G20 activists hope Twitter will give them the edge over the police

The Times (of all places!) reports on the use of Twitter by ‘militants’ to plan protests in London ahead of the G-20 meeting here, today.

“Militant demonstrators aiming to disrupt next week’s G20 summit will use Twitter and text message alerts to stay one step ahead of a massive police operation.”

You don’t say?  Young politically active groups using mobile technology to out-organise, out-think, and out-maneuver stodgy old bureaucracies dedicated to defending the status quo using mid-20th century conceptual frameworks?  Quelle surprise!

UPDATE – As of Sunday, the protest didn’t seem to amount to much of a system disruption.  See the Guardian article here.

UPDATE 2 – “Middle-class academics, squatters and students” must use Twitter too.  I bet Marx would have used Twitter if he could have figured out how to sync his Blackberry.