October 4, 2009
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Tweet at your own risk
A man was arrested for tweeting the location of police officers during the G20 protests to protesters trying to avoid them. Somehow they call that “hindering prosecution”.
I find this rather scary. How on EARTH is that against the law?!?
So if I tweet the location of a cop waiting on the side of the road to give people speeding tickets, am I “hindering prosecution”???
So apparently the police are upset that they didn’t get a chance to blast enough kids ears out with sound canons or pose with pictures of enough unjustly arrested protesters. So now they’re looking to punish to people that prevented that from happening. This is really kinda sick.
Or am I missing something? Someone explain to me how this makes sense?
Here’s the link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/04/elliot-madison-accused-of_n_309042.html
Comments (19)
It’s also the same if you flash your brights at cars that are approaching a speed trap to warn them. If a cop sees that, they can give you a ticket for “hindering prosecution”.
I think it’s pretty petty to search Tweets to find information like that.
It’s crap.
These kinds of laws are different from place to place, but sure, if you are intentionally helping someone to break the law, you can be charged with a crime. Clearly the police in this case already had a beat on this particular guy. Not saying it SHOULD be a crime. Just saying there are lots of jurisdictions where it WOULD be a crime.
You could argue that prosecuting twitizens for reporting the position of the police violates freedom of speech or of the press, but there’s a point at which the actions of the press can and do hinder the legitimate work of police and even threaten their safety. At that point, those freedoms cease to exist, exactly as they would if you were providing intelligence to the enemy during time of war.
Our society is actually shockingly lenient on this sort of thing, tending to err more on the side of the folks swinging their fists about than the fellows who keep taking it in the face.
Hindering prosecution/apprehension is a misdemeanor unless you’re aiding a felon, and it can (like most misdemeanors) usually be resolved without jail time, and sometimes without a mark on your record.
More worrying is that police seem to have been deployed to disperse people engaged in what would appear to be a constitutionally-protected peaceable assembly for reasons of political protest. Even if those people were for the most part anarchists (for whom I have no sympathy whatsoever,) I expect someone should look into that.
There are legitimate avenues to address police misconduct, both through the offices of police and federal enforcement and through political channels. Actively opposing police in the field should be viewed as an absolute last resort, as it is criminal, and for good reasons.
As to “leadfoot alerts,” those would not rise to the standard required, since the people you’re warning are not in danger of being apprehended or prosecuted for criminal conduct. Traffic infractions (unlike unlawful assembly) are technically civil torts against the state rather than crimes.
Flashing your brights at oncoming traffic is usually an infraction in itself. It certainly annoys the hell out of me, since I’m doing no more than the limit but need to see where I’m going.
Not only is that stupid, but people have the right to rally and protest!!
What should really scare you is that everything we do–including tweets–are monitored by Big Brother. Thank Obama for keeping his promise to kill the Patriot Act (not). Keep this up and you will become another blogger for liberty
I try to look at this from the situations point of view. I’m not going to sit here and defend the police for purposefully going out of their way to break laws they are sworn to protect just to tear down the Constitution that they are also sworn to protect. The protesters arrested and uncaught were very freely exercising their right to free speech and the right to peacefully assemble. They had done all of these things and from what I’ve seen from the countless number of videos, only the police and various other camo-officers attacked. The sound weapon was against city ordinance and was used to break up peaceful protesters. All the while, those that were simply watching were arrested. Furthermore, I’ve even seen law enforcement pose as protesters to get inside and disrupt actions. And convicting those few people who used Twitter to warn others where law enforcement were located? Exactly how much power do the police have these days?
Sure, there are officers that do a fine job. They risk their lives day in and day out trying to keep the streets clean and our homes safe. They go out of their way to protect what few freedoms we have left. But what happened at the G20 summit was an absolute farce. Those people were doing nothing wrong. They peacefully marched close to the building. They held up their signs and chanted. Oh noes!! They must be terrorist. “Kill Kill Kill”.
Wait until the protesters exercise their right to bear arms and form a militia. They’ll be dropping nukes and dirty bombs next. >.>
Oh wow, this is interesting. Hmm… well, beyond a certain extent I could understand the reasoning behind this. But this minor tweet doesn’t seem so bad… = It’s not like they’re tweeting to some criminals to help them escape.
Tweeting in rebellion is only legal if one is tweeting about #iranelection, apparently. *sigh*
@iStephanieMarie - weird. What if I call someone up and tell them I got pulled over by a cop on road X? Or text someone? Or say I’m going to a party and then when I get there I tell everyone I was pulled over and then some people leave and travel the same road I did to get there on my way home and are more cautious as a result? Am I then hindering prosecution? Things like that can quickly get ridiculous.
@ordinarybutloud - “intentionally helping someone to break the law” Now you see that’s the question isn’t it. Take the speeding example, is it really the case that I’m helping the person break the law by telling them of a speeding trap or is it rather that I’m giving the person information that might encourage them instead to FOLLOW the law. If someone told me about a speeding trap, I’m not going to speed. Likewise if someone tells someone that there’s a barrier here so you can’t march there and have to march somewhere else isn’t that helping them to obey the law?
I think knowing where police officers are at any time should definately be a right. I wonder why they forgot to put it in the constitution?
Actually, I believe that the reason it’s illegal to give up a police officer’s location is to protect the police in case someone takes it into their head to assault the cops, not avoid them. Not that I disagree with you all here. I think it’s deplorable to help the police keep us in line like good little cattle, but from the other end of the spectrum… there are lots of people who might take such a tweet as an invitation to do harm. Let’s have a bloodless revolution if you please. We are, after all, better than our oppressors, and more often than not, the police are just doing their jobs, as misguided as those jobs might be.
I dislike cops. A lot. They do a lot of things that they shouldn’t. They went to my friends house to let them know that this guy they were living with was in the hospital, but before ever doing that they raided their house, put my best friend in handcuffs assuming she was eighteen when really she was fourteen. Then they left, AND THEN told them that their friend was hospitalized.
Lovely.
I find this really disturbing… People were peacefully protesting (except for a minor few) and yet it was considered “hindering the law” to tell them where the cops were to avoid them? They weren’t breaking the law in the first place.
Solution: Don’t use twitter.
@nephyo - I suppose that would depend on the wording of the Tweets. Though, generally speaking, I think it would be easy to be prove by beyond a reasonable doubt that a Tweeter’s intent was to *warn* the potential law breakers rather than encourage them to comply with the law. Just imagining a regular jury filled with regular people, I’m thinking I could probably persuade them about the intent pretty easily. Good defense argument, though. Very creative.
wow.
that’s ridiculous. it makes me think about the Iranian when they were protesting. if he gets prosecuted.. can you imagine the chaos?
Fuck the POlice.
Nazi-tastic