"Who Owns Your Tweets"? asks radical writer Natasha Lennard provocatively, trying to convert the criminal actions of blocking traffic into some kind of "information security" and "privacy" and even "copyright" issues -- and failing to tell you the actual story.
I told you we'd be seeing more of this as OWS gets more and more desperate: we are.
My response:
Truth in reporting -- Natasha doesn't "cover" the OWS movement, she *participates* in it. So this is a diary entry, not a "news report."
Read about her radical views here
Lennard abets the whole OWS agitprop that "a New York Times reporter was arrested" making it seem as if some terrible media violation occurred. But a real NYT reporter, a full-time staff professional, would have better judgement. Lennard was only a free-lancer who wrote three articles on the OWS which she herself takes part in, and the Times, giddy with the revolutionary potential of OWS and not having their own sources, used her stuff. They don't any more.
(And as you can see from the Slate piece, she cunningly abets the whole fakery of Malcom Harris, whom she admits is her good friend and a prankster, in lawfaring around his stunt to knowingly occupy the bridge and then pretend to be a free-speech victim.)
There's nothing wrong with having radical views and taking part in radical actions. But if you break the law and block traffic or refuse to disperse, you'll take the consequences. So let's not call this some sort of "repression of journalism" when it is merely lawful response to unlawful direct action. And let's not call a judge's subpoena of your Twitter communications some kind of free speech horror when you have used it to incite crime.
There's also a lot of fancy footwork in this article obfuscating the fact that your medical records are private, and there are laws covering them, but your tweets are public. The Internet is not special; it is like a phone service. Law-enforcers requests with a warrant your phone communications; law-enforcers request your Twitter communications including your private messages, and this is lawful.
Why is this lawful? Because there is *probable cause* that you have committed a crime. This article COMPLETELY avoids telling you the content and the circumstances here, and takes part in the Occupy Big Lie:
You can't cry "foul" when you use Twitter to taunt police and announce that you are going to deliberately occupy the Brooklyn Bridge, despite obvious legal restrictions, and then pretend to be aghast that police arrest you for going off the sidewalk. James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal had these people's number:
These people may be tech-savvy, but they're so street-dumb that it apparently didn't occur to them not to post incriminating statements all over the Internet. A further irony is that the claims of "entrapment" are not only false but inverted. The lawbreaking "protesters" evidently sought to provoke arrests, which they then claimed were unjustified. If we were prosecuting these cases, we would demand a formal apology to the NYPD as a condition for any plea bargain.
And no, Twitter feeds are not works of art or literature. They are public communications with a private component. When they are used to incite imminent violence, or plan and incite and implement criminal actions, they don't get a pass under the First Amendment.
There isn't any prosecutorial overkill here. My son was there while this was going on, held up in traffic for hours while this menace was occurring; we all saw the tweets, the Facebook statuses and the photographs filling up Flickr that in fact are incriminating: there was a deliberate plan to occupy the full of the Brooklyn Bridge to deliberately block and disrupt traffic, and that was wrong and unlawful. You don't get to harm other people to make your point. Demonstrations can be restricted in time, place, and manner. You violate it for your subjective reasons, you take the consequences.
Lawfaring to try to coercively install radical rule isn't going to work.
I'll add this: I hope this trial doesn't go away. I really do hope it establishes that no, your social media communications are not some special, autonomous fairy-dusted place where you get to incite violent revolution and "direct action" online and in the real world and expect to forever get a pass under the privacy wrap.
As I noted when I saw the first rounds of this Big Lie from OWS, the "Internet freedom fighters" are waging war to demand maximum access for disrupters and rioters on social media and minimum -- or no! -- interference by government. They need to be disabused of their coercive notions, for the sake of all of our freedoms.
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