Apparently, tweeting police scanner data is a no-no.
gothamist.com
gothamist.com
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.
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.
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!
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.
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."
Kinda sucks. 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.
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.
This sounds like something they teach in government-run schools...
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can say whatever you want, as long as what you're saying isn't helping someone commit a crime.
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?
See 47CFR73.1207 following "(c) The transmissions of non-broadcast stations may be rebroadcast under the following conditions:"
I can't find it either.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1493749
which relates to headlight flashing and didn't involve any Supreme Court.