The latest protest tool: 'texting'

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/09/02/textmessaging.protest.ap/
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The latest protest tool: 'texting'

Protesters use the technology to find, or avoid, hotspots

NEW YORK (AP) – "Multiple reports of provocateurs setting trash fires
in midtown," read one text message sent to 400-plus mobile phones this
week through a service called Ruckus RNC 2004 Text Alerts.

For protesters navigating Manhattan during the Republican National
Convention, text-message broadcasting services like this, sent to their
cell phones, provided an up-to-the-minute guide to the action on the
streets.

Texting "tells you where the hot zones are, where people are getting
arrested," said Greg Altman, 31, of New York City. "It tells you which
stuff to avoid." When he got a message Tuesday that protesters were
being beaten near Manhattan's Union Square, he stayed away.

Protesters weren't just employing the message services to look for
trouble and stay out of it.

Frances Anderson, 33, who divides her time between New York and Los
Angeles, picked the protests she would attend each day using text
messaging. "It's like a personal assistant," she said.

The text messages have ranged from an offer of a sewing machine for a
women's anti-war group called Code Pink, to an alert that protesters in
row boats on a lake in Central Park might be arrested, to an update
that protesters were allegedly beaten while handcuffed.

Text messages have called activists to spontaneous protests, including
a Wednesday rally by the downtown pier where arrested protesters were
being held and a rally against oil interests in Central Park. "Teleflip
your friends," the message on the latter protest urged.

"I came here this morning after getting a text message," Gael Murphy,
the 50-year-old co-founder of Code Pink said at the rally near the
pier.

Text messaging is not as prevalent in the United States as it is in
Europe and Asia and a number of protesters Tuesday said they had
trouble sending messages.

Text messages have become an important organizing tool for spontaneous
protests. Texting alerted thousands of people to anti-government
protests in Spain following the Madrid bombings that killed 191 people
in March. Massive protests in the Philippines in 2001, coordinated by
text messaging, were credited with ousting President Joseph Estrada.

Ruckus RNC 2004 was among the text-messaging groups available on the
commercial UPOC.com service, which is best known for text alerts of
celebrity sightings. More popular with protesters was the TxtMob.com
site, developed expressly for activists by techies with the Institute
for Applied Autonomy.

Users register their mobile phone number and e-mail address with the
site and can join many of the 200 groups (some are private), some of
which have hundreds of users. Messages sent by users are "broadcast"
through the TxtMob server.

TxtMob has 4,400 registered users, the site's administrator, who goes
by the pseudonym John Henry, said in a phone interview. Users with
several cell phone companies reported trouble receiving messages
Tuesday and Wednesday. Henry wouldn't say what he thought caused the
problem.

Reporters covering the protests were among TxtMob's more avid users,
and Henry said he assumed police were also keeping up with its
missives.

Tanya Mayo, 36, the national organizer of anti-war group Not in Our
Name, said, "We've made some real advances in technology; so have the
police. We have to assume that anything we have technologically is all
accessible by the police."

The New York Police Department "is utilizing a variety of tools to
monitor the activity of demonstrators in New York City," officer Chris
Filippazzo said, reading from a department statement. "We are not
releasing details of our tactics at this time."

Text messaging was far from the only technology protesters relied on
during the convention.

Activists from Code Pink got nighttime voice mail alerts telling them
where to go the next day. The women also used two-way radios to summon
extra leaders when a rally at Fox News they had expected would attract
200 people attracted more than 1,000.

Ben Meyers, 34, of New York, said he watched the indymedia.org Web site
Tuesday for minute-by-minute updates on what was happening where. The
organization also offered a broadcast of marchers' mobile phone updates
in conjunction with micro-radio station 103.9 in Brooklyn. Protesters
with cable TV service could also watch a public access channel that was
running nightly video of protests.

But texting was the demonstrations' most prevalent technology, and some
protesters who lacked it felt uncool.

"I have to figure out that thing for the next protest, so I can do it,"
said Misha Rappaport, 56, of San Francisco, squinting at her cell phone
across the West Side Highway from the pier where arrested protesters
were being held.