The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania police have arrested a 41-year-old man for using Twitter<\/a> to post messages about police movements during the recent protests surrounding the G20 Summit.\u00a0 Also, FBI agents entered the man’s home<\/a> in New York City and confiscated computer equipment.\u00a0 The man is charged with directing others to avoid apprehension.\u00a0 The police declared the entire protest in Pittsburgh illegal, giving themselves the apparent freedom to charge anyone who helps the protesters.\u00a0 But anyone could have read the Twitter postings anywhere in the world.\u00a0 It was a public announcement about what the police were doing in plain sight.\u00a0 The American Civil Liberties Union<\/a> (ACLU) has stated that if this were happening in Iran or China, it would be condemned as a human rights violation.\u00a0 It most certainly is.<\/p>\n Police movements are public knowledge.\u00a0 Posting to Twitter about the whereabouts of police during a protest is simply the publication of public information.\u00a0 There is absolutely nothing illegal about it.\u00a0 If I stand on a street corner with my cell phone and Twitter about the movements of police cars, I’d be doing exactly what this man was arrested for.\u00a0 If those cars happened to be on their way to intercept a criminal, could the police come and arrest me for aiding that criminal?<\/p>\n The problem of police brutality and illegal actions against protesters is wildly out of control all over the nation.\u00a0 In Los Angeles you have the police violently attacking a peaceful gathering of immigration protesters in MacArthur Park.\u00a0 The riot police beat up television journalists and smashed their cameras.\u00a0 Later, the department had to pay over fourteen million dollars to private citizens and has even more to pay to the journalists they attacked.\u00a0 In Minneapolis the police burst into a home containing the organizers of a peaceful group planning protests for the Republican National Convention.\u00a0 The police held the organizers at gunpoint, tied-up on the floor for hours, just to keep them away from the convention. These were young highly-educated people with attorneys present on scene being held at gunpoint by a police force with no other intention than to prevent the exercise of their right to free speech and public assembly.<\/p>\n Look at this video from the G20 protests in Pittsburgh.\u00a0 Pay special attention during the arrest and assault on some protesters at the 5 minute and 12 second mark.\u00a0 What do you see?\u00a0 It’s a press photographer clearly wearing some sort of credential on his chest.\u00a0 He saunters through the melee without concern.\u00a0 He’s carrying a camera.\u00a0 The cops ignore him because he’s got that press credential. Then at the 6 minute and 15 second mark you hear a cop arresting someone and he says: ‘You’re with the press?\u00a0 Who are you with?’\u00a0 Presumably, he’s going to let a member of the press go instead of arresting him.<\/p>\n