That’s how Andrew Belonsky put it.

On Thursday, October 1, the FBI conducted a raid on Elliot Madison’s Queens, NY, home in search of books, files, data, film and something called the “instruments of crime.”  Madison was arrested, apparently because during the G-20 protests in Pittsburgh two weeks ago he had been tweeting reports of the locations of police to the demonstrations, thereby assisting protesters seeking to evade the police.

As reported in Raw Story, Vic Walczak, legal director for the Pennsylvania ACLU, sees the FBI’s action as pure “intimidation,” and part of a “much bigger war on demonstrators.” Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley argues on his blog that,

Arresting someone for communications based on public observations is an abuse of authority and a violation of the Constitution. The scene is uncomfortably reminiscent of the Chinese police seeking people with pictures of publicly viewed abuses.  Likewise, the Iranian government arrested bloggers viewed as supporting the protests over the presidential election. This case involves a more sophisticated assault on free speech rights: claiming that the tweets assisted criminal conduct. It is a theory that would gut the first amendment and create a chilling effect on citizen communications.

Tags: FBI, free speech

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