Rather than allow residents to exercise their rights to free speech, operators of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) in the San Francisco Bay Area decided last week to shut down cell phone service to four stations where a protest was planned to take place.

 

The protest was prompted by the fatal shooting of Charles Hill by BART police on July 3.

 

Once BART officials got wind of the demonstration, they reportedly worked with telecommunications companies AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile to keep people from using their phones. The agency also instituted new rules forbidding any future attempts to demonstrate on BART property.

 

Eva Galperin at the Electronic Frontier Foundation compared BART’s actions to those of Middle East dictators, calling the cell phone disruption “a shameful attack on free speech. BART officials are showing themselves to be of a mind with the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, who ordered the shutdown of cell phone service in Tahrir Square in response to peaceful, democratic protests earlier this year.”

 

Some protesters struck back at BART by hacking into an agency website and posting on it company contact information for more than 2,000 customers.

 

On Monday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that it would open an investigation into the cell phone shutdown. FCC spokesperson Neil Grace said “Any time communications services are interrupted, we seek to assess the situation.”

 

The infiltrators, known only as Anonymous, also called for a protest on Monday, which led to the temporary closing of four downtown train stations. During the protest, cell phone services were available.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

BART Pulls a Mubarak in San Francisco (by Eva Galperin, Electronic Frontier Foundation)

S.F. Subway Muzzles Cell Service During Protest (by Elinor Mills, CNET)

'Anonymous' Hackers Protest San Francisco's BART Cellphone Blocking (by Paul Elias and John S. Marshall, Associated Press)

BART Website MyBart.org Hacked by Anonymous (video) (by Ed Walsh, San Francisco Examiner)