[EAS] Saved by Google
pjk
pjk at design.eng.yale.edu
Tue Oct 26 11:52:28 EDT 2004
Subject: Saved by Google
(from NewsScan Daily, 21 October 2004)
GOOGLE SEARCH HELPS SET KIDNAPPED JOURNALIST FREE
Iraqi militants who kidnapped and threatened to kill an
Australian journalist did a Google search for his name on the
Internet to check his work before releasing him unharmed. John
Martinkus, a veteran freelancer who has covered conflicts from East
Timor to Iraq, was released Tuesday, a day after he was taken
hostage by Sunni militants and ex-Iraqi army officers. Martinkus
was filming a report for SBS's Dateline program and was preparing
to leave Iraq when he was grabbed outside a hotel popular with
foreign correspondents. SBS executive producer Mike Carey today said
the journalist's captors had investigated his background online and
saw he was harmless. "They Googled him, they checked him out on a
popular search engine and got onto his own website or his
publisher's website and saw he was a writer and journalist," Carey
said. "They had thought he was working for the Americans as an
informer." In this case, modern technology probably saved his life,
he said. "It certainly did help," Carey said. (The Age 20 Oct 2004)
rec'd from John Lamp
<http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/20/1097951730538.html>
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