Apparently, tweeting police scanner data is a no-no.

http://gothamist.com/2009/10/05/fbi_raids_queens_home_in_g20_protes.php

by steveklabnik • 17 years ago

57 26 17 years ago

As someone who was basically live-blogging the protests via Twitter, I'll admit that this story hits pretty close to home. I'm definatly still following this guy on Twitter, and I re-tweeted several people who were tweeting scanner information.

Kinda sucks. Public information is public, I'm interested to see how they plan on proving the charges.

ubernostrum2• 17 years ago

"Public information is public, I'm interested to see how they plan on proving the charges."

Well, I think they intend to prove that he was not merely making public information public, but also directing people in how to evade arrest for what was -- rightly or wrongly -- illegal behavior.

I should note here that I don't particularly care what people think about whether it should be illegal to continue protesting after the cops order you to stop, all that matters in this case is that it is. I do, however, feel obligated to point out that going to jail has always been a part of civil disobedience, and people who refuse to face up to that strike me as a bit cowardly.

steveklabnik7• 17 years ago

Yeah. I typed poorly. Even then, the thrust of that sentence is legit: I'm not sure how they can prove that he intended to aid criminal activities.

Even then, there are all kinds of shades of grey. I personally wanted to spread information about the event to as many people as possible. Would that enable people to protest longer by evading police? I guess so. Would it enable people who just wanted to stay away from any trouble to not come near? Yeah.

Additionally, I'm unsure as to what the law says in this situation: if a policeman gives me an unlawful order, and I don't follow it, is that illegal? I was under the impression that it's illegal to disobey a lawfully given order.

In any case, this whole thing is one big giant mess.

Alex3917• 17 years ago

"jail has always been a part of civil disobedience, and people who refuse to face up to that strike me as a bit cowardly."

This sounds like something they teach in government-run schools...

anshulk• 17 years ago

I do, however, feel obligated to point out that going to jail has always been a part of civil disobedience, and people who refuse to face up to that strike me as a bit cowardly.

So all those Iranian protesters should have simply courted arrests? No. There is a particular type of civil disobedience that requires not evading of arrests. Then there are some whose explicit purpose is to fill up jails (jail bharo andolans, literally "fill the jails protests" are an occasional feature in civil disobedience in India, a relic from the British era). I do not agree with your sentiment. I think you decide whether or not you court arrests based on the goals of the movement and the perceived progress of that goal based on doing so.

ralonso• 17 years ago

"I'm interested to see how they plan on proving the charges."

The guy is a self-proclaimed anarchist. That's all the evidence, sadly, that the police needs in order to prosecute him. According to the police, he was "coordinating" the riot by updating the status of the officers in real-time, or something of that sort.

Another pacific protest needs to be made. This seems to be getting out of control how easy it has been getting for the government to control what gets passed onto the public and what doesn't. Manipulation of the media needs to end.

wheels• 17 years ago

Not to be missed, from the comments there:

The irony is thick enough that I'm about to smear mustard on it, put it between a couple slices of bread, and eat it for lunch. This is the exact same type of criminalization of dissent that we condemn the Iranian regime for, and rightly so. The State Department was happy to provide TOR bridges and proxies and satellite technology for Iranian dissidents to avoid the crackdowns on them, and allowed them to use Twitter in to express their views.

But here in the US? Nope, you're a criminal if you tell people where riot police are marching. Unless this guy is guilty of something beyond what's reported here, this is a travesty. With all the well-documented examples of provocation, wrongful arrest, and police brutality the people need information on what the police are doing. Lawful protesters must be allowed to voice their dissent, or we become no better than the current and historical regimes to which America was meant to be counterpoint.

javanix2• 17 years ago

I feel like I should point out that according to federal law, it is an illegal use of a police scanner to "use information received to aid in the commission of a crime, or disclose information received to other persons."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanner_(radio)#Legal_issues_in...

There are ethical and legal considerations concerning whether or not the protests were illegal, but I think as it stands now the defendant is very close to being on illegal footing.

steveklabnik7• 17 years ago

From his "about" page:

Who We Are:

Tin Can Comms Collective is a collection of communication rebels seeking to provide useful free tools for activists fighting the State and Capitalism. We are an anarchist group that has come together to help with the communication infrastructure for the the Anti-G-20 protests this September in Pittsburgh, because: People and Information want to be Free!

javanix2• 17 years ago

What are you talking about?

I gave a link to Wikipedia (which lists the actual legal sources). I wasn't passing judgement, just saying that what he did seems to be illegal if you accept the fact that the protests were illegal.

jriddycuz• 17 years ago

"People and Information want to be Free!"

Hmmm. The fact that he attributes volitional desire to information makes me wonder if he could use a freedom of religion-based defense, rather than just a political ideology one. Courts are rarely sympathetic to "anarchism" but frequently eager to demonstrate tolerance of "beliefs" and "worldviews."

dfranke• 17 years ago

This is not the first story of this kind to come up on HN, and last time I commented that I'm pretty sure there was a supreme court decision that established that trying to forbid people from warning others about speed traps over CB radio was a 1st amendment violation. I still can't track down the case. Help, someone?

steveklabnik7• 17 years ago

When I tried to look, I found your previous comment!

I can't find it either.

mattyb• 17 years ago

All I can find is this:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1493749

which relates to headlight flashing and didn't involve any Supreme Court.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

The article is slanted so heavily I had to turn my laptop at a 45-degree angle just to read it.

Let's review: political speech is protected speech in the United States. That means speech about how government and the politicians work. That's sacred.

Once you move away from purely political speech, you don't have an iron-clad right any more. There are limits to what you can and cannot say.

I don't think you can make a case that this speech is purely political, even though it involves political protest. So all the "I thought this could only happen in X nation" comments are way off-base. Don't be manipulated by people writing quasi news articles that have an agenda.

I'm sure the government has made the case to the judge that this type of speech is enabling people to commit a crime. I have no idea if that argument is sound or not, IANAL, but I'm pretty certain that the free speech argument here is bogus. He could have tweeted all day long about his political opinions without a problem.

Having said all of that, as a libertarian I'm really concerned about governments trying to control communication around protests. This should be an instructive legal case for those people, like me, that don't understand where the lines are currently drawn.

steveklabnik7• 17 years ago

People tend to see it as a free speech issue because he's simply re-sending out public data. Each individual person could have just as easily listened in on a scanner. It's a bit counter-intuitive.

The real issue is that scanner data isn't really public. You're allowed to listen to it, but not if you intend to commit a crime.

tptacek• 17 years ago

He's not being prosecuted for the speech, he's being prosecuted for the action. You can say whatever you want. You can't intentionally help people commit crimes.

bena• 17 years ago

Because criminals have a great track record of following the law.

Or, in other words, that law is only intended to punish people for making the data available via other channels. It explicitly targets people like this guy for simply disseminating public information. A guy who wants to rob a house will not care that using a police scanner to help commit a crime is illegal. He's already robbing a house, by using the police scanner data he can reduce the risk of being caught by incurring the additional cost of the penalty for using the scanner _if he is caught_.

It's a non-law. It doesn't stop the criminals and criminalizes innocent citizens. Plus, the people being the government, when is it illegal to tell people what you are doing?

HeyLaughingBoy• 17 years ago

Not only that, but 47 CFR prohibits rebroadcasting a non-public signal and Tweets may be considered broadcasting. Even ignoring the reason he's doing this, the act iself may be prima facie illegal.

See 47CFR73.1207 following "(c) The transmissions of non-broadcast stations may be rebroadcast under the following conditions:"

arfrank• 17 years ago

It seems to me that they could have pretty easily hidden their location/who was carrying out the tweets with a few changes to how they setup the whole situation. That being said it was likely they were either being watched beforehand or were at least on someones radar prior to G20.

BruceWilliams• 17 years ago

I'd really like to know why they had a pound of liquid mercury. Samurai swords I understand - who doesn't want a few of those? But a pound? Of mercury? (Come to think of it, mercury is pretty heavy - how much volume is a pound?)

warfangle• 17 years ago

33.48 cm3 or so at 20 degrees C - less than the size of a golfball: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_volume_of_one_pound_of...

loupgarou21• 17 years ago

I dunno, I'd kinda like a pound of mercury. Apparently, my grandfather used to have like a mason jar about half full of mercury.

Apparently, tweeting police scanner data is a no-no.

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