This was described as a public safety measure by the officials who ordered it, but many see it as an intrusion and possible infringement of people’s rights.
Many people are looking at this in light of the recent riots in the UK and how they were handled (and how similar events might be handled in the future).
While I doubt that PM Cameron rises to quite that level of despotic ambition, I have to wonder if there are limits on how much technology can be shut down, or how often, before it seems to violate people’s rights. The linked article is fairly long (for a news article, anyway) and details both sides of the question.
On the one hand, I understand that public safety could have been an issue. On the other hand, I don’t know that a part of the planned demonstration was to bring weapons and assault people, so I’m not sure what actual public safety issues there really were. I don’t think I’d have a problem seeing that a flash mob that was directed to bring Molotov cocktails would warrant an effort to suppress the medium the message was being passed through, but what about a demonstration that is planned without violence? Is the mere fact that some violence could occur when people demonstrate enough to warrant this type of shutdown in any planned protest?
I thought I’d throw this out to my fellow Dopers to read through and ponder. I’m interested in legal opinions as well as ordinary folks’ thoughts on this specifically and on the action in general. Did BART go too far? Or did they do the minimum necessary to disrupt what was a potential safety hazard? Did they really disrupt anything at all? Is this something that should be done all the time? Should it be done at all? At who’s discretion? Under what criteria?
I didn’t read the article (just the parts you quoted), but ISTM that all they did was shut down repeaters. The things that make it easier to get a signal within the station. Is that correct? If that’s the case, could people have simply walked outside and continued receiving facebook updates/texts/tweets?
When I first heard about this, I heard that they were blocking the signal. ISTM, that there’s a big difference between blocking the signal and turning off repeaters that they installed to make life easier for passengers waiting to board.
Are there pay phones in the stations? If so, I can picture that being used to counter “prevention of expression” issues. I can even picture the stations installing more pay phones to justify future repeater-shutdowns.
NETA, I’m not sure how I feel yet, but if all they did was shut down repeaters, I think before any discussions commence (not here, but in the media) people need to be very clear on terminology. Specifically, that shutting down repeaters in the station is not the same as cutting off your cell phone service or blocking access to the internet.
Umm… yes? And in a concentrated area like a train station, it should be relatively easy to install or re-install and maintain a bank of pay phones.
To the more general issue (and in light of recent London unrest), I can picture it becoming legally acceptable to electronically mass-monitor text and twitter messages for terms relating to flash rioting, to alert human law enforcement when there’s a spike in such traffic with a time and location attached.
I have no idea if there actually were plans to “stop trains”. I’m not sure how protesters were supposedly going to accomplish that, either.
What is clear is that, by their own admission, BART officials turned off the network that helps provide cel phone service. I don’t even know if they actually own the network or if it’s just on BART property. If anyone has more details, please provide them with links to the source stories.
I just noticed that in the AP article, if you look in the title bar it uses the phrase “phone jamming” which, again, wasn’t the case. As I said before, I’m not sure where I stand on this, but I wish they would get everything straight. Cell service wasn’t blocked* or jammed, they just turned off repeaters.
*One could call it blocked, but only due to the geography of where the cell phones are, no one actively blocked them. It’s not that these people were in Faraday cages.
I doubt they own the network, the actual cell network, that would be sprint, verizon,at&t etc. What the repeaters do is take the signal from the providers and amplify it, so that it can be used underground, or in metal trains or geograhic areas that notice loss of signal.
Turn off the repeaters and you kill the signal until such time as the subway patron returns to the surface.
The repeaters are a service that BART supplies within it’s domain. They didn’t shut them down willy nilly, there was already a group of protesters stopping the trains.
If I was a passenger who was held up by these howler monkeys after a hard day in the salt mines I would certainly have gotten all stabby over their antics.
Protesting is a hallmark of freedom but if you use it to interfere with other people’s lives then it will eventually get ugly.
I think the distinction between blocking cellphone signals and not boosting them makes this specific action perfectly okay. As Joey P says, if people could just walk outside the stations and make their calls, it’s kind of hard to see this as the fist of Big Brother crushing le people in its grasp.
Snowboarder quoted part of an article suggesting that some of these repeaters were in a tube (I assume that means subway where people couldn’t get out). But again, this isn’t blocking the service, it’s simply disabling a system that BART chose to put in place as a convenience to it’s customers. It would be different if, say, the tube already had a great signal and they shielded it. I can’t imagine it would be unconstitutional for them to just rip the repeaters out altogether if they chose to.
You’ve probably heard about BART’s decision to black cells phones service in it’s stations to stop a protest, and the response by the hacker group Anonymous. If Anonymous is trying to get sympathy for their cause, I’m not sure its working. Why release the contact information of innocent train riders, why not try and get the information of the people in charge?
I feel the same way about the Sony hacking. Supposedly it was done because Sony sued a guy who wanted to release “jailbreak” info for the PS3. At first I thought, “Yeah! Stick it to the man!” But then I questioned why my information was being released along with millions of others. What’d I ever do to Anonymous?
Does Anonymous even care how their actions may affect regular folk?
Oh, if you’re part of Anonymous, please don’t hack SDMB because of this post.
Well, Bart didn’t really block cell phone service as such, so (no offense) are you sure you’ve written an accurate description of what Anonymous is doing?
While a subway station is clearly designed to handle large crowds of people, the inherent presumption (inherent in the design of the station, in how the transit operator manages it, and in how passengers use it) is that the crowd is there to board trains and that there’s a flow of people as trains arrive, people exit trains, people board trains, and trains leave. A large number of people standing on the platform with no intention of boarding a train is a disruption. We’re not talking about a public plaza but an exceedingly enclosed space with limited exits.
Add a “civil disobedience” element of intentionally blocking others from boarding/exiting trains, even if that’s done wholly non-violently, and I can see a raft of public safety issues without anyone bringing weapons or intending to assault anyone. Again, enclosed space with limited exits; a block-the-path-with-your-bodies peaceful protest that presents no danger on the street could be disastrous in a subway station.
Watch the news video posted by Magiver. Though apparently none of the protestors attacked anyone, the public safety issues are obvious: trapping other people on subway cars, and backing up the flow of trains so that stations became overcrowded, at the height of rush hour.
Imagine all the complaints you’ve seen about tourists on the Washington DC Metro, London Tube, etc. who don’t understand the need to move, and multiply them a hundred-fold because at least the tourists intend to get on a train in their own sweet time.
Merged the thread started by Daddypants into a slightly older one started by Snowboarder Bo. The posts made to Daddypants’ thread are now posts 14, 15, and 17.
And here they are threatening to take down the Fullerton Police Department’s website and communications. That will really do wonders for public safety. :rolleyes:
