Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 14.2
Chart of ALOHA HFS case
On the evening of December 6, ALOHA (tentative name), a junior high school
student, tweeted that he had obtained an illegal copy of a game just after its release.
The next morning (December 7), ALOHA tweeted that he could not boot the file
and asked how to boot the file at a popular Japanese question and answer website. In
a short time, an interested individual found ALOHA's tweet and posted a thread
about ALOHA on 2channel, Japan's largest BBS complex which has an enormous
number of users. At this point, the HFS began.
Several hours later, some platforms reported ALOHA on the basis of ALOHA's
thread on 2channel. Around noon, a news website JAWS (tentative name) reported
ALOHA with screenshots of his tweets and his blog. After that, another news
website HAWK (tentative name) reported ALOHA's story and then a comment
on HAWK provided ambiguous information about ALOHA's place of residence.
On 2channel, the main stage of ALOHA's HFS, the HFS made progress in a
short period of time. On the day the HFS started, HFS participants found ALOHA's
other posts on a video sharing site and identified images of ALOHA. Additionally,
they extrapolated information about ALOHA's school. However, they could not
identify information about his school until next morning. Later, HFS participants
extrapolated information about which junior high school ALOHA attended, based
on the content of his blog and tweets. They shared a large amount of credible
information but no identified information about ALOHA was available until the
early morning of December 8.
On December 11, an individual went to a location where ALOHA took after-
school lessons to investigate ALOHA, and another individual made contact with
acquaintances of ALOHA using SNS. As a result, facts about ALOHA, including
his real name, were identified on December 12. Then, students who attended the
