"Iraqi militants who kidnapped an Australian reporter in Baghdad and threatened to kill him "Googled" his name on the Internet to investigate his work before releasing him unharmed, the journalist's executive producer said Tuesday," reports Associated Press.
"John Martinkus, the first Australian confirmed as having been held hostage in Iraq, was seized early Saturday and held for nearly 24 hours before being freed. His executive producer at Australia's SBS network, Mike Carey, said the Internet... likely saved Martinkus.
""They checked on him to see if he was who he said he was," Carey told The Associated Press. "They Googled him and then went onto a Web site — either his own or his book publisher's Web site, I don't know which one — and saw that he was who he was, and that was instrumental in letting him go, I think, or swinging their decision."
The only hostile environment I'm planning on visiting soon is a pub in Hackney, but better make sure I've still got the top ranking on my own name... just in case.
