“the social media equivalent of going into a crowded movie theater and shouting ‘Fire!’”

That’s a real mouthful, and I don’t know whether it is the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s way of  expressing frustration, or whether it is a sign of changing attitudes towards free speech. Here’s the background:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A rapper could face criminal charges after a tweet from his account incited a telephone flash mob that overwhelmed the emergency phone system at one of busiest stations of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department, the agency said Saturday.

The sheriff’s department alleges The Game tweeted the Compton station’s phone number Friday and told his 580,000 followers to call the number if they wanted an internship.

Naturally, this tied up the switchboards and callers with emergencies couldn’t get through. I don’t know whether the rapper had been hacked as he said, or was was pranking, or whether he might have had some sort of political motive:

“Yall can track a tweet down but cant solve murders!” the tweet said. “Dat was an accident but maybe now yall can actually do yall job !!!!”

A call and email to The Game’s publicist, Greg Miller at Big Hassle Media, was not immediately returned.

The rapper finally took down the number around 11 p.m. Friday after a third request from Parker, who took particular issue with the accusation that deputies are not doing their job.

“Under the LA county sheriffs we’ve reduce homicides in Compton by over 50 percent in recent years and crime is down in Compton, but it’s particularly helpful when the public can contact us,” Parker said Saturday in a phone interview with The Associated Press. “This incident was the social media equivalent of going into a crowded movie theater and shouting ‘Fire!’”

Investigators will document what happened, how many calls flooded the station, the rapper’s tweets and other information, and will turn it over to the district attorney’s office next week, Parker said. The rapper could face charges of maliciously disrupting or impeding communications over a public safety radio frequency, obstruction of justice or other charges related to delaying a peace officer from doing their job.

It is not at all clear whether the rapper in question is the one who posted the tweet. But even if he did, if his intent was to engage in some kind of protest, I’m having conceptual difficulties in seeing the difference between having callers flood a police switchboard as a protest and having listeners to a radio talk show inundate politicians with calls and emails.

Hence my worry. I also worry about the desire to crack down on social media, because that’s what they’re calling blogs these days.

It is axiomatic that there is no right to incite a riot, but I worry that what has been going on lately with “flash mobs” — and now “telephone flash mobs” — may be blurring the distinction between what constitutes incitement, and what constitutes a riot.

A lot of people are expressing frustrations over the increasing use of communications technology to facilitate flash mobs, and in Oakland, the BART police shut down wireless so demonstrators would find it tougher to disrupt the system. But what about people who might need to make emergency calls? Why wouldn’t turning them off constitute “maliciously disrupting or impeding communications over a public safety radio frequency” just as much as a tweet asking people to flood them with phone calls?

In today’s Free Press, columnist Mitch Albom calls the situation “the 21st-Century mob”:

“It’s instantaneous and it’s anonymous,” said Paul Wertheimer, founder of Crowd Management Strategies. “What we’re looking at is the 21st-Century mob.”

The 21st-Century mob. Just press send.

[…]

…how do you stop it? Some have talked about blocking the signals of digital devices in certain volatile areas — sort of like an instant jamming mechanism. But that supposes: 1) You can identify that area quickly. 2) You have the technology. 3) You’re not also blocking legitimate use of those devices — like an elderly person calling for an ambulance on a cell phone. (Already in San Francisco, civil libertarians are complaining about the rapid transit incident.)

Besides, once you identify a hot spot, hasn’t much of the damage been done?

You can’t keep people from assembling in America. But what happens when the point of the assembly is to disassemble something?

I think the answer to that would depend on what was being disassembled. Many people would love to see SWAT Teams disassembled. Others want Planned Parenthood disassembled. While still others want the Tea Party disassembled. As the activist who designed the Wisconsin Blue Fist put it,

These people need to be stopped at all costs.

By all costs? By any means necessary? Is that idle rhetoric or a call to arms? Is there a difference between saying that in a discussion group or blog post and tweeting it to people who are in the middle of an angry demonstration? Or does the distinction hinge on the amount of “influence” the speaker has? Under the First Amendment, there is no distinction between speakers.

Is there really a problem necessitating new laws? Rioting is already illegal and so are calls for violence. Communication technology has evolved to allow more sophisticated and more rapid communication to ever-larger numbers of people, and ever larger numbers of people are involved. But it strikes me that the flash mob problem usually involves more local, urban communications between people who either know each other and are of a similar mindset, and who use public transportation to get around quickly to the designated places.

It would be just as logical to blame these flash mobs on cities, or unsupervised young people with nothing to do and all the time in the world, as it is to blame social media.

Hey, how come no one has thought to blame public transportation?