Cellphones blocked in SF to hinder transit protest

2:45 - 3:30 in the video.

What makes an effective protest? It has to disrupt normal every day activity. Unfortunately, this is illegal everywhere in the USA. Besides, they can just gut the protests by shutting off cellphone towers.

What a @$^ing joke.

gosh so what about hindering emergency response in that area unrelated to riots? seems like practice for local enforcement doing so routinely in the area in response to any civil unrest or lockdown.

I can see how easy is to stop us. So...no cellphones and we get silenced ?

Remember George Washington, Paul Revere or Martin Luther King. They didn't have cellphones or internet, nothing stopped them.

What would you do if all those prophecies come true and we have to live like our ancestors 200 years ago? Are you going to bend *** after the elite?

Have a good use for all technology we have now, but keep moving forward if you don't have it.

reply to post by AllInMyHead


I did, i even looked up the location on google maps because I wanted to make sure it was a subway and not a train station. That makes alot of difference and that was why my response as to how dangerous it would be to protest in a subway.

Ridiculous.

Don't want to hear something? Just press the Mute button.

This will now easily happen on a larger scale.

Then what?

Protesters
start getting out your walkie talkies

Originally posted by beezzer
I wrote this in the other thread, but I feel it bears repeating.

"This is exactly the same argument TSA uses. It's all for safety.
Just ignore the fat sweaty guy pawing your wife in the security line.
It's all for safety."

good one

but don't forget the classic of all classics:

"its for your protection as well as ours !"

I can see both sides of this. On one hand, cutting off the protest IF it was because of a safety concern in the subway,would be something I could understand. I am all for peaceful protests but not at the expense of someone else's right to be unharmed.

On the other hand, a dangerous precedent has been set. By blocking cellphones to quash a protest local,state and federal gov's now will have carte blanche ( as if they didn't before ) to implement the same kind of tactics to stop protests in the future.

There is more I would like to say but it is late, and I am having trouble organizing my thoughts and do not want to turn this into a rant.

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is just trying to keep their (very important to commuters here in the Bay Area) form of transportation up and running. If BART service is disrupted, it hugely impacts travel in a negative way... Road traffic here is already ridiculous as is.

I see a lot of comments about "OMG what if there was an emergency and they had to call 911?"

Well, they could either:

1) Seek out a BART police officer (whom patrol every station) for assistance
2) Use a payphone to dial 911
3) Exit the station and use their cell phone again
4) Recall that emergencies have occurred well before the existance of cell phones in the first place

AllInMyHead on page 2 of this thread hit the nail on the head regarding this. Go read it before inserting "Our freedom is being taken away" comments.

I also agree with ICEKOHLD's comments, except for the "they cannot stop the movement, we are taking the land back" bit. Oh, yes they can stop it.

To the OP, shutting down a cell phone relay switch does not equal taking away our right to peaceably assemble. Disrupting BART service is not peaceful assembly, therefore it is not ok.

This is totally BS! Please block cell phones in movie theaters, not in train stations!

Judging by the 50+ deaths in the LA riots, I'd say this country has a right to be worried about planned protests especially when it comes to issues such as these....

Interesting tactic this is though.

It is not about protesting anymore. It is about violence. There are too many idiots that are running around thinking that they are owed something when they did nothing to earn it.......

When people run around burning things, looting small mom and pop shops that are struggling to survive, all in the name of something (it does'nt matter what), it scares people....That is what it is about....

Controlling the idiots that want to tear everything up. There is rarely a peaceful protest anymore.....If there is I do not here about it...........

I say if you want to picket something with a sign, then do it....but do not burn the whole town down because you are unhappy

Fine if they wanna shut off the cell towers... then help em out, tear down the f***in towers permanently. It's either ON or it's OFF, the state doesn't get to choose when.

The ironic thing is BART stations are the only place in San Francisco where iphones work. Lots of fanbois out there were probably more pissed than the Angry Birds.

I've been to protests in San Francisco where FRS is used. Oh, I suppose BART could jam those radios.

For AT&T, there has been quite a bit of femocell hacking of late. Basically the femtocells that people by for their homes can be converted to look like regular GSM service. I could see some hackers setting up their own GSM network for the next protest.

For every measure, their is a countermeasure. I assume BART would just jam the femtocells.

reply to post by ICEKOHLD


agreed. Yes the internet and cell phones have given us unpresidented access to information but we have come to the point where without it we are crippled. its time to start using older forms of communication to ensure we still have access to one another when it really goes down. If we do not stand united, we will fall and they will control the direction of history.

Originally posted by zooplancton
this is an outrage. what if a member of someone's family needed medical attention and was trying to reach someone in that block out zone. total BS... especially in such a progressive city.
how is that even legal?

well.. so much for 911 calls .. I think the mayor should be...literately... thrown out of office, and then see if his cell phone works for a 911 call..

and here's something as well.. everyone should call 911 and say their cell phone isn't working .. flood the system.. !!! someone is going to have a HUGE class-action law suit on their hands ..

oh and don't forget ALL the businesses that are trying to make an income around the city and the ports .. WOW~! LOL.. hope there's a YT for this event.. I'll take a front seat ~!!

reply to post by Komodo


BART is a regional authority. I'm not sure it is fair to blame the mayor.

While I think the BARTs actions were pretty disgusting, I suspect what they did was completely legal. There was a time when cell phones didn't work in the underground stations. They still don't work in the tube under the bay or the train tunnels. Maybe they will have to pay the wireless companies for lost billing.

Some of the underground BART stations link up with SF Muni. It's not clear if the towers on the muni level were shut off.

I certainly hope that after deliberately crippling communications, no one down there so much as suffered a hang nail they were unable to dial their cellphones for help with. If so? Then sue California into dust. This wasn't just foolish and ill conceived, it could get real people hurt. Communications isn't a game and it isn't something to turn on and off as a political toy.

Of all the states I have lived or spent serious time in, California must be one of the worst when it comes to the "state" at all levels, from crossing guard to the Governor, taking it as a given that your life is for them to decide on and determine the future of. In this case, your ability to communicate or call help is obviously a privilege they have determined can be taken on a whim, at any time and without warning. Neat. Where do I sign up?

An Additional thought I just had.... Since BART officials seem to foolishly believe that treating their paying customers like school children by crippling their phones will stop them from getting a bit of bad P.R., I believe they need to set this whole thing up again and make it several times larger than it ever would have been the first time. After all, it's a basic violation of freedom and safety to protest now...not just the bad shooting this HAD been about.

What nobody has mentioned yet is that this wasnt the first protest.

January...

violent civil protests in Oakland Wednesday night, during which angry mobs of people were arrested after setting fire to cars and smashing storefronts. ... the station damaged. Several full length and small windows were broken toward the back of the station. Graffiti was found on the exterior of the station and bricks were located both inside and outside the building as well as on the platform. ...” the windows were smashed “...
"We approached the BART station fully masked and carried stones, bricks, and spray paint in our gloved hands. We painted first .... We spent no more than 20 seconds smashing in the glass windows and then vanished into the night.”

bdp

A few weeks ago, July 11...

... a rowdy protest ... chanted and held doors open to keep trains from leaving the station. Three stations in all were closed down at some point in the evening..

kgo

A few weeks ago, July 17...

Also Tuesday, more than 35 people... were arrested..., shutting down streets and at one point storming the Castro Muni station. Inside, some protesters threw smoke bombs and used sticks and hammers to smash signs and vandalized a Bank of America branch...
Mission Police Station, where they threw a hammer at officers... disrupting Muni serivce and traffic...

seattlepi

And more of the same type of reports from elsewhere.

This is not freedom of speech.
This is VIOLENCE.
Putting passenger safety at risk during peak hour times is NOT acceptable behaviour.

I would never hand out a megaphone to a person in a theater if I suspected they were going to use it to yell 'fire', no matter how many times I had handed out megaphones for other reasons before.

BART were fully within their rights to do anything they could to disrupt further behaviour of this type, based on *how the protesters had behaved in the past*.

I thought long about whether to come back and add this, but I can't resist. California writes it's own jokes and makes itself a target for almost every bad thing it gets. If they'd stop doing it to themselves, perhaps it'd be a place worth living in, not leaving with all haste.

articles.latimes.com...

Perhaps, if cell phones are something they suddenly find worth turning off, they can start there. Instead of turning them off in a public place and not only violating but endangering their legal citizens, perhaps turning them off in PRISON is more important? Oh never mind.. This is the People's Republic Of California, after all.


Oh...as far as the arguments about possible or potential violence... Since when did the American system take punitive sanction against it's citizens on the POSSIBILITY that a problem MAY develop at some FUTURE point? It seems this whole attitude of peace and security at ANY price and by ANY means has gotten totally out of hand.