LEE COUNTY — Elvis Rodriguez, 30, flashed Latin Kings hand signals on his MySpace.com page and called himself “King Kamel,” according to his arrest report. Richard Figueroa-Santiago, 22, used his MySpace page to post pictures of friends making “Eastside” hand gestures, detectives said.

Now, in the first cases of their kind in Florida and in the nation, both Lee County men face five years in state prison for the gang-related content of their Web pages. Their prosecutions are the first under a state law passed last year that criminalizes the use of electronic media to “promote” gangs. Attorneys for both are challenging the law as unconstitutional. “It violates his right to free speech, to associate,” said Joseph Cerino, Rodriguez’s lawyer. The bill’s sponsor, a retired police officer, calls the law a modern response to increasing gang violence in some Florida cities.

“We have seen from day one until now that none of our freedoms are absolute, and the freedom of expression is not absolute,” said Rep. William D. Snyder, R-Stuart. The defendants appear to share little in common — Rodriguez has been arrested seven times in the past 10 years for a variety of non-violent crimes. Figueroa-Santiago has no apparent criminal background and, according to his father, was a student at Southwest Florida College at the time of his arrest.

Both were nabbed in November as part of “Operation Firewall,” a slate of arrests by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office that netted 15 people, including a Bonita Springs felon charged with stockpiling weapons, six juveniles with flashy Myspace.com accounts and a pair of middle-aged men accused of recruiting gang members.

Their arrests came weeks after a new anti-gang law hit the state books. House Bill 43, a 95-page bill that created or tweaked some 35 different statutes, stiffened penalties for gang-related crimes, upping certain charges when a documented gang member is involved.

Idiots all the way around on this one.