Crackdowns on Twitter: Not Just for Iran Anymore

From Amy Goodman's latest in the Oregonian:

A social worker from New York City was arrested last week while in Pittsburgh for the G-20 protests, then subjected to an FBI raid this week at home -- all for using Twitter. Elliot Madison faces charges of hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime. He was posting to a Twitter feed (or tweeting, as it is called) publicly available information about police activities around the G-20 protests, including information about where police had issued orders to disperse.

[...]

The U.S. State Department, impressed with the importance of Twitter to Iranian protests, asked Twitter to delay system maintenance that might have interrupted the service during the Iranian protests.

While Madison optimistically mused, "I'm expecting the State Department will come out and support us also," his lawyer, respected civil rights attorney Martin Stolar, said: "This is just unbelievable. It is the thinnest, silliest case that I've ever seen. It tends to criminalize support services for people who are involved in lawful protest activity. And it's just shocking that somebody could be arrested for essentially walking next to somebody and saying: 'Hey, don't go down that street, because the police have issued an order to disperse. Stay away from there.'"

[...]

One Iranian twitterer for the virtual news hub Tehran Bureau recalled the June protests in an essay: "An officer spoke to us through a loud speaker: 'Disperse: This is your last warning.' The sight of them made my knees tremble, but the wave pushed on and so I went along." He was beaten, bloodied, arrested and held for 20 days. While Elliot Madison was not physically harmed, his legal battles are just beginning, and his case could prove central to the future of free speech in the mobile, digital age.

Late Night Developments

A couple developments being reported:

Andrew Sullivan's blog links to Der Spiegel which is apparently reporting that Iran may bring in 5,000 Hezbollah troops for a "showdown".

Publicus thinks that the success of Twitter in Iran could end up being shut down:

Twitter is obviously one of the big stories to come out of the Iranian election. And it's been a remarkable development -- no argument there. The tweets have been inspiring and courageous. And there's an aesthetic dimension to them that's hard to resist.

But understand... the tweets could be stopped (more on that below). In fact, I worry that Twitter's success in Iran will create a false confidence that the Internet can't be stopped, and that people's digital voices can't be silenced. They can -- and we should understand that keeping an open global Internet requires aggressive effort and activism.

There are even apparently rumors within Iran that certain tags are being blocked on some feeds. Here is a Tweet from IranRiggedElect:

Still not confirmed if the #iranelection hashtag is blocked. KEEP USING IT. Could be a propaganda to disperse everyone.

and an interesting piece just up at the New York Times:

But many analysts say the differences between factions have never been quite so pronounced nor public as in the past few days. Former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, once a close Khamenei ally who helped him become supreme leader, sent an open letter to him in the days before the election warning that any fraud would backfire, Mr. Milani noted. If he allowed the military to ignore the public will and to destroy senior revolutionary veterans, the decision would haunt him, Mr. Rafsanjani warned: “Tomorrow it is going to be you.”

Everyone speaking of Ayatollah Khamenei tends to use the word “cautious,” a man who never gambles. But he now faces a nearly impossible choice. If he lets the demonstrations swell, it could well change the system of clerical rule. If he uses violence to stamp them out, the myth of a popular mandate for the Islamic revolution will die.

“The Iranian leadership is caught in a paradox,” said Ms. Nafisi, the author of memoirs about Iran.

Tweets and More Video from Iran

Latest Tweets from Iran:

persiankiwi:

we are moving location - seperating - situation in Tehran is tense - cant explain #Iranelection

StopAhmadi:

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. over 'n out.

abzole:

We won't give up, THIS IS JUST WHERE IS BEGINS #Iranelection

tehranelection:

I have to shut down for a bit, the police are looking for satellites.

Bahram81:

Rumor goes on;3 of d 16 are Iraq-war veterans (Mousavi's potential allies),have been taken2undisclosed location in east Tehran #iranelection

More disturbing video is also coming out of Iran. First video below is of some authorities beating and leaving someone on what looks like a roof and the second video is a brief clip of protesters carrying the body of a person who was killed during yesterday's protests:





and here is a video of the massive protests from yesterday:

More Video out of Iran and a Movement to Get Twitter to Stay Online

Channel 4 in Britain has captured some amazing footage of paramilitary forces firing on the protesters. One person was killed and many more wounded when protesters were fired upon in Azadi Square earlier today. Here is some video:



This video was captured and is apparently of a male who was shot:




Also, this video appears to confirm that a woman was either shot during the chaos or severely injured:



The crowd that marched to Azadi Square was reportedly five miles long and was comprised of hundreds of thousands of people:



Twitter continues to be a major outlet for people in Iran to get out their messages and to inform people outside of Iran about what is going on inside the country. Twitter has a scheduled outage in order to perform routine maintenance at 9:45PM this evening (9:15AM in Iran) and there is currently a movement to get Twitter to stay online during this time. You can follow that link to join this movement.

I will also take this opportunity to say that in this post, written back in March, I was critical of Twitter and questioned the usefulness of this new social media. I wrote that while I saw some value in it, I wasn't really convinced. My perception of Twitter has drastically changed over the course of the last few days due to this situation in Iran. It has proven itself to be a highly effective medium for which to get out quick bits of information to a vast number of people, even when the Iranian regime has tried to shut down the media to prevent the stories of these dissidents from being told. News reporters and ordinary citizens alike have relied on Twitter to tell their stories and even organize protests. It has shown itself to be vital during this moment in history.

The Power of New Media and the Ongoing Protests in Iran

As I mentioned in my last post, a lot of the media outlets are being shut down in Iran. Apparently Twitter has escaped any kind of shutdown and has been a means by which the citizens and protesters have been able to communicate. There were even rooftop chants that were organized via Twitter. Here is some video of these chants that are reportedly becoming deafening. It is enough to give you chills:



Andrew Sullivan's blog is doing a great job covering this issue and has these thoughts:

That a new information technology could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times. It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before.

It's increasingly clear that Ahmadinejad and the old guard mullahs were caught off-guard by this technology and how it helped galvanize the opposition movement in the last few weeks. That's why they didn't see what those of us surgically attached to modems could spot a mile away: something was happening in Iran. If Drum is right, the mullahs believed their own propaganda about victory until reality hit them so hard so fast, they miscalculated badly and over-reached.

The key force behind this is the next generation, the Millennials, who elected Obama in America and may oust Ahmadinejad in Iran. They want freedom; they are sick of lies; they enjoy life and know hope.

This generation will determine if the world can avoid the apocalypse that will come if the fear-ridden establishments continue to dominate global politics, motivated by terror, armed with nukes, and playing old but now far too dangerous games. This generation will not bypass existing institutions and methods: look at the record turnout in Iran and the massive mobilization of the young and minority vote in the US. But they will use technology to displace old modes and orders. Maybe this revolt will be crushed. But even if it is, the genie has escaped this Islamist bottle.

Maybe that's what we're hearing on the rooftops of Tehran: the sound of the next revolution.

Allah O Akbar!

Steve Clemons has a take on the Iranian regime's response to the opposition:

He conveyed to me things that were mostly obvious -- Iran is now a tinderbox. The right is tenaciously consolidating its control over the state and refuses to yield. There is a split among the mullahs and significant dismay with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. A gaping hole has been ripped open in Iranian society, exposing the contradictions of the regime and everyone now sees that the democracy that they believed that they had in Iranian form is a "charade."

But the scariest point he made to me that I had not heard anywhere else is that this "coup by the right wing" has created pressures that cannot be solved or patted down by the normal institutional arrangements Iran has constructed. The Guardian Council and other power nodes of government can't deal with the current crisis and can't deal with the fact that a civil war has now broken out among Iran's revolutionaries.

My contact predicted serious violence at the highest levels. He said that Ahmadinejad is now genuinely scared of Iranian society and of Mousavi and Rafsanjani. The level of tension between them has gone beyond civil limits -- and my contact said that Ahmadinejad will try to have them imprisoned and killed.

Likewise, he said, Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Mousavi know this -- and thus are using all of the instruments at their control within Iran's government apparatus to fight back -- but given Khamenei's embrace of Ahmadinejad's actions in the election and victory, there is no recourse but to try and remove Khamenei. Some suggest that Rafsanjani will count votes to see if there is a way to formally dislodge Khamenei -- but this source I met said that all of these political giants have resources at their disposal to "do away with" those that get in the way.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet...

It appears that Twitter has become the latest Facebook, or so people are telling me. Celebrities and even politicians have signed up for the service and "tweet" about all kinds of interesting (or meaningless) topics.

I, for one, have yet to see the value in signing up for a Twitter account. It just seems like something that would consume more of my time than it would really be worth in the end. The concept seems like a hybrid between texting and Facebook and while I enjoy both of these individual means of communicating, I am not sure that I need to have a Twitter feed. Maybe I just don't care enough about what my friends are eating for breakfast or what their latest inside joke is (that I won't understand anyway).

Much to my surprise, I found that there is a little debate about this exact topic that has been taking place on the internets. John Cole somewhat agrees that there may be little value in Twitter, but I hope that I don't come off quite as crotchty as he does in his post. (Damn these kids and their new-fangled technology!)

Jay Ackroyd on the other hand, thinks that those in the beltway media using Twitter is a good thing because it often drills down to their real, unfiltered feelings on issues (Often emphasizing how messed up the beltway media mentality can be).

So perhaps I can begin to see that there may be some value to this after all. Like all of these social media tools, there will always be elements that one may find or not find valuable, but for my own purposes I still think that I may sit on the sidelines and watch for the near future. I am not quite sold as of yet.

After all, Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan both point to how fun just watching can actually be. They both bring up the value of Christopher Walken's Twitter feed. Even if you find zero value in Twitter, you must admit that his feed is highly entertaining and pretty hilarious.