Stello's Choice

An activist named Elliot Madison was arrested last Thursday during the G20 protests in Pittsburgh for sending twitter messages out warning protesters of police activity while listening to a scanner.
The charges leveled against Madison are hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime.
The FBI then searched Madison's house for at least 16 hours and confiscated computers, books, and materials related to Madison's job as a social worker.

Madison's attorney explains via transcript from Democracy Now!:

Essentially, what Elliot is charged with is using the computer or the cell phone to put up an announcement that said that the police had issued an order to disperse. Having done that and having informed people that the police had issued the order, then it is claimed that that announcement hindered prosecution somehow by, I guess, having people avoid being arrested. It would seem to me that that is something that provides some benefit to the police department, in terms of saving them the expenditure of resources in processing people. But they’ve decided to criminalize that communication, or at least in their complaint that’s what they say, that the communication that said, “Hey, there’s been a dispersal order; everybody be aware of it,” somehow turns into a crime of hindering prosecution. The communication facility then, the cell phone or the computer that was used to post that message, becomes an instrument of the crime, and the use of that mass communication facility becomes, they claim under Pennsylvania law, a third crime.

This is just unbelievable. It is the thinnest, silliest case that I’ve ever seen. It tends to criminalize support services for people who are involved in lawful protest activity. And it’s just shocking that somebody could be arrested for essentially walking next to somebody and saying, “Hey, don’t go down that street, because the police have issued an order to disperse. Stay away from there.” All of a sudden, essentially, that becomes the crime that Elliot and his co-defendant are charged with.

It is worth mentioning that the State Department has condemned arrests of protesters in other countries for using twitter as an organizing tool, and even asked Twitter to postpone maintenance downtime during the uprisings in Iran.

Further reading:

• NYT Article
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation has links and the court documents here.