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We interrupt your daily Bush-bashing to point you to an example of the insane security procedures going on right now at the Democratic National Convention: Wired News: Free Speech Behind the Razor Wire.

Looks like protesters are having their free speech rights completely trampled, by being herded into designated ‘free-speech zones’ which are well away from any delegates that might actually hear the protester’s points of view. Thankfully, modern wireless tech is at least allowing the protesters to communicate and organize with their fellows despite the security. Here’s a snippet:

But activists have been largely united in one civil action: their boycott of the so-called free-speech zone carved out by the U.S. Secret Service and local authorities, the only spot where protesters will be able to shout their messages to the delegates arriving on buses in a nearby parking lot.

The protesters are also coordinating actions outside the free-speech zone by sending text messages on their wireless phones. Some protesters for a short time Monday converted the zone into a mock prison camp by donning hoods and marching in the cage with their hands behind their backs.

The protest zone, which most people here simply call “the cage,” is beneath an elevated section of disused subway tracks near a newly paved bus parking lot.

Activists say the zone resembles the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The zone, surrounded by two layers of chain link fences mounted on Jersey barriers, draped with black mesh and topped with razor wire, violates the protesters’ free-speech rights, said a legal observer for the Boston chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

By the way, mad props to the fine folk at indymedia for providing assorted tech geekery and assistance to the protesters and independent media outlets over there.