Friday, November 6, 2009
Twitter Anarchist....unjustly arrested
In the Twitter Anarchist case, I must agree with his lawyer, Martin Stolar, and agree that the Anarchist's Constitutional rights were violated, and once again if this case holds, we are moving again to a much more socialist government. This country was founded on the basis of the first amendment, not really but that’s what is claimed by many people, and consequently the first amendment holds great power in the United States. While the listening on the police blotter may have been an illegal act, which I am not sure it actually is because you can buy them at most stores like Wal-Mart and even buy an iPhone application that is one, the actual warrant that was generated concerned the relaying of this information through Twitter. It has been decided again and again that the freedom of speech, so long as it does not only encourage others to take direct action and incite people in violence, and it can be very easily argued that this information did nothing of that sort, extends to the internet as well as any personally created information posted there-in, Twitter. Again, I must restate that what Martin Stolar, the lawyer of the Twitter Anarchist said, that this warrant was not only vague but was in direct violation of his Constitutional right to free speech. I believe, that if this case actually makes it to trial the Anarchist will either be acquitted or his conviction will be overturned, that is if we still live in the America that has rights and is not hiding scared from every single threat to its safety.
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one quip: do you mean that this case indicates a fascist direction in jurisprudence rather than a socialist one?
ReplyDeleteOn second thought, another quip: is basing the defense on free speech a realist tactic? It doesn't have to be, but I was wondering if the only avenue for defense open to the TA is this apparently natural law approach.
Third: I'm pretty sure listening to the police scanner is not illegal. My grandparents used to do it all the time for perfectly non-anarchist, concerned citizen-type reasons. Once in a while they even called their friends at the church or Mobile Meals and "relayed" what they heard on the scanner, so I wonder how relaying that information on Twitter could be any different.
I think that it doesn't violate the freedom of speech, because there is certain things that you cant say. This example might be a stretch but I think the situation called for some action.
ReplyDeleteSince it is not actually illegal to listen to the police scanner, I have to say you are right in that he did nothing wrong. However, freedom of speech is certainly limited and I think everyone would agree that it should be. After all, would you want members of the CIA using "free speech" to release reports to the newspapers on sensitive American intelligence?
ReplyDeleteTwitter is one of the new problems of the uncharted digital era that the law hasn't really caught up with. I think that it should be the Anarchist's right to say what he wants on twitter-- but i think the way that this should have been approached is that he was putting his 'speech' onto the private property (ie the server of twitter) and therefore it would be up to the owners of the website to determine if it violated their user policy. I think at best, the twitter information (assuming it can be verified) should only be used to show motive/intent for a larger physical crime that led to the suffering of another individual.
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