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Officials of Bay Area Rapid Transit block cellular communication at its some of its stations and all underground subway tunnels throughout the San Francisco Bay area yesterday. They did because they believe it would disrupt protestors, who were upset by the shooting of a 45 year old man by BART officers last month.

Officials were concerned that the protestors “would use mobile devices to coordinate their disruptive activities and communicate about the location and number of Bart police,” the transit agency said Friday afternoon in a statement. Cutting off cellphone service for several hours at selected stations was “one of many tactics to ensure the safety of everyone on the platform,” Bart said.

Where have we seen this before? Perhaps Egypt’s action in shutting off the Internet to its citizens during the recent uprising.

How can a public agency in this country take this sort of action unilaterally? The consequences of such a communications black-out could be extremely bad. Imagine doctors’ emergency calls not getting through? How could people call the police if needed for protection? And further, since when can a governmental agency cut off public communication without violating the First Amendment? As stated by the EFF:

Cell phone service has not always been available in BART stations. The advent of reliable service inside of stations is relatively recent. But once BART made the service available, cutting it off in order to prevent the organization of a protest constitutes prior restrain[t] on the free speech rights of every person in the station, whether they’re a protestor or a commuter. Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right. Censorship is not okay in Tahrir Square or Trafalgar Square, and it’s still not okay in Powell Street Station.

Oh, and the anticipated demonstrations never even occurred.

Related articles

• Cellphones blocked in SF to hinder transit protest (sfgate.com)
• BART Pulls a Mubarak in San Francisco (eff.org)
• BART admits interrupting cellphone service during protest (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Police kill mobile phone service to squelch protest (go.theregister.com)
• Cell Reception Cut In San Francisco To Hinder Protest (npr.org)