The United States’ descent into a police state seems to be gathering pace. Beating and arresting peaceful protestors was bad enough; now people are being arrested for twittering the location of police during the protest.
Elliot Madison, a 41 year-old social worker and self-described anarchist from Queens was arrested on September 24 after being found with computers and a police scanner. He was charged with “hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime.” It’s lucky our tech facilitator Mike Gogulski is in Slovakia, or he might have been arrested too.
On Thursday, the Feds raided his Queens home and searched it for 16 hours. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has made the legal documents available. Among the items seized were computers, cellphones, and “anarchist literature.”
We should be getting used to the authorities deeming the possession of anarchist literature as an offence worthy of harassment. As hard as I try, though, I just can’t get past the fact that the Feds think it important to take a person’s book collection as part of their investigation. Even if we accept the thuggery of shutting peaceful protest and arresting those spreading information useful to protestors as legitimate (which you’d have to be slightly psychotic to do, by the way), it’s difficult to see the relevance of Madison’s political views or literary tastes to his legal culpability.
Even if the literature doesn’t get him into any trouble, he is being bullied for his beliefs. This is what a police state looks like.
Brad Taylor is a graduate student in Political Science at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. He blogs at
It’s funny how the can spin things to make it sound worse than it really is. Excerpts from a non existent article about a raid on my compound:
A search of the premises lead to the discovery of a shotgun, bladed weapons (pocket, kitchen knives, and a machete in my camping gear), laboratory equipment with a collection of mysterious liquids in unlabeled seal brown glass bottles (homebrew), it is believed that the suspect may have been making chemical weapons. Fixx was also found to have had anarchist literature, and the means to reproduce more (printer, copier, stapler) and what appeared to be equipment and materials to mass produce posters, banners and clothing featuring radical political messages (screen printing stuff.) Several modified computers were discovered all seem to be using military grade encryption and anonymity software popular with spies and terrorists.
Heh. I suspect the last sentence would read: “Several modified computers were discovered all seem to be using military grade encryption and anonymity software popular with spies and terrorists and pedophiles.”
Though I am not a Constitution hugger by any means, one has to wonder about Freedom of the Press issues on this twittering thing. It seems to me like these people were simply reporting news.
Just for the record, I’m not feeling incredibly lucky.
You’re the most courageous of us all, Mike.
If that’s true, Nick, I think we’re well and truly doomed
Beh… You chose the hardest path so of course it looks dark. We’re growing like never before, though. The people on my Facebook friend’s list are reaching more people in a week than the Tuckers and Spooners did in their lifetimes.
I’m glad you posted this. I don’t know if Fr33 Agents have seen the article written by one of the residents of the raided house. I saw it on news.infoshop.org, which isn’t loading right now, but it is also here:
http://www.ainfos.ca/ainfos15727.html
Shotgun+Homebrew+Kitchen knives+Computer+Anarchist lit = Up to no good. Elementary, ye citizens!
“Though I am not a Constitution hugger by any means…” What the hell does that mean? What do u hug? U better hug it or lose it.
I’d love to lose it. It’s the founding document of the largest government the world has ever known.