San Francisco officials foil protest by turning off cellular signal

The San Francisco transit system has admitted that it turned off underground cellular service on Thursday to curb protests at its Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) stations, and civil liberties advocates are outraged.

Transit officials said they turned off service at certain stations between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Aug. 11 to prevent protestors from using their mobile phones to coordinate and share information about the numbers and locations of BART police, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The protesters had previously announced on various Web sites that they would be assembling at BART stations to protest the July 2 fatal shooting of Charles Blair Hill at the Civic Center/UN Plaza station in San Francisco. BART officers claimed Hill stumbled towards them with a knife.

A previous protest organized by the group on July 11 disrupted the rush-hour travel of hundreds of thousands of commuters and briefly shut down the Civic Center, Powell Street and 16th Street Mission stations.

Free speech advocates complained that the decision to cut cellphone service was taken out of a dictator’s playbook.

"BART officials are showing themselves to be of a mind with the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak," the Electronic Frontier Foundation said on its Web site, the Associated Press reports.

"All over the world, people are using mobile devices to protest oppressive regimes, and governments are shutting down cell phone towers and the Internet to stop them," said Michael Risher, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's outrageous that in San Francisco, BART is doing the same thing."

Transit officials said they took action to protect commuters. "It all boils down to the safety of the public," BART Deputy Police Chief Benson Fairow told KTVU-TV on Friday, the AP reports. "It wasn't a decision made lightly. This wasn't about free speech. It was about safety."

“A civil disturbance during commute times at busy downtown San Francisco stations could lead to platform overcrowding and unsafe conditions for BART customers, employees and demonstrators," a statement on the transit authority’s Web site explained.

Transit officials told the AP that they believed their action was legal. BART allows free speech, including protesting and proselytizing, outside the fare gates, but not on train platforms. According to PC Magazine:

Officials said BART's method for blocking cell phone signals didn't involve any kind of signal jamming – which could run afoul of the Communications Act of 1934, a measure that expressly forbids "maliciously interfering with the radio communications of any station licensed or authorized under the Act…"

The protest group has scheduled another demonstration at the Civic Center station for Monday’s rush hour, according to the San Francisco Examiner. The demonstrators have been asked to wear blood-stained shirts, but the protest is intended to be peaceful, the group said on its Web site. The group has also requested that people disrupt BART’s communications by emailing and calling officials and “black faxing” – sending fully inked pages to FAX machines.

“We request that you bring cameras to record further abuses of power by the police and to legitimize the protest,” a statement on the protest group’s Web site said. “The media will certainly spin this in an attempt to make our actions appear to be violent or somehow harmful to the citizenry at large.”