Twittering the G20 Iranian Style

U.S. law enforcement appears to be reading from a playbook perfected in the streets of Tehran. In the wake of protests last week at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, the police arrested a self-professed anarchist for using the social-networking site Twitter to coordinate communications among G20 summit protesters, and direct them away from police positions. The charge for this exercise of free speech: the criminal uses of a communications facility, in this case a computer and a Twitter feed. 

According to news reports, the arrest was followed up by an FBI raid of the man’s house in Queens, NY, where they seized computers, phones, black masks, newspapers, books and pictures of Lenin and Marx (yes, pictures) looking for evidence of additional crimes.

The last time I checked, urging people to protest isn't a crime in the United States; using Twitter to urge people to protest isn't a crime in the U.S.; and it's certainly not a crime to observe a protest and direct protesters away from the police.  In fact, all these activities are the very essence of the foundation of our First Amendment.  By all available accounts, there does not appear to be any evidence that the content of the tweets were intended or indeed likely to incite anyone to imminent violence or law- breaking or to engage in other speech that falls outside of First Amendment protection. Rather they were intended to help protesters avoid police after an order for the crowd to disperse. I doubt the police would have arrested anyone for standing on a corner with a microphone directing the crowd. Yet the same message delivered via Twitter is now apparently a crime.

This case runs thick with irony.  During the recent Iranian election protests, the U.S. State Department specifically asked the folks at Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance that would have shut down the service, in order to ensure that the Iranian protestors had access to their most vital communications link. Twitter was used to organize protests, direct protesters away from police and warn them of danger. Twitter also enabled young Iranians to become citizen journalists, bearing witness to the world of the events unfolding on the streets.  The Twitter-er who was arrested in Pittsburgh was doing the exact same thing that that the U.S. government was trying to facilitate in Iran.

A Federal District judge in New York has ordered authorities to stop examining the items gathered in the search until more of the facts can be sorted out. But the damage has surely been done.

The next time protestors take to the streets of Tehran or Beijing, armed with cell phones and Twitter accounts, we should not be surprised when countries crack down hard on those tweeting the revolution and point to Pittsburgh as a precedent. And America will be relegated to the sidelines, rendered mute by our own foolish actions.

Follow Leslie Harris on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CenDemTech