Elliot Madison was arrested last month during the G-20 protests in Pittsburgh when police raided his hotel room. Police say Madison and a co-defendant used computers and a radio scanner to track police movements and then passed on that information to protesters using cell phones and the social networking site Twitter. Madison is being charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility, and possession of instruments of crime. Exactly one week later, Madison’s New York home was raided by FBI agents, who conducted a sixteen-hour search. More...
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.
An excellent critique of the U.S. double standard for the use of Twitter and texting. The video juxtaposes clips from the mainstream media's coverage of Twitter's use during the Iran protests with Twitter's use during the recent G20 protests in Pittsburgh.
The following first-hand account of the Queens "twitter raid" is now floating around the net. "On October 1st, 2009, at 6:00am, the Joint Terrorism Task Force kicked out the front door to our home—an anarchist collective house in Queens, NY, affectionately known as Tortuga...."
On Thursday, F.B.I. agents descended on a house in Jackson Heights, Queens, and spent 16 hours searching it. The most likely reason for the raid: a man who lived there had helped coordinate communications among protesters at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh.