I know this is an old story but i just stumbled across it. It is fascinating.
Journalism student James Karl Buck tweeted one word and got rescued from an Egyptian jail.
Buck, a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Mahalla, Egypt, covering an anti-government protest when he and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested April 10.
On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter.
The message only had one word. "Arrested."
Within seconds, colleagues in the United States and his blogger-friends in Egypt — the same ones who had taught him the tool only a week earlier — were alerted that he was being held.
I find it very interesting how new technologies and forms of comunications are used to counteract the entrenched "powers that be."