World Other Press Newswire Archive

Yesterday, demonstrators in Ramallah surrounded a United Nations building in Ramallah to demand attention to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

At 7:30 AM, about 25 youth activists reportedly blocked access into and out of the UN Ramallah Common Premises building. Later reports indicate upwards of 40 demonstrators involved in this morning’s action. A few minutes into the action, the hashtag #UNclosed began to trend worldwide on Twitter.

A new study by the Mediterranean Council for Intelligence Studies’ (MCIS) 2012 Intelligence Studies Yearbook points to the use of social media as “the new cutting edge in open-source tactical intelligence collection”. IntelNews.org’s Joseph Fitsanakis, who co-authored the study, reports:

We explain that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a host of other social networking platforms are increasingly viewed by intelligence agencies as invaluable channels of information acquisition. We base our findings on three recent case studies, which we believe highlight the intelligence function of social networking. (Joseph Fitsanakis, Research: Spies increasingly using Facebook, Twitter to gather data, intelNews.org, February 13, 2012)