The New York Times reports that an American man has been arrested and charged with “hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime.” Pennsylvania State Police are referring specifically to Elliot Madison’s use of Twitter, the social-networking site that went from being something of an online inexplicability (messages can be no longer than 40 characters long, spaces included) to front-page news in June when the site became vital to organising anti-election protests in Iran. A largely American body of Twitterers then responded by using their own Twitter accounts to express solidarity with the Iranian protesters, many of whom were being arrested by Iranian police. In fact, the U.S. State Department went so far as to ask Twitter “to delay a planned upgrade that would have cut daytime service to Iranians who are disputing their election” (Reuters). Twitter co-founder Evan Williams eventually did comply, but he said the State Department’s request wasn’t why. He explained, “We did it because we thought it was the best thing for supporting the information flow there at a crucial time, and that’s kind of what we’re about – supporting the open exchange of information” (BBC).

Meanwhile, according to the NY Times, “On Thursday, F.B.I. agents descended on a house in Jackson Heights, Queens, and spent 16 hours searching it. The most likely reason for the raid: a man who lived there had helped coordinate communications among protesters at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh.”

The article continues:

American protesters first made widespread use of mass text messages in New York, during the 2004 Republican National Convention, when hundreds of people used a system called TXTmob to share information. Messages, sent as events unfolded, allowed demonstrators and others to react quickly to word of arrests, police mobilizations and roving rallies. Mass texting has since become a valued tool among protesters, particularly at large-scale demonstrations.

And police and government officials appear to be increasingly aware of such methods of communication. In 2008, for instance, the New York City Law Department issued a subpoena seeking information from the graduate student who created the code for TXTmob. Still, Mr. Madison, who was released on bail shortly after his arrest, may be among the first to be charged criminally while sending information electronically to protesters about the police. […]

Since the raid, no other charges have been filed against Mr. Madison. On Friday, Mr. Stolar [Madison’s lawyer] argued in Federal District Court in Brooklyn that the warrant was vague and overly broad. Judge Dora L. Irizarry ordered the authorities to stop examining the seized materials until Oct. 16, pending further orders. […]

On Sunday night Mr. Madison said that the search of his home was an effort to “stifle dissent,” and added that several groups in Pittsburgh, including the summit organizers, had used Twitter accounts to describe events related to the meetings.

“They arrested me for doing the same thing everybody else was doing, which was perfectly legal,” he said. “It was crucial for people to have the information we were sending.”

This whole story begs several obvious questions. What exactly makes using Twitter to protest a G20 summit different from using Twitter to protest Iranian elections, such that US state entities will attempt to shut down the one and protect the next? How would this be different if Madison had used some other medium — or is what makes Twitter so dangerous, from the perspective of law enforcers, its ability to reach mass audiences immediately? If so, can legal action taken against Twitter users be applied against all forms of mass communications – most notably, cell phones? Is the current legal system even technologically-informed enough to be able to comprehend, let alone deal with, the tenacious mutability of the Internet specifically and community technologies generally? On exactly what rights can the social network users rely, or must these things always be decided on a case-by-case basis, at the whims of governing political discourses? Just who is responsible for the alleged crime in question – the creator of a given Twitter account, the viewers/readers/followers of that account, the creators of Twitter?