SF subway cell shut down invites FCC probe
Anonymous flyer for BART protest.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said today that it's investigating a decision by government officials in San Francisco to pull the plug on subway cell service before a protest last week.
Also today, Bay Area Rapid Transit officials were bracing for a second protest scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. PT (8 p.m. ET) to highlight the civil liberties concerns raised by silencing mobile devices. Today's protest was organized by the group Anonymous, which appears to have been behind an intrusion into a BART Web site over the weekend.
It's unclear whether BART will disable service again. BART spokesman Linton Johnson, who has not returned several phone calls from CNET today, told KRON TV this morning that he would not reveal what BART plans are in preparation for the protest.
Preliminary reports on Twitter this afternoon suggested that BART police -- the agency maintains a uniformed division, which was involved in a fatal shooting that sparked the initial outcry -- would shut down the subway station where today's protest is scheduled to be held. The location, at the Civic Center BART, is adjacent to San Francisco city hall.
"I can not talk about our tactics tonight because we are obliged by the Constitution to balance everybody's rights," BART spokesman Johnson told the station. "We were forced into a gut wrenching decision" to cut cell service in order to protect BART users' "constitutional right to safety."
There is, however, no right to safety in the U.S. Constitution, only a right to speak and assemble freely -- which, some legal experts say, BART violated. The word "safety" appears in the state constitution, but in a section that talks about individual rights, not police powers.
The move to shut down a communication channel, while regularly done in the Middle East, including Egypt, and other regimes attempting to thwart pro-democracy and human rights demonstrations, is something previously unseen in the United States.
That's what appears to have captured the FCC's attention. "Any time communications services are interrupted, we seek to assess the situation," FCC spokesman Neil Grace said in a statement. "We are continuing to collect information about BART's actions and will be taking steps to hear from stakeholders about the important issues those actions raised, including protecting public safety and ensuring the availability of communications networks."
BART operators angered people when they
Activists thwarted after BART system shuts down cell service in advance of planned protest.
in four downtown San Francisco stations last Thursday in an attempt to prevent people from organizing and holding a protest of the shooting last month of 45-year-old Charles Blair Hill on July 3 by BART officers in Civic Center station. S.F. subway muzzles cell service during protest
People are also angry about the January 1, 2009, fatal shooting of Oscar Grant by BART officers. His shooting, while he was restrained, unarmed and on the ground, became highly publicized after video from cell phones and cameras went viral on the Internet. The officer was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter after claiming he meant to fire his Taser instead of his gun, and he served a two-year sentence.
New protest planned Anonymous logo shows up on Bart.gov and CaliforniaAvoid.org, while user info is also leaked.
To retaliate against BART, the Anonymous group of online activists defaced the MyBART.org site yesterday and
names, e-mail addresses, unencrypted passwords and for many their address and phone number too. And they planned a protest to take place at Civic Center station for today. Anonymous defaces BART site, leaks user data
A San Francisco Police Department spokesman said there will be officers above ground ready to help BART officers if needed. An FBI spokeswoman, meanwhile, confirmed that BART had contacted the agency for help in investigating the Web site hack.
Support Anonymous had last week when it announced "OpBART" or Operation BART may have diminished when BART users' information was released publicly on Sunday. There was dissent even within Anonymous, which lacks a formal structure or hierarchy and seems to attract followers based on the target. (See
This handy chart provides a timeline of the computer attacks and hacks that have happened over the past year.
of recent Internet attack activities.)Keeping up with the hackers (chart)
"The customer data leak was grossly irresponsible. But there is Anonymous and there is Anonymous. Some dumb apples here and there. That's it," someone controlling the AnonyOps Twitter account wrote to CNET today. "Many of us fight against this sort of action, but being we're leaderless, it's hard,"
The Twitter profile also released this public statement: "Today's protest is about more than just today's actions. We're also trying to grow the public's appetite for protest. We want maximum exposure for this event and for others. We want the public to see that we aren't bad people."
AnonyOps and other Anonymous members were urging people to protest peacefully, and to wear red shirts and masks. "Today's protest is about more than just today. Keep it peaceful and we will succeed in increasing the public's appetite for protest," AnonyOps tweeted.
Participants had created an Operation BART channel on UStream where they would post video and people could chat. Anonymous also released a link to what was billed as live audio feed from BART.
And protesters were urged to use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in the event that cell service is cut off. One Android app, Auto-BAHN, is designed to let people communicate via Bluetooth when cell service isn't working. However, it's not available in the Android Market and you need the Android Software Developer's Kit to install the application.
BART created this page with resources for commuters who need transit information today.
Meanwhile, Joe Weiss, a critical infrastructure security expert, told CNET he was dismayed that people seem more concerned with hackers posting peoples' personal data than they do with problems that affect BART's operations and which could conceivably harm more than peoples' privacy. For example, BART's 28 trains were stopped for more than two hours a week ago due to a communication problem between two routers, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "What led to the router failure remains a mystery," BART spokesman Johnson told the news outlet.
"Here you had two cases within a week - one you never heard of and it shut down the entire system," Weiss said. "While the Anonymous hack is front page."
Separately, Anonymous has launched an operation against the town of Fullerton, California, to protest the death of Thomas Kelly, who died after being beaten by Fullerton police last month. (CNET's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report.)
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I see. So what if somebody had a medical emergency and nobody could call 911 because cell service was shut down?
What if somebody's day-care provider tried to call them because there was an emergency with their child, but couldn't reach them because cell service was shut down?
The "Christian conservatives" are trying to make the US into a theocracy just like countries in the middle east (in complete violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution) and now BART thinks they have the authority to disrupt communications, just like they've done in some countries in the middle east?
Are people really so stupid as to not understand that a point can be reached when Americans decide they've had enough, just like some countries in the middle east?