Caution: Using Twitter During A Demonstration Can Make You A Terrorist
By Susie Madrak Saturday Oct 31, 2009 1:00pm
Wired is one of the few publications that acts as a watchdog on civil liberties and freedom of information issues, and I'm glad they do. The federal government far too often overreaches - and this looks like it's one of those times. Go read the whole thing:
(WIRED) -- An anarchist social worker raided by the feds wants his computers, manuscripts and pick axes back. He argues that authorities violated the U.S. Constitution and the rights of his mentally ill clients while searching for evidence that he broke an anti-rioting law on Twitter.
In a guns-drawn raid on October 1, FBI agents and police seized boxes of dubious "evidence" from the Queens, New York, home of Elliott Madison. A U.S. District Judge in Brooklyn has set a Monday deadline to rule on the legality of the search, and in the meantime has ordered the government to refrain from examining the material taken in the 6 a.m. search.
Madison, who counsels more than 100 severely mentally ill patients in New York, seems to have first drawn attention from the authorities at September's G-20 gathering of world leaders in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There he was arrested on September 24 at a motel room for allegedly listening to a police scanner and relaying information on Twitter to help protesters avoid heavily-armed cops -- an activity the State Department lauded when it happened in Iran.
A week later, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, armed with a search warrant and backed by a federal grand jury investigation, raided Madison's house, which he shares with his wife of 13 years and several roommates. The squad seized his computers, camera memory cards, books, air-filtration masks, bumper stickers and political posters -- all purportedly evidence that the 41-year old social worker had broken a federal anti-rioting law that carries up to five years in prison.
But a closer look at the court documents leaves the unmistakable impression that Elliott Madison is yet another casualty of the government's nasty, post-9/11 habit of considering political dissidents as threats to national security.
Madison, his wife and his lawyer Martin Stolar say the search violates the Constitution's protections against general searches and prosecution for political speech. The police also seized mobile phones, citizen emergency kits, manuscripts, posters and even the couple's marriage license.
In a motion to throw out the search, Stolar called the search unconstitutional:
In this day and age, federally authorized agents entered the private home of a writer and urban planner and seized their books and writings. The warrant's vagueness and lack of specificity encouraged the agents to use their own discretion and their own views of the political universe to seize, or not to seize, items which they thought were evidence of a violation of the federal anti-riot statute. The law and the Constitution do not allow this. If there really is a grand jury investigation with possible future prosecution under [a federal anti-rioting law], the use of this statute as applied to demonstrations, demonstrators, and their supporters has profound 1st Amendment implications.
If Madison were an Iranian using Twitter to coordinate government protests, he'd likely be considered a hero in the West. Instead, the self-identified anarchist -- who volunteered in Louisiana after Katrina -- is now facing up to five years in prison for each count a grand jury cares to indict him on.
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...the morning crew at my local radio station is subject to arrest the next time they tip off commuters as to the whereabouts of speed traps.
They are pushing the same anti-democracy/constitution / bill of rights and laws which Bush / Cheney created and passed.
Remember the democrats voted for these illegal laws also...
Names of those Who voted for the Patriot Act.
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_ca...
We can trust some of the politicians none of the time.
We can trust some of the politicians some of the time.
Is their anyone among them we can actually trust all of the time?
At this time?
I think I remember that Russ Feingold was the ONLY Senator who voted Nay on the Patriot Act. What that says to me, is that all the others are either:
a) too lazy to read the bill
b) owned by the Powers that Be / in on the 9/11 scam
c) to stupid to be in office
The Patriot Act is grossly misnamed....Elliott Madison seems like more of a patriot to me than all of those Senators who voted, blindly or stupidly or under coercion, to throw away our Constitution.
Yeah, all that shit I said on websites? It wasn't me, and I didn't mean it anyway.
Jeez, I could be hearing all my posts read out in court because a riot or protest happens near me some day... I better keep my stuff funny.
Ah, the land of the free.... mmmm, smells like bacon!
"Heading to Fudruckers!"
and you'll be safe.
Catch 22 (Trick Endings and Trap Doors)
But killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men women and children in a trumped up war doesn't. Isn't Amurika grand?
remember?
and more and more things become illegal.
Gotta keep those arrests up if you wanna make a big profit.
We live in a police and prison state, and it is becoming more extreme as time passes.
The Civilian Inmate Labor Program is a program of the United States Army provided by Army Regulation 210-35[1]. The regulation, first drafted in 1997, underwent a "rapid act revision" in January 2005; it provides policy for the creation of labor programs and prison camps on Army installations. The labor would be provided by persons under the supervision of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The more things CHANGE (as in: you can pretend in), the more they stay the same (as in: you can believe in).
Carrying a gun to a rally is okay but this is not?!
messing with the NWO is not.
..."he was arrested on September 24 at a motel room for allegedly listening to a police scanner and relaying information on Twitter to help protesters avoid heavily-armed cops -- an activity the State Department lauded when it happened in Iran."
Small world isn't it?
Without persistent resistance we know what will happen to personal rights when law enforcement is involved. It sure is interesting how carrying a gun is sort of it's own resistance all by itself, whereas you can't put up much resistance using a cell phone... i guess that's why guns are A OK. but unarmed folks have to fork over their personal freedoms to prevent the expression of their Freedom Of Speech from making things a little harder for them to do their jobs.
So my first thought is - Let it be a little harder for the authorities, but also make it easier for them too by keeping the guns away from rallies. The net would be happier people and safer people.
so we don't have to here. :(
Thanks for making me laugh. I always thought that the argument for war that you're referring to here was teh stupidest. I mean, really, like just occupying Iraq was going to somehow keep all terrorists preoccupied, preventing them from even thinking about coming here.
This is clearly an abuse of power and is not appropriate application of law.
that I posted long ago. I'm starting to see a pattern here.
great minds pay attention to important things?
way too much time on my hands. All day and night I'm reading news from all over the world. It's like an addiction actually.
I don't even want to get into discussing this intertube thing.
i would wager the feds were monitoring his e-mail and twitter activity in real time without a warrant during the protest.
Obama the cowardly president, like the pos prez before him, has his doj arguing that this is ok.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/A...
I guess if an "esteemed" tribunal of government attorneys say no then the court must allow the state to get a case dismissed. An absolute joke.
...get a warrant to search for "items which they thought were evidence of a violation of the federal anti-riot statute."???
...when there wasn't even a riot!
The only "riotous" behavior that I saw was cops beating the crap out of everyone...for what looked like a "fairly" peaceful protest.
I appreciate Crooks and Liars covering this, given that Madison is pretty far to your left. I do want to point out, though, that to refer to "the government's nasty, post-9/11 habit of considering political dissidents as threats to national security" is to ignore history.
It's certainly true that this habit was ramped up after 9/11, but it's not at all new. There are still a number of people like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal who are in prison for the last wave of repression of dissidents, and plenty of us white dissidents who at least had our liberties violated on a regular basis. And Cointelpro was merely a rerun of the McCarthy years, which echoed the Palmer raids, the attacks on the Wobblies, and so on going back to the Alien and Sedition Acts. The fact is that a lot of powerful people have their fingers crossed when they swear to uphold the Constitution, at least whenever that Constitution comes into conflict with their interests, AKA "national security." Yet it is by definition impossible for any national security threat to override the Constitution, since our nation only exists by virtue of the Constitution.
I totally agree that American rights and liberties have been under assault (for many decades) but...
...ya gotta admit that the patriot act was one "hellofa milestone"
If DEFINATELY means that this process works, and works big time. So next time, there needs to be a new twitter account, from anonymous PCs, and multiple people logging in to said accounts giving muliple vantage point feedback.
FUCK 'EM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUwpLyIDIJw
... over a police scanner has always been against the law. Scanning as a hobby is legal as long as you don't repeat what you hear.
Listening to a law enforcement conversation over a scanner and repeating or rebroadcasting what you hear is no different than warrantless wiretapping of your personal phone calls.
Law enforcement is entitled to privacy in their communications, even if what they are doing is wrong, suppressing dissent for example.
While I don't necessarily disagree with the protestors motive, the methods he chose to use were illegal. I think the Twittering only led the police to find out that he was breaking the law by using a scanning device to intercept their communications; which is definitely illegal if he was posting it to twitter or repeating it over any other communications medium. Its no different than me being at your house and picking up another phone extension while you are talking to your mistress, and I start Twittering away to the world what I'm hearing. I am violating a basic right of yours, your ability to use private communications.
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