I’ve read this article from the Times a few times now and don’t know whether it’s because the writing’s so muddled, the premise so absurd or my four hours of sleep is blocking some necessary synaptic connection needed to understand why this actually happened, but what most definitely happened is that a man was arrested.

Apparently for Tweeting.

Or, in the parlance of the Times, 41-year-old Elliot Madison was “charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime.”

I think — if I read this right — Elliot camped out in his hotel with a police scanner, a nom de guerre and favorite Twitter app and basically sent out updates on where the police were heading at any one time. Sort of like, wait for it, Iranian protesters did to much global fanfare just a few months back.

According to the Times:

A criminal complaint in Pennsylvania accuses him of “directing others, specifically protesters of the G-20 summit, in order to avoid apprehension after a lawful order to disperse.”

That’s about as helpful as the Times is in explaining the infraction. Are the police claiming that one cannot monitor their position and activity through scanners and then broadcast that information (via sms, Twitter or otherwise)? Are they saying that Elliot was aiding and abetting by sending information directly to people engaged in criminal conduct?

And is this a free speech issue where a) one should be able to report on the whereabouts of public servants, and b) make that information available in the time, manner and means one chooses? The Times doesn’t say. Maybe they don’t have any idea either.

What did happen though is that FBI agents spent 16 hours searching Elliot’s Jackson Heights, Queens home.

Just strange.

UPDATE 01: The Electronic Frontier Foundation posted Madison’s motion and his lawyer’s supporting declaration.

UPDATE 02:: As Russ notes in the comments below, BuzzNews fills in some blanks and from there we get a first hand report from Birds Before the Storm via Steampunk Magazine.

Over the past decade groups around the world have utilized Internet communication technologies during crisis to broadcast their message to local and global communities. Tubes, Code & Content looks at three case studies to see how this has been done. In the process we see that over the years, the ability to harness Internet communications is moving from formal organizations to anyone with actual Internet access.

Case studies include:

• B92, an oppositional radio station in Milosevic’s Yugoslavia;
• Sokwanele, an oppositional group under Mugabe’s Zimbabwe;
• Iran Elections, a mass protest against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s 2009 reelection.

Before we review them though, we explore the the significance of the shear amount of digital content being produced on a global scale. In doing so we learn that 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube per minute and the digital equivalent of a US Library of Congress is created every 15 minutes. What challenges does this present? What does such mass creation signify?

Run time is approximately one hour. Our review of digital creation takes place up to approximately minute thirty. Discussion of B92, Zimbabwe and Iran occur from there until the end.

Both the video and the presentation can be downloaded by selecting the links below.

• The “Media. Communication. Protests.” Screencast. iTouch/iPhone compatible. (160 MB .m4v file)
• The “Media. Communication. Protests.” PDF. Includes active links to sites and sources referenced in the presentation.

UPDATE: Creative Cloud has a post from the other day called If You Printed the Internet. Fun stuff. Includes factoids such as, if the Internet was a book, it would weigh 1.2 billion pounds and measure 10,000 feet tall.