Those who wish to protest at private residences inside the District already have to keep the noise to a minimum. But now those wishing to protest anonymously could be arrested for it — unless they clear it with the Metropolitan Police Department. The Council recently approved a bill, first proposed by Mary Cheh in 2009, which would make masked protesting without informing police and between the hours of 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. an arrest-on-sight offense.

The American Civil Liberties Union believes that the legislation is an infringement on First Amendment rights:

“It’s already unlawful to wear a mask while committing a crime,” said Arthur Spitzer, the legal director for the ACLU’s Washington branch. “Now they’ve prohibited peaceful demonstrations when people are wearing masks … and there are legitimate reasons to protest outside a house with a mask on.”

Well, it’s good to know that it remains illegal to commit a crime.

But back to the point at hand: the Residential Tranquility Act of 2010 was proposed in reaction to protests by a group called Defending Animal Rights Today and Tomorrow, which has shown up at residences in the District donning masks and creating quite a ruckus. The group’s website includes videos like this one, which show the group confronting an unhappy neighbor of their target who had attacked the group with curses — the protesters antagonize him as a “puppy-killing scumbag,” while chanting “we know where you sleep at night” at their intended target.

It’s an interesting case: lobbing veiled threats while masked in the middle of the night through a megaphone in a quiet residential neighborhood certainly stretches the reasonable definition of “peaceable assembly,” doesn’t it?