"Is anyone in Kabul hearing booms and pop-pop of gunfire? Or is it just me?" This was one of first tweets about the January 18th terrorist attacks in the heart of the capital of Afghanistan.

Crafting an effective strategy to productively involve the general public in homeland security should center on two technologies: mobile communication devices and Web 2.0 social media.

When deadly riots broke out in China last week, the Chinese government sprang into message control mode. It choked off the Internet, blocked Twitter, and deleted updates and videos from social networking sites. At the same time, it invited foreign journalists to take a tour of the area. The Chinese have clearly learned the lessons of Iran. READ MORE Shattering the Right vs. Left Prism Once Again: The Wall Street Journal Goes After Goldman and the Bank Bailout Even the capitalist Bible is taking shots at Wall Street darling Goldman Sachs. We've now reached the point where the only people defending the administration's Wall Street policies are the people benefiting from them -- or their good friends, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. READ MORE

For better and for worse, America's technology companies have a demonstrated record of driving crucial foreign policy outcomes, and Washington must make it known when it believes a foreign cause is just.

Social networking sites and blogs are naturally emotional and subjective, but a healthy democracy needs also to have a dispassionate journalism that is able to question the motives of sources.

In the past week or so, a meme has circulated on the Web: "Tiananmen + Twitter = Tehran." But it's not just about the so-called "Twitter Revolution." ...

A Nobel Peace Prize? For delaying a scheduled maintenance to keep the information flowing? I'm trying to imagine how that commemorative statue looks on the National Mall and I'm just not seeing it.

At the same time that Twitter and Facebook facilitate grass-roots communications, though, these technologies sow the seeds for future political repression.