Posts to CitizenQuasar Twitter page.
(Credit: Screenshot by Steven Musil/CNET)An Oklahoma City man who allegedly threatened on Twitter to turn a tax protest into a massacre has been arrested on suspicion of making interstate threats in what is believed to be the first federal prosecution based on posts made to the micro-blogging site.
The FBI arrested Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, after agents identified him as Twitter user CitizenQuasar. Using the micro-blogging site, Hayden allegedly threatened to start a "war" against the government at the Oklahoma City Capitol where a "Tea Party" tax protest was planned.
"START THE KILLING NOW! I am willing to be the FIRST DEATH!," read a message posted at 8:01 p.m. on April 11, which was followed by, "After I am killed on the Capitol Steps, like a REAL man, the rest of you will REMEMBER ME!!!" Another post said: "I really don' give a (expletive) anymore. Send the cops around. I will cut their heads off the heads and throw the(m) on the State Capitol steps."
Hayden directed many of his tweets toward another Oklahoma City man he erroneously thought was an organizer of the protest. Wired tracked down Earl Shaffer, a 68-year-old retiree who Hayden allegedly tweeted about, including posts with his phone number.
"He seemed to know stuff about me, but I don't know how or why," Shaffer told Wired. "He called me a few days before that tea party and let me know somehow he got my name as one of the organizers. I don't have the energy."
Shaffer told CNET News that he has never met Hayden and is unnerved by the situation.
"I have no idea who this guy is," Shaffer said. "It is very much a concern that he mentions my being killed."
One of the last messages posted to the site on April 15 says CitizenQuasar is "Locked AND loaded for the Oklahoma State Capitol. Let's see what happens."
Hayden was arraigned on April 16 and released to an Oklahoma City halfway house, according to various media reports.
The U.S. intelligence community has expressed concern that terrorists might use Twitter to coordinate attacks. A draft Army intelligence report prepared by the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion and posted to the Federation of American Scientists Web site examined the possible ways terrorists could use mobile and Web technologies such as the Global Positioning System, digital maps, and Twitter mashups to plan and execute terrorist attacks.
Supporters of the blind protest the Authors Guild for objecting to the Kindle 2's text-to-speech function.
(Credit: Michael Adolph)The controversy regarding the text-to-speech function offered by Amazon.com's Kindle 2 digital book reader appears to be heating up again.
Groups advocating for the blind and reading disabled on Tuesday held a protest at the Manhattan offices of the Authors Guild. The guild was very vocal in opposing the text-to-speech technology in the Kindle. The group, which represents 4,000 authors, argued that the Kindle infringes on copyright and could hurt audio book sales.
The whole debate seemed to be over in February when . The Web's largest retailer said it had decided to enable publishers with the power to disable Kindle's text-to-speech function on a per-title basis.
Text-to-speech enables computers to read text in a lifelike voice.
The protest of 150 and 250 participants, according to reports, was held "in hopes to reverse the Guild's threat to disable text-to-speech from e-books for the Kindle 2," according to a statement from the National Federation of the Blind (NFB).
Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, said his organization came up with a plan that would have given the blind and visually impaired access to the Kindle's voice function regardless of whether publishers chose to disable the technology.
"Authors want everyone to read their books," Aiken said. "We've been strongly supportive of the rights of the blind and disabled to obtain books...We know how to balance the interests, to make sure there is special access to books for people who need it but still protect markets that authors depend on. Audio-books is one of those markets."
The NFB rejected the guild's proposal calling it "burdensome" for the blind to prove their disability or "pay extra for the text-to-speech version."
More than 100 people were arrested in downtown Oakland on Wednesday night when a protest turned violent, fueled at least in part by videos that quickly spread online of a subway policeman fatally shooting an unarmed man while he was lying on the ground restrained by another officer.
The case--and the overall intense community response to it--highlights the impact technology can have on news events. The devices people carry in their pockets give them the ability to turn what would normally be a case played out in the courtroom into one in which anyone with an Internet connection can serve as virtual judge and jury.
BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle, 27, allegedly shot Oscar Grant, 22, early on New Year's Day after Grant was pulled off a BART train following a scuffle among riders. Outrage over the incident spread quickly after videos--taken by onlookers with their cell phone cameras--started appearing on TV and the Internet.
Links to videos of the incident quickly circulated via e-mail. One of the first videos posted on YouTube was a KTVU Channel 2 news broadcast, which includes live video clips and an interview with a woman who took some of the video. (Note: We included YouTube links because of compatibility issues.)
This video, also from a KTVU broadcast, was later posted on YouTube. It appears to show the gun. Another video shows the scene from a different angle.
Much of the video is grainy and views of the scene are sometimes obscured by people moving in front of the camera. However, there is no mistaking that the victim was on the ground, subdued by officers and not appearing threatening to anyone.
"When you watch that video your stomach just drops out from underneath you when you hear that gunshot because you know what the end result is," BART Chief Spokesman Linton Johnson told Channel 7.
What started Wednesday as a peaceful protest against the shooting and the way it was handled by authorities, turned into a near riot with protesters setting fire to trash cans and cars, including a police cruiser, and breaking store windows. There appeared to be no injuries, but about 105 people were arrested.
Exacerbating the anger among citizens was the fact that the shooting officer had resigned earlier on Wednesday, before authorities questioned him for an internal investigation. With no word from the officer explaining what happened, people have been left to speculate about the cause of the shooting (one theory is that the officer mistook his gun for a taser gun) and the mystery has undoubtedly driven even more people to view the videos.
The raw video on the Web site of KTVU Channel 2, based in Oakland, has been downloaded more than 500,000 times since it was posted on Monday, said Ed Chapuis, news director at the station.
The videos have played a critical role in the public interest in the incident, he said. "You have the incident in question actually on tape. You've got multiple views of it," he said. "That's what's different and unusual about the case."
Before broadcasting the video, KTVU officials debated whether or not it was appropriate to do so and decided that because there were so many questions raised about the sequence of events during the shooting, there was a strong journalistic reason to share the video with the public, according to Chapuis.
"This is a tragedy and there was nothing good about what happened," he said. "That is what we as journalists should be focusing on."
In the aftermath of the protest, people are again turning to technology as East Bay residents turn to microblogging site Twitter to get updated information about the investigation and subsequent protest activities.
It should also be noted that the victim's family on Wednesday publicly decried the Wednesday night violence, calling it an affront to his memory.
Twitter users were using the site to post and get information about the Oakland shooting and additional protests.
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