Cell Phone Network Shutdown
On August 11, BART officials, acting in anticipation of another anti-police protest announced during the evening commute hours, and acting on information that the protest would be coordinated live via Internet and text messages, successfully prevented the demonstration by shutting down the public cell phone network serving their jurisdiction in and between the downtown San Francisco stations. This action immediately garnered worldwide condemnation of BART, escalating the scope of public scrutiny on the agency from a regional to a global scale. The cell phone shutdown has generated even more negative publicity than has been generated by Charles Hill's shooting. It is the first documented instance of any government agency in the United States shutting down public communications to disrupt a protest. The American Civil Liberties Union called the decision "in effect an effort by a governmental entity to silence its critics." Numerous media outlets quoted BART officials making the claim that the planned protest was a threat to public safety, but did not offer any analysis of the claim's merit. BART has not published any evidence to support the claim that the protest planned for August 11 constituted a danger to anyone.
Read more about this topic: BART Police
Famous quotes containing the words cell, phone and/or network:
“It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Nobody wants to phone me,
Even collect.”
—Cole Porter (18931964)
“Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)