Word of this came to me through a tweet from one of my favorite never-met friends on Twitter, Cindy Stanford, a Ph.D. student in human factors at Wichita State. At 11:53, “Qik” the footage is not.

Noel Hidalgo got deported for this

Noel Hidalgo—an activist I once met online in 2006 while attending RootsCamp in Second Life—had a camera as he walked through Tiananmen Square and happened upon some people protesting the human rights violations in Tibet. He wound up on a plane back to the States. Fortunately, Noneck twitters:

02:06 AM August 09, 2008
I’m qik’n an awesome video of a protest i saw in t sq. The frosting came from a cbc camera man who got his passport stolen by police.

03:50 AM August 09, 2008
now i’m back at the hotel and realize that i have some really sweet footage

05:53 AM August 09, 2008
damn, this is down the street from my hotel. http://tinyurl.com/5btqjc

06:23 AM August 09, 2008
fyi my friends, i’ve moved back to my china mobile sim.

08:27 AM August 09, 2008
FINALLY! after 4 hours of mucking with FCE, i have a video that my friend is going to send around. i’ve i’m lucky it might get onto the wire

08:30 AM August 09, 2008
@RachelSterne i’d be happy to travel the world traveling for @groundreport going live is gonna be hard but fun!

09:46 PM August 09, 2008
wow, the pictures of the war broiling in georgia is mystifying.

01:11 AM August 10, 2008
holy shit my t square video has had over 13k views!!! http://tinyurl.com/6mdcmr

About 21 hours ago
I’m getting deported for filming. Everyone safe. tibet will be free!

About 17 hours ago
I’m with americans and canadans we are safe & on our way to la. Pema missing, they said she will be on the next flight to germany. Unsure of her safety.

Earlier in the trip, Noel had also experienced his way onto the ESPN blog, advising the reporter to clear out before things got ugly in a different protest on August 5th.

On the plane, heading home

The travel is not new for Noel. One year ago, he started a wandering journey around the world he dubbed The Luck of Seven:

for seven months, i will stand on the seven contents, dive into the seven oceans, and contemplate seven topics of freedom. while on the way, i will document the journey through stories, photos and videos. this is not my story, this is our story. though your hospitably, donations, projects, connections and friends, our stories will merge into one.

He kept a regular journal, with videos and photos to document his experience, focusing on seven topics of freedom:

1. Free Culture—originally a book by lawrence lessig, free culture is now a movement to break through the walled gardens of our minds and share information.
2. Free and Open-Source Software (F/OSS)—examples include firefox, open office, wordpress, and drupal … “the agents of open-source software are diverse, eclectic, and highly lovable.”
3. Couchsurfers and Bloggers—imagine opening up your house and letting a complete stranger sleep on your couch? That’s the norm for the social network of couchsurfers.
4. Agents of Progressive Social Change—searching for global agents of change.
5. Barcamp & Coworking—two places where physical conversations are organized through the internet. BarCamp is a grassroots technology unconference where attendants are presenters and presenters are attendants. Coworking is the workplace equivalent.
6. Happenstance—the art of random interaction.
7. Our Environment—spotlighting locations and people who are protecting nature, looking for the destruction we don’t see on the evening news.

At least the video ought to be easier to upload now. Welcome back to the West, Noneck.