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October 7, 2009
Twitter User Arrested For Helping Pittsburgh Protesters Evade Police
A New York man was arrested for assisting protesters at the Pittsburgh G20 Summit to evade police by sending out Twitter messages, the guardian.co.uk reported.
The police were monitoring Twitter messages of protesters, the online newspaper noted.
Elliot Madison, 41, from Queens, and Michael Wallschlaeger, 46, were tracked to the Carefree Inn motel in Pittsburgh, though the newspaper reported Madison was arrested at his home.
"The pair were found sitting in front of a bank of laptops and emergency frequency radio scanners. They were wearing headphones and microphones and had many maps and contact numbers in the room.
Official police documents allege the two men used Twitter messages to contact protesters at the summit "and to inform the protesters and groups of the movements and actions of law enforcement," the newspaper reported.
An interesting use of Twitter by both sides - guess the protesters should have been more aware of the possibility the police could also have access to the communications - obviously they were not using direct messaging.
Guess the authorities in Iran had not thought of this.
Posted by Frank Watson on October 7, 2009 5:59 PM
Comments
Stevigal October 7, 2009 6:52 PM
Hello! Nice blog, I actually found this on google blog.
Best regards.
Christian October 7, 2009 7:32 PM
Since when is it illegal to protest? What's become of the 1st Ammendment?
Anonymous October 9, 2009 5:54 PM
I'm wondering how this is different from what reporters did? They used radio and TV to pass along what protesters and police were doing.
Why weren't any of them arrested?
Jim L October 12, 2009 3:40 PM
Difference is he was messaging specific people from what I can gather... if the posts were general comments that the protesters used then there would not really be a case - but we will see when it plays out
Aussiewebmaster October 12, 2009 4:17 PM
"Guess the authorities in Iran had not thought of this." And so sad that ours did.