Ruling Expected on Twittering Anarchist Raided Under ‘Rioting’ Laws

[The Straight Story]

Ruling Expected on Twittering Anarchist Raided Under ‘Rioting’ Laws


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 (.pdf) that the 41-year old social worker had broken a federal anti-rioting law that carries up to five years in prison.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/twitter-anarchist/

[thunder rising]

1. "bumper stickers and political posters" .. evil weapons of communication.

[redqueen]

2. Great article. Well worth reading.

K&R

[metapunditedgy]

3. Law enforcement agencies are broadcasting enencrypted on public airwaves.

They know exactly what they have to do to encrypt that information. But money given to states to improve law enforcement telecom technology was -- surprise -- sucked into the political vacuum and never used for what it was intended.

Relaying publicly-available information should not be a crime.

[FatDave]

5. "Relaying publicly-available information should not be a crime."

Seems to fall squarely under free speech, doesn't it? And technically speaking, don't We The People own the airwaves the police broadcast on?

[The Straight Story]

6. I would think the cops would want to be transparent (nt)

[metapunditedgy]

7. The government claims to own them for us.

For cell phone companies, they auction off the airwaves for billions of dollars, and many companies recoup that cost and much more.

[corkhead]

4. At first I thought the title of the thread said "Twittering Antichrist"

I was expecting another article about Liz or dick Cheney