Some of the early reports of the disaster that happened in Mumbai was over Twitter, a social networking service that focuses on short (140 character) messages that can be updated to your network over phone or email.  Early photos could be found on the Flicker photo hosting service (the same was true for the London train bombings of 7/7).  By now it’s clear that Web 2.0 tools are being used to communicate quickly as things are happening, or in the case of one Berkeley student arrested in Egypt, to communicate things that would otherwise be drowned out by other things.

A question worth considering (for good or bad) is whether or not this traffic could be monitored in a way that maintains privacy while perhaps providing an early notification that something is happening and first responders and other relevant agencies need to be notified.  I recognize this opens a can (or more) of worms, given recent problems with warrantless surveillance.  Perhaps there can be some kind of generic message traffic analysis (maybe using the Twitter search function) for these kinds of messages paralleling traffic analysis in other media.  I offer no answers here, but feel confident in suggesting that new networking technologies will attract attention for monitoring purposes, even for tracking the flu.