrington tweets. Yesterday, he posted this entry about a UC Berkeley graduate journalism student, James Karl Buck, who was arrested on April 10 without any charges in Egypt for photographing a demonstration. He used his mobile phone to twitter the message “Arrested” to his 48 followers, who contacted UC Berkeley, the US Embassy and a number of press organizations on his behalf.
He was released the next day. It sounds like he was detained rather than arrested since it looks like he was able to use his cell phone. This shows the power of this technology in an emergency, especially when travelling. He could have sent a text message to one person, but by sending the SMS to twitter he reached 48.
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