It should not surprise people that whenever there is a new technology the government seeks to restrict its use and in cases where this technology can be used to facilitate dissent the laws and its agents often over step their own rules. We all know that what is in fact legal and how the law is enforced during protests or crises often at odds. The state seeks to disrupt organizing by digging deep in their bag of dirty (and illegal) tricks including illegal warrants or raids; mass arrests of lawful protestors; warrantless surveillance; and so on. This article looks at the US attempts to criminalize political wireless communications.

This article does not look at the legal issues in other countries where there are many other equally restrictive laws. During the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in Boston and New York in 2004 a group called Institute for Applied Technology (www.appliedautonomy.com ) provided a sms service for protestors called TxtMob. They had a few hundred subscribers that sent text messages about what was going on in the streets. Tad Hirsh a doctoral candidate at MIT and one of the main developers, was issued a subpoena in February 4, 2008. Lawyers representing the city in civil lawsuits regarding police abuse filed by hundreds of people arrested during the convention asked Mr. Hirsch to hand over voluminous records revealing the content of messages exchanged on his service and identifying people who sent and received messages (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/nyregion/30text.html ). TxtMob eventually shut down after Federal prosecutors tried to subpoena records for the site and the owners decided to simply trash the servers rather than turning it over. Four years latter at the same conventions, this time in Denver & Minneapolis, a group called the Tin Can Comms Collective used software that interfaced with Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, to provide protestors a way to communicate to the public and themselves. This time there were thousands of subscribers. Denver police were said to have actively monitored the public text feeds coming from Tin Can Comms. In Minneapolis/St.Paul they raided the communications office without a warrant, detained a number of people there and confiscated its equipment. They were arrested for allegedly having a police scanner but no charges were ever filed and all of the Comms people were released after spending 36 hours in the county jail (no equipment was ever returned). The raid seriously disrupted the communications system but it remained in a much diminished form for the rest of the protests (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/08/30/18531223.php ). In 2009, the Tin Can Communications Collective created an enhanced twitter feed during the G-20 Summit meetings in Pittsburgh. This time two volunteers were raided and arrested at a motel outside of Pittsburgh within hours of the protests. Undercover PA State police agents located the two. Again their equipment was confiscated and they were charged with 2 felonies and 1 misdemeanor carrying a maximum of 15 years in jail. They two were held for 2 days on $5,000 and $30,000 dollar bail. They were also taken to the local FBI office. All charges were eventually dropped before arraignment (2 months latter) in an effort to complete the sealed warrant from public view (http://friendsoftortuga.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/aff_of_prob_cause.pdf ). Despite the raid and the arrests this time the communication feeds were virtually uninterrupted and continued to provide an important service to protestors and the public during the following days of dissent. A week after the arrests, the two communication activists had their home raided in New York City by the Joint terrorist Task Force and FBI for 16 hours. More communicators and cell-phones were taken along with household items, books and even a portrait of the Bulgarian National Poet (misidentified as Karl Marx). This created a bit of publicity storm with articles being written about the twitter activists in the NY Times, Washington Post, Wired magazine, Boing Boing, Detroit Free Press and countless blogs and web-sites. The warrant for the raid is still under seal and only a small fraction of the things taken from the home have been returned. The authorities also say there is an-ongoing Federal Grand Jury Investigation regarding the case. 11 months have passed and still there have been no charges or indictments resulting from this massive raid on the twitter activists’ home. Since the New York raids there has not been another large-scale mobilization. It is unclear if the authorities have finally realized they cannot stop protesters from using new media to communicate in lawful ways. The raids, the arrests, the subpoenas and high bail have not stopped the development and use of new technology to spread dissent. We will have to wait to see how the government responds to this obvious fact.