BART Defends Mobile Service Shutdown

itwbennett writes "In a filing to the FCC, Bay Area Rapid Transit general manager Grace Crunican defended last August's mobile shutdown, saying that 'a temporary disruption of cell phone service, under extreme circumstances where harm and destruction are imminent, is a necessary tool to protect passengers.' Taking the opposing position, digital rights groups, including Public Knowledge, Free Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the FCC (PDF) that 'wireless interruption will necessarily prohibit the communications of completely innocent parties — precisely those parties closest to the site where the emergency is located or anticipated.'"

Comments

Re:Next they'll turn off the power

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what I think anyone can object to. If anyone actually believed this was about, "extreme circumstances where harm and destruction are imminent", then it'd be understandable.

But that's like... terrorist with a remote trigger wired to a mobile phone. Not, "Aw god dammit, a bunch of stupid college kids are gunna protest something again." Then you're just getting nasty about suppressing something you don't like, and you're inconveniencing a gajillion other people in the process.

You know where I heard that kind of rhetoric last?

[Opportunist]

Living this close to the former iron curtain, I have heard and read that kind of apologies before. Every time there was an unrest in one of those countries, something like this would be sprouted. "For the safety", "to protect order", "to keep people from misusing tools" and "what could have happened if we didn't step in".

So far the difference is still that we don't get shot.

At least not yet.

Re:Next they'll turn off the power

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

That said, your note that you believe the slippery slope is coming to reach to turning off the power is a bit much. Yeah you could have been exaggerating for fun but honestly, that's just silly.

So, which is more useful - blocking communications between members of a dangerous mob or blocking communications of potential victims of that dangerous mob to do things like call 911?

Of course that question assumes that you buy the claims that the mob is dangerous to anything more than the jobs of the people turning off the communications.