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TechnoratiMen Arrested for G-20 Twittering say It's Free Speech
Those two concepts converged during the G-20 summit, when state police arrested two New York men for using Twitter to inform protesters in Pittsburgh about the movements of local officers.
![[A line of policemen blocks the street during a protest march during the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania September 25, 2009. Police have arrested two New York men for using Twitter to inform protesters in Pittsburgh about the movements of local officers.(REUTERS/Eric Thayer)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/g20_tweets.jpg "g20_tweets.jpg")
They are accused of hindering apprehension, criminal use of communication facility and possessing instruments of crime. The charges raise questions about the use of technology in areas where the First Amendment and potential criminal activity converge.
"Anyone can tweet, but the truth is, sometimes speech can be criminal," said John Burkoff, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
The charges came to light late last week when an attorney for self-described anarchist Elliot Madison filed a motion in federal court in New York asking for the return of much of the evidence seized during a 16-hour FBI search. Agents arrived at the man's Queens residence at 6 a.m. Thursday to investigate potential violations of "federal rioting laws."
Several people live in the house, Mr. Madison's lawyer said, and much of the material taken did not belong to his client.
While there were many potentially relevant items seized -- gas masks, computers, corked glass vials, beakers and test tubes -- there were lots of likely irrelevant materials seized, as well -- posters of a cat and another of Curious George, photographs of Karl Marx and Lenin, along with MP3 players.
Also taken were files of Mr. Madison's clients. He is a social worker in Manhattan and has two master's degrees.
Attorney Martin R. Stolar describes his clients, Elliot and Elena Madison, as "political activists dealing with social justice issues as well as paralegal support workers for those contemplating political action and those arrested as a result of political demonstration activity."
Elena Madison is not charged in the case but is one of the plaintiffs requesting return of the seized items.
They work as part of a confederation known as The Peoples' Law Collective.
According to a criminal complaint filed against Mr. Madison, Pennsylvania State Police served a search warrant on Room 238 of the Carefree Inn on Kisow Drive in Kennedy early in the afternoon of Sept. 24. It was the first day of the G-20 summit and also the day set for unsanctioned protests in Lawrenceville.
In the motel room, police discovered Mr. Madison and Michael Wallschlaeger sitting in front of personal computers listening to both police and EMS scanners.
They were using headphones, microphones and maps to alert protesters about the movements of law enforcement, the complaint said. They sent the information out via cell phones and Twitter.
"Investigating the government and broadcasting information about it would seem to be constitutionally protected communication," said Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union. "If the police want to communicate privately, there are certainly ways to do that, and police radios are not one of those.
"How can it be a crime? It's not a secure communication."
But Mr. Burkoff said that it's one thing to listen to police information and even to share it. It's another, though, to provide it to someone for potentially criminal purposes.
"Were they sending it to people simply to protest, or to commit further crimes?" he asked.
To earn a conviction, prosecutors will have to show that Mr. Madison and Mr. Wallschlaeger were assisting criminal activity.
"It begs the question of both timing and what the people were doing when they received [the information]," Mr. Burkoff said.
Given the timing of the arrests -- the criminal complaint lists 3:25 p.m. -- Mr. Walczak noted that Mr. Madison could not have been aiding the few people who destroyed property in Oakland during the G-20, because that happened later in the day.
Indeed, the court filing specifically notes that the underlying crime Mr. Madison was assisting was the protesters' failure to disperse.
"Are they plotting against world leaders?" Mr. Walczak asked. "I find so much of what happened the last two weeks mystifying. The response seems so disproportionate to the threat."
Mr. Burkoff has not heard of police making arrests based on the use of Twitter before.
He noted that the American government encouraged the use of the social networking program for people protesting elections in Iran earlier this year.
"We tend to applaud the use of Twitter when it's in Iran and protests we like," he said. "But we're much more nervous about it when it's protests we don't like."
Mr. Walczak questioned the constitutionality of the charges, as well as their necessity.
"I guess if you have 5,000 police officers and a quarter-million dollars in fancy equipment, you have to do something with it," he said. "Might as well go after some amateur ham radio operators in a motel room."
82 Comments so far
Show AllPAULA REED WARD, PITTSBURGH POST GAZETTE:
"The quick evolution of technology has changed the way Americans do almost everything, including how law enforcement combats crime, and consequently, how criminals elude law enforcement."
WHO ARE THE "CRIMINALS"? THE PEOPLE ON THE STREET? YOU HAVE LABELLED THEM AS "CRIMINALS"?
ALSO, WHO MADE THE "CRIMINAL COMPLAINT"?
AND WERE ALL 5000 STATE POLICE OR ANY BLACKWATER?
HOW ABOUT DOING SOME REAL REPORTING?
I FIND THE ARTICLE, THE WHOLE SITUATION TO BE A VIOLATION OF FREE SPEECH AND THE RIGHT TO PROTEST.
I applaud you for asking these questions.
If Blackwater is being used to assault Americans and bypass accountability their will be hell to pay!
Well, normally this whole case would have boiled down to scanner laws. Some states make it illegal to divulge information heard over a scanner to another party.
However, in this particular case, it seems both the state AND the FBI decided to 'throw the book' at the defendant and set an example.
Surely, "possessing instruments of crime" is quite the stretch.
look...
civilization as anyone knew it or knows it is crashing --
you don't need a mayan calendar to know this; however,
if you just sit down with a pencil and paper and jot down the indicators -- choose them yourself -- and then look it over --
what other rational conclusion is there?
does that mean give up and just smoke dope all day?
i don't think so -- i think protest equals caring --
saving the humanity within ourselves, in all the various ways that can be done, counts for something
"...i think protest equals caring --
saving the humanity within ourselves, in all the various ways that can be done, counts for something"
thank you for this post...beautifully said.
It's disgraceful that police prevent public assembly and speech, violating Constitutionally protected rights. Citizens are treated like criminals and are spied upon in advance. However, we see the same police tactics at just about every political event these days.
Surely, city officials - who will end up defending the city in the ensuing lawsuits - understand these problems from the beginning. So what does this all mean?
It means the police state trumps Constitutional rights. It's deemed acceptable for the city to pay out a little damage money (public funds) to keep the pressure going.
The corruption isn't just with Washington, D.C. It extends to every local police department, and every local city government. When you think of that, it's really quite astonishing what little remains of the republic. Simple reforms, even if possible, can't fix this fucked up system.
-TIA
"However, we see the same police tactics at just about every political event these days." Except the Faux News sponsered "tea parties!" Thank you Cindy and our brave citizens who have the courage to speak to power!
Welcome to AmeriKKKa!!!
"Men Arrested for G-20 Twittering say It's Free Speech" It is! Or at least it was in America. Welcome to AmeriKKKa!!!
The irony, or more like hypocrisy...the US gov't and corporate media praised the use of Twitter messages by protesters against Iraq's 'rigged' election as a modern tool for democracy...how dare Americans use it to express free speech rights in this country.
You mean Iran?
I guess the govt no likey use of intelligence techniques (open source ones at that) against it.
Oh no Vernn this is what we have been and still getting worse!
"photographs of Karl Marx and Lenin..."
This story is frickin unbelievable, this country is officially FUBAR!
Yes, and the cat picture taken by the authorities was no doubt the famous mascot of anarcho-syndicalism, the black sab-cat!
No doubt if there were pictures of Joe Hill or the late Utah Phillips thay would have taken that as evidence also.
You go, you brave twitterers! It's the best use of that technology I've ever heard of!
Where are the right wingers, who rant and scream about civil liberties and the Constitution?
Why don't you give up all your liberty so you can be free... Putz!
Why do you right wingers only rant and scream about civil liberties when it comes to guns? When it comes to everything else, you not only say nothing, you even support the repression of civil liberties.
Stop watching the MSM with the left right BS my friend this is about yours, mine, our children, all of us. Turn off the TV. Our rights are being destroyed by the Washington Republicrats. Both sides have put us on this path and both are pressing on the accelerator.
If we don't stand up there will be nothing left for future generations.
I agree that many civil rights are being infringed on. I agree that attempts at gun control are attempts to infringe on civil liberties.
Some questions for you:
Do you agree that attempting to restrict the rights of LGBT people is an infringement of civil rights?
Do you agree that the War on Drugs is an infringement of civil rights?
Do you agree that the Patriot Act is a a gross infringement of civil rights?
What is LGBT?
The War on Drugs is a gross destruction of our liberties as free individuals should be free to put in their bodies what ever they choose as long as it doesn't harm others. The War on Drugs (perpetual war to milk the citizens for more and more money to militarize our police) was the precursor to writing the disgusting War on Terror (perpetual war to milk the citizens for more and more military spending).
The Patriot Act is the most unpatriotic legislation that was never read and is the single most destructive bill against our liberty. Remember just this year the Patriot Act was used 97% of the time for domestic crime not TERRORISM.
What did all those people who died for this country die for? Freedom.
Got much left?
What are we going to do about it?
LGBTs: lesbians, gays, bis, transsexuals.
I heartily agree. I think the libertarians--who, incidentally, were quite worked up about the abuses in Pittsburgh--should be the natural allies of the anarchist left. And by "anarchist" I don't mean window-smashing, but decentralizing and antiauthoritarian. I don't have much use for self-styled "liberals," who identify too closely with the system for my liking. I think the true radical left has more in common with the libertarian right than with them. And, in any case, as you imply, in the stifling political atmosphere of the USA, where there isn't even a remote chance of an alternative political philosophy emerging under the current system, these distinctions of "right" and "left" are meaningless. If enough people came together and rejected the system wholesale, then some traditionally "left" and "right" positions could perhaps be worked out. As things now stand, however, it is best for those who are fed up with the status quo to find common cause. Ending the wars based on lies and the rapacious "service economy" would be a good place to start.
My criticism of the silence of the right, on Pittsburgh, on the Patriot Act, on legalisation of drugs, on LGBT rights, is actually from a (leftist) libertarian viewpoint.
Libertarian does not equal right wing. There are leftist libertarians, libertarian socialists, too; basically what you call anarchist, ie opposing authoritarianism in all its forms. Noam Chomsky is a libertarian socialist.
My problem with right wing libertarians is that they are suspicious only of concentration of (federal) government power. They are perfectly fine with concentration of power, with authoritarianism, in corporations, in churches, in state governments. It isn't only (federal) governments that can be enemies of civil liberties. Right wing libertarians appear to perfectly fine with corporations or religion / the church or state / local governments that repress civil liberties. Furthermore, they only complain when a (small) subset of civil liberties are being repressed. Do you see right wing libertarians saying a thing when people are trying to restrict the civil liberties of LGBTs? How often do you see you right wing libertarians complaining about the War on Drugs?
Putting all that aside, as to working out traditional left and right positions, I've a suggestion: ask a right winger what s/he thinks about universal health care; about public education, especially about public university education; about minimum wages; about taxes, especially on corporations; about laws to restrict the power of corporations. Try to reconcile left and right positions.
I disagree. Libertarians believe in the protection of individual liberty. Our original form of government was a Republic which is just that a small central government with other state governments who freely chose to be a part of it. Libertarian completely disagree with corporations being able to influence government more than the People. Libertarians also think the War on Drugs is unconstitutional and have been against it since the start.
What if it is a state government that is repressing civil liberties? Or for that matter, what if it is a city government that is repressing civil liberties?
". Libertarian completely disagree with corporations being able to influence government more than the People. "
OK. And how do you prevent corporations from being tyrannical, from being able to repress individual liberties?
Libertarians believe in the primacy of capitalism over everything else, left- anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists reject capitalism. So, I really don't see some common ground on civil liberty issues being near enough to bridge that gulf.
They were ranting and screaming about anarchists, even complaining about them being "armed with guns".
Really? Not that I've heard.
And if so, isn't that their God-given constitutional right, like it is to bring an AR-15 to a meeting on health care?
"could not have been aiding the few people who destroyed property in Oakland"
Property? Who cares about property? The less property I own, the better for me. The property laws begin to look a little fascist. Then they start to look a lot fascist. Anti-social. Anti-human. Anti-universal. Destructive. Oppressive. Protecting consumption addiction, consumption slavery. The property laws must be purged.
The question is, when does the legal community, the lawyers and judges, become less part of the solution and more part of the problem? Are they not mere borgs today, carrying out the agenda of a godzilla monster run amok? Our public servants take oaths, don't they? How long will the judges continue with business as usual, ruling on petty property prosecutions while massive corporate crimes including anti-trust violations, violations of international treaties and laws of the land that have crashed the soul of the nation and freaked out the entire planet go unprosecuted? At some point the legal community will have to choose sides.
It's time to Re-Boot Washington and all of it's (Add name here) Industrial Complex's. Nuff said~
I'm glad to see someone noting the utter hypocrisy of our leaders, commending the use of twitter by Iranian protestors (because they mean nothing but ill to Iran and its people) and criminalising it when American protestors employ the same techniques. But of course when the American establishment arrests, detains and charges dissidents, this isn't repression. How wonderful it is to be western and christian and so utterly free from any sin.
"the truth is, sometimes speech can be criminal"
The question is, WHEN is speech criminal? If you are only concerned about "upgrading" your lifestyle, a bigger house, a newer Lexus, you may find that the kind of speech that is criminalized is that which guards against the slippery slope of consumerism and the massive destruction at the bottom of that slope. And the kind of speech that is legalized is the siren song sung in the elite media at the bottom of the slope to draw you down into the swamp of consumption destruction to be a slimy slave to the machine, the production machine, owned and operated by extremely wealthy elites, your masters. Your speech is free down there, nobody can hear you. And you may not get out alive.
And, of course, you are always free to complain in the privacy of your home or other soundproof space.
Complaining to the choir on sites like CD is also allowed.
The "Ghostnet" virus mostly out of Chinese servers that hacked into government computers in 130 countries including the Dalai Lama was able to use the camera and microphones on the computers to spy on their owners.
Anything that impedes the grinding up of people in the empire's gears can be justified, by the emperor and his minions, as illegal - notwithstanding constitutionality, morality, sanity, rationality, or reality. What we've seen in the last 20 years or so is the narrowing of political free space in the US. It was made most obvious in Bush's 'free-speech zones' - literally fenced in areas where people were allowed to have free speech. Not very different from the behavior of other totalitarian states.
Authoritarian states merely want obedience from their populations. Totalitarian states want their hearts and minds as well and will copiously use censorship, lies, and propaganda to that end. With apologies to Kurt Vonnegut, Welcome to the monkey house.
Disgusting nazi hit piece on the first amendment... This isn't the America I grew up in. Sad...
what you expect in a system that economically exterminates more people that famous adolf did through gas chambers - street protest are immature and counterproductive - when will we start thinking about democratization and specific issues like right to work and right to decision making instead of writing blank checks for elected officials
edweg
Those rights will only become a reality through street protests - specifically ones sufficiently large and disruptive as to threaten business as usual until they accede to our demands. Yes, people will get killed.
We have been unable to get anything near the required numbers yet - but the day will come.
Your viewpoint is stunningly ahistorical. Please name a single liberation, freedom or rights movement that was successful without getting in the streets. France? Russia? India? Montgomery and Memphis? Caracas? Teguichugalpa?
Perhaps Canada?
Not always, granted Canadians are pretty slow to get out there on the streets but when we do something happens. Remember that 'coalition of the willing" we were not part of? 350,000 in the streets of Montreal and smaller but still substantial numbers in other cities across the country pointed out to the PM what Canadians thought the right thing to do was. But then a single vote of no confidence can turf a Canadian PM, you Americans are stuck with whoever you put in for four whole years. That is a lot of time to be stuck with a leader who has lost the people's confidence.
And the way corporate American media blanks out the demos that do happen is just a sin. Bet people in Canada and Britain have a better picture of what is happening in the streets than Americans do.
I was in Demonstrations before you were born.
If you want or are waiting for people killed to prove your obsession with demonstrations that is your problem.
And you will not get your required numbers with your attitude that only makes the Police State get all the money they need for more of the same.
In the case of the twitters you would make an excellent witness for the State.
Jim,
Ever heard of Gandhi or Rev. Martin Luther King? Do you think they would agree with you?
Didn't they understand that large mass demonstrations, however peaceful, will alway eventually result in the deaths of some demonstrators, and often the leaders, but they clearly understood freedom isn't free?
I am not wishing anyone dead - and I expect an apology for your slanderous accusation - but the facts are, no peacful revolutionary movement ever achieved anything without eventually have to face deadly police violence so we better be prepared.
I assumed you were a veteran of resistance in the 1960's, and are you a folk singer of some sort? Recall Anne Feeney's "Have you been to Jail for Justice?" Have you become a coward? Do you seriously think that just writing our congressman while singing kumbaya will acheieve the like of revolutionary change needed to save humanity, much less free it?
Jail for justice is fine. Vandalism and running away leaving peaceful demonstrators to get arrested is cowardly.
Nonviolent resistance is not about your cowardly tactics.
You ask stupid rhetorical questions like "have you heard of Ghandi and MLK?" Stupid Questions do not mean you are helpful in distorting everything they stood for.
Do you think Ghandi and MLK did not write letters to authority?
Work your plan on someone else.
You spend a lot of time and energy writing to me.... How are you doing with that?
You want me to tell you that your cowardly tactics is going to "save humanity and free it"?
Good luck with that!
"You spend a lot of time and energy writing to me.... How are you doing with that?"
Like writing my congressman, it is useless - like shouting at a wall. You have a stereotype of me as "insufficiently pacificst" and I'm not going to change your mind.
You shout your rhetorical questions at me and expect me to agree with you?
Like the other day on this same topic your shout was:
"Which type of action got the killer of Oscar Grant arrested? Singing kumbaya or burning some cars?"
Hey, I am a folk singer, and I take this cliché of singing Kumbaya as an insult.
Your assumptions of what "stereotype" I think of you like "insufficiently pacificst" is your idea.
Non-violent resistance is the way to go.... So you are correct, you are not goin to change my mind on that.
We agree on many things so lets call a truce.
Peace
Fine, but please stop blaming police violence on the victims of police violence themselves.
And let me reassure you that we were quite nonviolent on Thursday, September 24, as were the tin-can comm coordinators who sent the twitter messages.
There you go again,
"please stop blaming police violence on the victims of police violence themselves."
Nobody here is doing that or is accusing the twitters. You still seem to be looking for a confrontation with someone who agrees with the demonstration by using your spin about what I write and it is false.
It was a good demonstration. You can take that as a compliment.
We write letters too ...and apply for permits.
I am curious. For you, what constitutes a sufficiently peaceful mass protest? One that apologises and immediately folds and walks home as soon as the police give a dispersal order?
Appeals to reason, morality and being nice don't work. Certainly you try it as a formality, but power does't work that way. Remember what Fredrick Douglas said?
and I assure you as someone who was in Bloomfield/lawrenceville on the day in question, nothing like you described ever happened. Nothing was vandalized with peaceful demonstrators being left to be arrested.
I do not see disagreement between you both. No one said people must get killed only that they will as both Ghandi and King were.
Of course people will be killed, even in non violent resistance.
That is why we need more disciplined people in the streets so as not to give the cops any excuse to crack down. They might anyway but they don't need any help making that choice.
Once that starts, the media blames the peace movement because all the viewers see is the chaos, it turns the public against the demonstration.
War makers want the peace movement to look like the angry mob.... I have seen this over and over again and it makes it easy to blame the peace people. We should know that game by now, and in my opinion, we don't need to play the way they want so they can bring in more and more force.
A great man who was gunned down by his government once said:
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable". JFK
Yep.
JFK
He did not call for vandalism or violence in the streets
That is why we are the revolution so why not a peaceful one?
What is inevitable, is up to us.
AND NONE OF US WERE ENGAGED IN VANDALISM OR VIOLENCE WHEN THE POLICE ATTACKED US! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?
Or is shouting WHOSE STREETS - OUR STREETS! Violence of some sort by your reckoning?
I know types like you well - smug, comfortable people, who confuse pacifism with passivity and acquiescence, and have destroyed the formerly effective Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh more effectively than the FBI ever could have.
My friend when people show up and agent provocateurs infiltrate and start the ruckus we all need to stand together and point the finger at the disgusting behavior of our fellow American police officers that swore an oath. These guys were itching to beat people and for what. How would they like it if their children were being persecuted like that?
I wonder how these officers would feel if we began to document their crimes against their fellow citizens and had their personal info posted so all the world would know where they find peace and quiet. I bet we would have some very polite officers but that will never happen here in this new corporate slave state.
I have yet to see these so-called bad elements - undercover police or otherwise
starting any ruckuses. There certainly were none in Pittsburgh. If the police had not forcibly broken up a peaceful gathering, no windows would have been broken in that small handful of banks.
You will see them if actions become large. The agents will scream that standing around or marching is not doing any good. They will insult the crowd or the leaders. They will try to get people to start breaking things or surging somewhere with no particular purpose.
There were some such agents in the 2003 demonstrations against invading Iraq. Since then, unfortunately, the demonstrations have been too small and are populated mainly with veteran marchers who don't fall for that stuff.
Joe
I have a cousin who was there and said there was definitely agent provocateurs in the crowds being used to instigate violence or vandalism. It's disgusting but it's standard policy.
In the 70's the FBI sent agent provocatuers, disgused as professors etc. to start violence. One was code named the Silver Fox.
Two FBI agents were found not guilty in a Kent Ohio court of shooting from behind the protestors at the National Gaurdsmen.
I was not in Oakland Thursday or Friday night, so I can't be sure. The breaking of the Pamelas and Irish Design windows (both snall family buisnesses which no anarchist has a quarrel with) sounds suspicious.
I think street demonstrations are overrated but they are still a valuable and vital expression for the People.
Street demonstrations and sabotage are what ended the Vietnam War.
People willing to be jailed for peace are the most important resisters, ask Ghandi and King.
I try to avoid cops dressed for battle. Avoiding trouble is Common Sense.
Sounds like they expect demonstrators to want to go where the cops are prepared and waiting for an excuse to charge and arrest you.
Now it seems the police have to prove that the twitters in question was a prearranged signal for vandalism or to go where the police are cracking down.
They will need proof that this was not about free speech of demonstrators who have the right to know and communicate what is going on around them as well as the right to speak truth to power without the gross interference and intimidation of paranoid power.
Unfortunately, one of the greateest outrages that has been memory-holed by the media is the way the week-long 3-Rivers Climate convergence was successfully completely shut down by the police.
The convergence had a legal permit for tents, exhibits and workshops in Shernley Park, but on Tuesday night, the police raided and seized all the tents and equipment. I showed up on Wednesday for a workshop to only find an abandoned open field.
The bizarre cross-city harassment of the Seeds of Peace meal bus seems to have been part of this same effort. Some are suspecting coal industry involvement:
http://www.counterpunch.com/stolarski10022009.html
Man there's a lot of things you can't do in the land of freedom.
Smug comments by Canucks are not appreciated.
Remember the work of those wonderful men in red and black in Quebec City on 2001, and Calgary in 2002? Pittsburgh generally followed the Quebec City model.
pjd412:
I think you're missing the irony. Canadians don't congratulate themselves for living in the "Land of the free", and don't reason that groups harbour hostility to us because they "hate us for our freedom". We value our basic human rights and freedoms, but we don't trumpet and brag about them like they're somehow unique to Canadian society.
As long as you're so free your government can eavesdrop on your personal conversations without court warrants, and you can't take a vacation in Cuba, Canucks will reserve every right to mock American patriotic hubris regarding freedom.
Also, the topic of this article is not the armed suppression of riots, it's the persecution and supposed criminality of speech, therefore the parallels you draw to Quebec City and Calgary are non-sequiturs.
I don't want to sound negative but...In all reality, the only "rights" a person has are the ones, one is willing to die for. As made famous by Mr.Bush Jr, the constitution is just a god damn piece of paper, it's not some divine document that will ensure your ability to speak or act freely. I applaud anyone who takes the risk of exercising their rights, but you shouldn't be surprised about the results.
"Quickly LaBeau, Hide the Radio in the tunnel, Sgt Shultz is coming!!"
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
So much for the freedoms of speech, assembly and association.
At this rate you should be repealing women's suffrage and equal rights for minorities by Christmas...
"People should not be afraid of their governments' Governments should be afraid of their people." V, 'V for Vendetta'.
Marching toward Amerika.
These gestapo dressed men are taking orders from someone you will never hear about. Maybe the mayor or some aoe hiding behind some desk in Washington. Rember the F.B.I. and C.I.A. love to keep the american citizens down. They like to kill, taser or torture just for bragging rights or laughs. Theny the pass it down to the robots called police.
"The quick evolution of technology has changed the way Americans do almost everything, including how law enforcement combats crime, and consequently, how criminals elude law enforcement."
So, I see... peacefully marching down the street, (or even the sidewalks) with a gathering of others, holding a banner on which is written "No Borders, No Banks", and singing "Bella Ciao" is "criminal activity". Also, using technology to avoid armored police roadblocks, so we can continue to excercise these free speech rights, is "eluding law enforcement".
It's all in your point of view. If you are part of the Establishment, as the major newspapers are, then the exercise of your rights is certainly a criminal act. Words are very powerful,eh?!
I hope nobody misses the symmetry between this case and the persecution of ACORN.
It would appear as if the American & Iranian police share the view that their opponents tweeting about them is criminal. Ironic.
""I guess if you have 5,000 police officers and a quarter-million dollars in fancy equipment, you have to do something with it," he said. "Might as well go after some amateur ham radio operators in a motel room.""
Or seize a bus full of food.
I think the Prof. John Burkhoff cited at length in this piece, and expressing such firm opinions about the "criminality" of speech, should henceforth be referred to as Prof. Bohn Jurkhoff.
Yeah, and he's from the school of Yoo.
My thoughts exactly, Mr. North.
I see. So when the people in Iran used TWITTER to organize rallies, it was a fight for democracy and the rights of the people.
When people in the USA do the same, it a criminal act.
That is correct.
Do not attempt to think this through any further.
Return to your activities.