On Oct 7, 2009, at 11:32 AM, LuKreme wrote: > > On 6-Oct-2009, at 06:35, Lawrence Sica wrote: > >> If you read the whole article it's not about Twitter really but they >> were sitting in a hotel room using scanners to report on police >> movements. > > Which is not illegal. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, and all that. >
It may actually be illegal. In some states possession of a scanner is against the law, in others using it in certain ways is. In PA it is illegal to use a scanner to help in the evasion of police when a crime is committed. > >> They had a whole setup with computers for mapping and then sending >> out information through a variety of means, including twitter and >> via cell phone. > > OH MY GOD! COMPUTERS! SENDING INFORMATION! CELL PHONES! > > Look around you right now. Does that describe you? It describes me. No, I am not listening in on police frequences and tracking them and reporting them to protestors or whatever. It's about what they were doing not using twitter or computers. The headline and the commondreams article glosses over this and focuses on the wrong part of the equation imho. Twitter or cell phones is not the issue. It's them reporting police movements to various people. > >> Looks like this is more a case of making an example and they are >> throwing everything at them. > > They are trying to further the police state by making reporting police > actions a crime. In some cases it is a crime to do this. That is the crux of this. They are trying to shut this stuff down by using this case as an example. Rhetoric aside that is what this is about. And reporting police actions is a crime in some cases already, hence the charges. > >> These are not some innocent guys on the street just twittering >> though. > > Define "innocent"? In this case, they were not just some guy using twitter to report something he saw on the street. They were actively doing something with a specific purpose. To help protestors evade police at the least. Like I said before, I don't see a problem with this but they may be breaking the law. If they were helping people engage in criminal behavior then it's different and is much more serious. --Larry _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
