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BART Disables Cell Service To Disrupt Protests
1729 writes "Yesterday, in an effort to disrupt rumored protests at Bay Area Rapid Transit stations, BART officials disabled cell phone and internet access within most of the BART system by shutting down the antennas that enable reception in the underground stations."
How long will it be before they just gas a place with knock-out gas in order to "keep the peace"?
Arab Spring
English Summer
American Autumn
When Poland's workers organized to protest the Communist government, one of the government's countermeasures was to disable the phone system.
My mother remarked at the time how unimaginable it was to live in a place where the phones could stop working because the government wanted them to.
in my city (Chicago) this is a "Value Added" type of service, for most of my life there was no cell reception down there, they even rolled them out one carrier at a time, I doubt they would be liable on a system that is not guaranteed to work since it is underground in a difficult place to get wireless communications.
There Can Be Only One...
This will *also* disable any early / current news access. The London bus bombings a few years ago were widely reported on by people carrying cellphones w/ photo or video capability. News will still come out, eventually, but if it trickles out *as it happens* both citizens and law enforcement might also get an early heads-up.
The subway sections of BART contain special cell antennas to allow service underground -- these were recently added in the past few years.
Given this, it seems like on the one hand that the service is a privileged. It certainly didn't exist more than 5 years ago, and people got along fine without underground cell service.
On the other hand, disrupting cell service seems like a violation of free speech. It may not be necessary for free speech, but it's still a method people use to communicate.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Blocking calls to 911 and other emergency calls people might have to make seems like it could cause some problems.
The London Underground is often known as the tube.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
If someone needs to dial for help and they can't because BART has disabled cell phone service?
Though I'm not from the Bay Area I'm rather willing to bet that the answer is "Press the button that calls for help, or at least contacts the conductor".
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
Fascist! Turn from the left
Fascist! Turn to the right
Oooh, fascist!
We are the goon squad
and we're coming to town
Beep-beep
Beep-beep
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I take the BART every day to work (Fremont to SF). While many stations are underground, when the trains leave the stations they are above-ground and can use normal (non-BART controlled) reception. Most of the time, the BART travels above-ground, not underground. (Also, even with the underground antennas on, the reception is still terrible, so you wouldn't want to make a call anyway.) Also, the wifi sucks, i just use tethering.
If an unfriendly group (let's call it a "terrorist cell") wanted to disrupt phone & internet service for an attack, they just have to let BART know in advance that they're planning a protest? Hmm - not sure if they thought this one through...
The rest of this story is business as usual. The disruption of emergency service makes this a serious boner on their part.
From the BART website:
Comments and Complaints - 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday-Friday, 24/7 voice mail 510 464-7134
Better yet, here is the contact information for BART's Government & Community Relations folks -- drop them a note and CC your local representative:
ALAMEDA COUNTY REPRESENTATIVE
Walter Gonzales, wgonzal@bart.gov, (510) 464-6428
Representing the following BART stations: North Berkeley, Downtown Berkeley, Ashby, Rockridge, MacArthur, 19th Street, Oakland City Center/12th Street, West Oakland, Lake Merritt, Fruitvale, Coliseum/Oakland Airport, San Leandro, Bay Fair, Castro Valley, Dublin/Pleasanton, Hayward, South Hayward, Union City and Fremont.
CONTRA COSTA COUNTY REPRESENTATIVE
June Garrett, jgarret@bart.gov 510-464-6257
Representing the following BART stations: Orinda, Lafayette, Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill, Concord, North Concord/Martinez, Pittsburg/Bay Point, El Cerrito Plaza, El Cerrito Del Norte and Richmond.
SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY REPRESENTATIVE
Molly Burke, mburke@bart.gov 510-464-6172
Representing the following BART stations: Embarcadero, Montgomery St, Powell St, Civic Center, 16th Street, 24th Street, Glen Park, Balboa Park, Daly City, Colma, South San Francisco, San Bruno, San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and Millbrae.
LEGISLATION
Paul Fadelli, Legislative Officer, pfadell@bart.gov 510-464-6159
DEPARTMENT MANAGERS
Kerry Hamill, Department Manager of Government and Community Relations, khamill@bart.gov 510-464-6153
Roddrick Lee, Division Manager of Local Government and Community Relations, rlee@bart.gov 510-464-6235
ADMINISTRATION
Lisa Moland, Goverment and Community Relations Specialist, lmoland@bart.gov 510-464-7227
Mailing Address:
Bay Area Rapid Transit District
Government and Community Relations Department
300 Lakeside Drive, 18th Floor
Oakland, CA 94612
Fax Number: 510-464-6146
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the ass clowns"
Many people trying to get home meanwhile the ass clowns...being ass clowns...
At least in the US, if this was done and somebody was seriously injured or died and couldn't summon medical attention because of it ... there would be lawsuits.
D00d, in the US, there would be lawsuits because it's Tuesday and someone was wearing a green hat.
and in vancover they riot over losing a NHL game
JAGga.me ----> Producing video games addressing emotional health and wellness issues affecting teens.
Religion is important to a lot of people.
what kind of doctor is poor enough to take a fucking subway/regional rail?
not a medical doctor who deals with emergency patient situations, for sure.
BART is not just for poor people.
But to answer your question...probably the kind of doctor that doesn't want to get stuck in the daily afternoon Bay Bridge traffic. For those that work close to downtown and live relatively close to a BART station, BART can be faster (sometimes *much* faster) than driving.
FWIW, I know a doctor who lives in the East Bay and takes BART, then walks to work. She's not an ER doc, but is called in to take on emergency Neurology cases at times. She could certainly afford to drive to work, but chooses to take BART for her 9-5 jobs, though she would drive in to take after hours emergencies.
One that has better things to do than spend a couple hours of his life every day at a simple but stressful, not particularly rewarding task of piloting a personal transportation unit through the notoriously heavy traffic of the bay area.
Maybe he wants to read medical journals, or goof off playing video games instead. Lots of things are better uses of your time. You should be able to drive when you want to, not because you have to be a mini-bus-driver just to get to your real job.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If someone needs to dial for help and they can't because BART has disabled cell phone service?
No. There are telephones with a direct line to BART employees on every platform. If a problem occurs on a train itself, there are phones with a direct line to the train operator at both ends of every car of every train. The same phones are routinely used by BART maintenance staff to communicate with train operators, so with rare exceptions they are always available and in service. You are much better off alerting the train operator of a problem on a train than calling 911 and waiting for emergency services to find a way to contact the operator.
Breakfast served all day!
Since crime must be prevented, everything should be shut down to prevent all sorts of crime. Never mind about protests. What about real crimes like bank robbery and murder? Phone shouldn't work, guns shouldn't fire, TVs should turn off, and cell phones, FaceBook, Twitter, should all be silenced. Then there's that whole internet thing... Everyone please just stay home and be safe! Think of the children.
Look, protesting is not a crime in any degree and should not be lumped next to them even when trying to make an example.
BART was pretty clear that they would have accommodated a protest. BART was attempting to prevent a shutdown of the system, which would be a major hassle for hundreds of thousands of people. This happened a couple weeks ago, it was chaos and there is no alternative to BART for the majority of its riders. I don't know whether shutting down some of their own equipment was effective, or outrageous, or appropriate, or what, but I am glad for everyone who was able to pick up their kids at camp or make other crucial appointments on that day.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
Of course, for some reason we know consider facebook updates to be "emergency" matters. I wouldn't want taxpayer money going to help someone post an up-to-the-minute "ZOMG! UR HAIR IS DA BOMB" on facebook from the subway.
What, pray tell, is taxpayer money supposed to be used for if not infrastructure, relief to the people in need and ensuring stability and security?
My point, if it was too difficult for your cowardice to grasp, is that an emergency call can be made with a phone. An emergency doesn't need text or video to get through to a dispatcher. A system of callboxes that go straight through to 911 would be more than adequate for actual emergencies. Such systems have worked for decades; they worked long before facebook boy was ever born (let alone since he came up with a great new way to waste time and resources) and will continue to work fine into the future.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I seem to remember back before the days of Digital PCS when it really was actual Cellular Phones, a company (I can't remember their name) developed a cellular blocking device that was marketed to movie theaters, supermarkets, and general public areas. The various cellular companies got together and petitioned the FCC for the banning of these devices because they blocked people from making Emergency 911 calls which was considered Illegal. So when did it become ok for BART to disrupt peoples ability to make Emergency 911 Calls?
I roughly agree with your sentiment, but I wonder just how much "get[ting] up in the way of regular people" should be allowed. That's a long spectrum with many shades from, say, carrying signs to detonating fertilizer bombs next to government buildings.
The point of protest/demonstration doesn't seem to me to be to cause pain or even inconvenience. It's to make visible your opinion. A 10,000-person march per se, if could do it without creating traffic problems or scaring people, would achieve the goal.
Causing difficulty for others isn't a civic duty. Making known broadly-held opinion is.
OMFG for months we've been hearing western nations cry bloody murder over Middle eastern government oppresive measures against their own telecom infustructures...
This colminated with the fucking UN declaring Internet access to be a human right.
Now we have ourselves some relatively minor incidents of civil unrest and the very same (mostly european) countries are doing the very same shit they were previously so adamantly against.
I hope BART gets sued to hell.
Welcome? we've been living the nightmare since Eisenhower. It's just come to it's total fruition these past few years. Heil!
If you're going to rebel, bring your own communications. If you want a handbook for this you could do worse than this.
And remember: the ultimate responsibility of a rebel is to provide a better system than he supplants, else history will judge him harshly.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Spot the difference:
Egypt shuts down the internet to stop free speech.
The US shuts down phone communication to stop "protests," Britain wants to shut down the internet.
See a difference? Neither do fucking I.
Great Intellect...
And then what happens when their is a medical, or otherwise, emergency that is not able to be 'dealt with' (in whatever way it needs dealing: Police, medical, etc).
I think we've already determined that the protesters are fucking things up. The emergency vehicle isn't going to get through for said medical emergency. They're 'protesting' and it's just tough for anybody who has said emergency. Don't blame the authorities.
Most cell phones these days have wifi, too, and are capable of running their own ad-hoc networks. That's all you need for point to point text.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Actually, no. The unique feature of the Soviet system was that while the top connected individuals were indeed surrounded by privilege, they were never technically rich. Most top Soviet officials and their families lived in apartment buildings which were tiny compared to a typical house of an even minor Western industrialist or a politician.
The aphrodisiac of the Soviet system was raw unchallenged power over others, not wealth.
It is only after the system collapsed when the "oligarchs" "buying" entire national industries for pennies on a dollar during Yeltsin's drunken binges appeared.
Which precautions have clearly failed in the West. Hence my point. Democracy and its "checks and balances" are now completely circumvented for good. Results are sure to follow.
I think that particular fallacy is called "It Can't Happen Here!". Lots of "Good Germans" swore by a similar idea. Note to the history-challenged: pre-Nazi germany was a Western (by definition) Constitutional Democracy (called the Weimar Republic).
Most people did not have a "bulled in the pan" in Germany in 1930 either.
But when my memories of crossing the Soviet border (something you clearly never did) circa early 1980s compare favourably with those of the USA border of 2010, something is clearly wrong with this picture, don't you think?
Absent an armed revolution, Fascism is not an all-or-nothing, black-or-white deal when one day you live in a freedom-loving, personal-liberties-cherishing place and the next morning a Fascist Dictatorship. Instead, Fascism (or systems like it) are introduced via a creeping progression, always.
And the West has been creeping towards it for two good decades, at first slowly, now rapidly accelerating. Just use your head: in the 1950s USA the "porn scanners" and "full body gropes" (of children, no less) would have been unthinkable and would have been - quite correctly - seen as an idea straight form a Soviet or a Nazi playbook. Fast forward to 2011....
Also when one talks about Fascism, or Fascism-like progressions, it is given that there will not be an exact repetition of the events of the mid 20th century. History never repeats itself exactly, it merely plays on the same theme. The new rendition of the oppression will be quite different in technical details, but very much the same as far as its victims are concerned (for example its most likely it will be Moslems in the camps - which will be euphemistically called something entirely different, instead of Jews).
Mobile reception on the tube isn't a popular idea. Tube mobile network opposed by 76% of Londoners
bah. low UIDs just speak for how early you got in. It takes talent to get a short nick. At least that's useful. Saves so much time on logging in y'know. (or saves time so you can use a stronger password)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I think you guys are mostly just disagreeing about terminology. The thing is that using guns in self defense is shaped by both of these facts: (a) shooting somebody is always deadly force, (b) you have a right to defend yourself from deadly force with deadly force, but you don't have a right to prevent the attacker from surviving; taking an extra shot just to make sure the attacker dies is murder.
Saying that guns are deadly force means that there is no "safe" way to shoot somebody, like the "shoot him in the leg" meme would have you believe. If you shoot somebody, that person may die, period. If you shoot somebody in the leg and they die, no court will take it seriously any defense where you say that you only meant to wound them and used only wounding force and the death was a freak accident so please give me involuntary manslaughter only please. No; once more, shooting is deadly force, and you should expect the target to die.
Yet shooting somebody doesn't guarantee that they will die; a sizeable portion of gunshot victims survive. The law places a huge value on life, even the life of the attacker. If you defend yourself with deadly force, you're not allowed to prevent your attacker from surviving.
So what do you do, concretely? (a) You aim at the center of mass, because that's basically the only reliable way to hit in a high-stress situation; (b) you shoot until you can see that they are no longer a threat; (c) you're done; call 911. If the attacker lives, they live; if they die, they die.
Are you adequate?
Not in Dallas. We had an incident where a train was disabled in a tunnel on a hot day, and the train operator responded to calls over the train phone only once in over an hour. Finally the passengers got irritated and walked out of the tunnel on their own. The DART response was to claim their employees acted appropriately, blame the passengers, accuse them of doing something dangerous and possibly illegal. If DART had sent any trains into that area at more than a slow walking speed, either to pick up those passengers, or because they didn't know the train was there, then DART is dangerously stupid and incompetent.
Before I say anything else: what BART did is disturbing and objectionable, and I don't want to suggest otherwise. But, I think there's a real problem with describing any authoritarianism or overextension of police authority as fascism, because there is an important, recurrent phenomenon, best labeled as "fascism", which isn't simply right-wing extremism, and it isn't always connected to the establishment of a police state; people need to have some way to identify that particular phenomenon.
Fascism involves extra-governmental, ultra-nationalist, right wing thugs, who go around and use violence against groups that they believe oppose them: organizations of oppressed minorities, labor unions, left groups of all sorts. In Italy, Germany, and Spain, in the years leading to World War II, such groups captured control of the government and instituted police states; there were similar groups elsewhere that tried to do the same thing. However, fascists gained their initial support from sections of the ruling class who were frightened of the rise of oppressed groups and the left; crushing such groups was the primary concern.
It's often useful to an authoritarian government to have paramilitary groups, ostensibly acting independently of the government, who will spontaneously act to crush dissent.
A recurrent pattern in Latin America, where right-wing governments are trying to suppress communities that are centers for dissent, is to just happen to have government troops stationed on one side of a village while paramilitaries sweep through. It's pretty implausible, as plausible deniability goes, but I expect it's good enough for the US State Department.
Within the US, there are the various "KKK" groups. I've been in arguments about whether the KKK is exactly fascist, but if it isn't, it's quite similar.
Perhaps a trivial example, but one that was close to home for me: In the early 00s, the right-wing writer David Horowitz worked with groups of students who were on the right of the Republican Party, encouraging them to harass student activists and intimidate left academics, especially anyone criticizing US foreign policy in the Middle East, opposing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or expressing support for Arab-Americans. As far as I know, this never actually came to violence, but Horowitz did single out by name friends of mine, who got telephone death threats and verbal harassment from his student supporters, and Horowitz and his supporters frequently called for anti-war activists to be tried for treason and executed. Particularly delusional of Horowitz was that he called his targets "fascists".