'Anonymous' BART Hackers: Bay Area Transit Website Hacked, Information Leaked In Protest (VIDEO)

SAN FRANCISCO — Hackers broke into a website for San Francisco's mass transit system Sunday and posted contact information for more than 2,000 subscribers, the latest showdown between anarchists angry at perceived attempts to limit free speech and officials trying to control protests that grow out of social networking and have the potential to become violent.

Bay Area Rapid Transit officials blocked underground cellphone service for a few hours Thursday at several stations as protesters tried to use social networking to organize a demonstration over the recent fatal shooting of a 45-year-old man by police. The decision was criticized by many as heavy handed, and some raised questions about whether the move violated free speech.

The hacker group known as Anonymous responded Sunday by posting the names, phone numbers, and street and email addresses of a Bay Area Rapid Transit website's subscribers. The hackers got the information from a database of 55,000 subscribers who receive alerts and other information from the transit agency's MyBart.org, BART spokesman Jim Allison said.

He did not know if the group had obtained information from all the subscribers. No personal financial information, such as bank accounts or credit card information was listed, according to Allison.

Bay Area Rapid Transit district officials said they were attempting to shut down the hackers' website, which contained the confidential information. The agency has notified the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, Allison said.

"We are Anonymous, we are your citizens, we are the people, we do not tolerate oppression from any government agency," the hackers wrote in an online posting. "BART has proved multiple times that they have no problem exploiting and abusing the people."

Laura Eichman was among those whose e-mail and home phone number were posted.

"I think what they (the hackers) did was illegal and wrong. I work in IT myself, and I think that this was not ethical hacking. I think this was completely unjustified," Eichman said.

She said she doesn't blame BART and feels its action earlier in the week of blocking cell phone service was reasonable.

"It doesn't necessarily keep me from taking BART in the future but I will certainly have to review where I set up accounts and what kind of data I'm going to keep online," Eichman said.

The group Anonymous, according to its website, does "not tolerate oppression from any government agency," and it said it was releasing the User Info Database of MyBart.gov as one of many actions to come.

"We apologize to any citizen that has his information published, but you should go to BART and ask them why your information wasn't secure with them. Also do not worry probably the only information that will be abused from this database is that of BART employees," the statement said.

Facing backlash from civil rights advocates and one of its own board members, BART has defended the decision to block cell phone use, with spokesman Jim Allison saying the cell phone disruptions were legal because the agency owns the property and infrastructure.

"I'm just shocked that they didn't think about the implications of this. We really don't have the right to be this type of censor," Lynette Sweet, who serves on BART's board of directors, said previously. "In my opinion, we've let the actions of a few people affect everybody. And that's not fair."

BART officials on Sunday were also working a strategy to try to block plans by protesters to try to disrupt BART service Monday.

"We're making preparations to try to prevent any unsafe conditions on the platform," Allison told the San Jose Mercury News. "I'm not going to discuss any specifics, other than to say we're preparing."

The American Civil Liberties Union has also questioned Thursday's incident. The ACLU has a scheduled meeting with BART's police chief on Monday about other topics and the cellphone issue will added be to the agenda, spokeswoman Rebecca Farmer said.

___

Associated Press writer Terry Tang in Phoenix also contributed to this report.

Comments

[AndyWright68]

03:22 PM on 08/16/2011

"... potential to becoming violent."?

That is the lamest excuse to shut down communication. Everyone has the potential to become violent. Guess we should play it safe and shut down all communications!

[H S]

06:30 PM on 08/15/2011

I've noticed a lot of comments that seem to be mixing up two different issues here. These protests are for the recent shooting of a mentally instable man on the platform at the Civic Center Station in downtown San Francisco, which happened on July 3, 2011.

Many of you are confusing this situation with the protests/riots over in Oakland having to do with the killing of Oscar Grant on one of BART's Oakland stations. While I'm not saying that one protest is better or more appropriate than the other, many of you are confusing the two incidents. Get it right! The protests happening at Civic Center - protests that are threatening to affect the evening commute (THIS evening, Monday, August 15, 2011) are about the July 3 shooting.

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/san_francisco&id=8229848

[S Pesticide]

08:29 PM on 08/15/2011

your right... but there's a pattern.. a track record

[Route53]

04:42 PM on 08/15/2011

To anyone posting to this article that doesn't use BART.....#1 Stop complaining because if you've ever wanted cell connection on BART, you know that it is crappy anyway. #2 If this were some kind of terrorist activity that was averted and your spouse was saved, you wouldn't be complaining. The people arranging this protest have nothing better to do than to cause heart ache to innocent BART riders who now have thier information compromised and or would have been greatly inconvenienced by the protester actions.

[H S]

05:43 PM on 08/15/2011

Disagree. You cannot use a hypothetical situation, one that may never happen, to prove a point. Logic 101.

This was nothing close to terrorist activity. This was an act of cowardice on the part of BART for fear of people communicating with each other to protest for a just cause.

Anon was wrong to do what they did, so don't think I am condoning it. Both parties are wrong and both times innocent BART patrons (I'm one of them) were affected.

[DefineReality]

05:57 PM on 08/15/2011

Good points, but you forget the other side of things. For all those who use BART and who have done nothing wrong. Maybe you were on the BART when this went down and your father was trying to call you to say that your mom was in a major car accident and she's at the hospital and probably won't survive. How would you feel getting off the BART, getting the message and rushing to the hospital to find out she'd passed away when had you just gotten the call while on the train you could have gotten off and made it to the hospital to see her before she died?

[BlackJAC]

03:15 PM on 08/15/2011

My final word on this subject, for I grow weary of the self-righteous indignation and mistargeted rage just because people need someone to hate: if Anonymous were really about protecting personal information, they would've just purged it from the server it had been on, possibly format it so it was irrecoverable, and left it at that, and not broadcast it to the world under the misguided notion that (Everyone Else's) Information Wants To Be Free (Just Not Mine).

[HHarvey]

09:08 PM on 08/15/2011

good point.

[lhanderson86]

01:47 PM on 08/15/2011

If you don't want people to know what you are doing, don't put it on facebook/twitter. People have protests all the time via word of mouth. When you put it on twitter, the police can see it too.

[BlackJAC]

01:54 PM on 08/15/2011

We now have a generation of fools who don't understand that the Internet is laser-etched in stone and all your actions on it set off signal flares announcing your location.

[S Pesticide]

08:29 PM on 08/15/2011

thats not the case at all

[zenful6219]

01:05 PM on 08/15/2011

This recent trend of governments attempting to prevent protests by disrupting social networks is troubling. Do they really think we're so lazy that all it takes to disrupt a protest is to cutoff access to Facebook? People have successfully organized protests in the past without social network or cellphones and they'll do it again. There is growing social unrest in certain countries and people will find ways to organize.

[lhanderson86]

01:52 PM on 08/15/2011

No social movement should rely on technology to execute their plans. Especially ones that can be turned off or monitored by the government.

[H S]

05:46 PM on 08/15/2011

I'm not sure that this social movement was relying solely on technology to execute their plans. I am sure that this social movement may have relied partially on technology to execute their plans; however, we will never know because BART put the kybosh on people using their cell phones to (possibly) connect to social networking sites. We don't know that this was going to even happen. BART cut the lines to keep people from being able to communicate, whether by cell or by social networking site.

[lisa26hd]

12:27 PM on 08/15/2011

Hacking is illegal but I don't see how posting public information is legal. The article states that Anon posted names, phone numbers, and street and email addresses. Maybe some of the phone numbers are private. I'm not trying to start an argument, I'm just wondering why people are upset about the posting of information that is normally not private.

[Wheelo]

03:54 PM on 08/15/2011

email addresses and PASSWORDS. Many people use the same passwords over and over, which isn't that smart but lots of people do.

They have essentially burgled BART and they stole data. You may say they're noble thieves, but they are still thieves.

[lisa26hd]

04:46 PM on 08/15/2011

The article here says "The hacker group known as Anonymous responded Sunday by posting the names, phone numbers, and street and email addresses of a Bay Area Rapid Transit website's subscribers." Did I miss in this article or did you read somewhere else that the group stole passwords?

[catchmyeye]

12:19 PM on 08/15/2011

A transit Co contacts phone companies and asks that phone service be suspended and phone companies comply?

[lhanderson86]

01:49 PM on 08/15/2011

It's a public transit system run by San Francisco, Alameda, Oakland, etc. I'm certain cities/counties have ways of contacting utilities and asking them to shut down part of the grid for whatever reason.

[HHarvey]

09:10 PM on 08/15/2011

they can shut down the cell towers in that particular area of BART, but I would be interested to know if you leave the station and go above ground if you would have service.

[OrwellianOne]

11:56 AM on 08/15/2011

"latest showdown between anarchists angry at perceived attempts to limit free speech and officials trying to control protests that grow out of social networking and have the potential to become violent."

The potential to become violent? Every protest in history had the potential to become violent, I suppose the only way to protect people is to make protesting illegal.

Remember, it's for your safety.

[H S]

11:50 AM on 08/15/2011

Aha! So that's why I couldn't make a call on BART on Thursday...

Hhhmmm...I'm torn on this one...

[Jimbo23]

11:45 AM on 08/15/2011

Censorship of this type will not reduce protests, it will increase them. Every attempt to stifle free speech and free assembly should be and will be resisted by any means necessary. This is America, not Syria.

[kemcha]

11:41 AM on 08/15/2011

Way to go ANONYMOUS. You have my support!!! Keep doing the great job you're doing because somebody needs to stand up to these government entities and that it's wrong to stifle our constitutional rights, the very rights that the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES gave to each and every American.

BART's actions were illegal and this will become a hotbed issue with the U.S. Supreme Court.

[WhatTheHolyHeck]

12:22 PM on 08/15/2011

BART deserves exposure and retribution, not the innocent commuters whose information was exposed. Bad move by Anonymous. They need to remember who the villains are.

[NUWAYNER]

01:08 PM on 08/15/2011

So...why do you think anonymous did this??? What kind of reaction are they seeking from whom?

[Deftguy]

01:11 PM on 08/15/2011

Exactly. To those who endorse this kind of anarchy, remember you can be a victim of their actions tomorrow just like these BART riders were.

[Wheelo]

01:39 PM on 08/15/2011

Once upon a time, there was no cell-phone reception on BART trains and poor reception in the underground stations.

Being able to talk on your cell-phone anywhere you wish, particularly while planning a stunt to disrupt the commutes of thousands of people is not a right. Disrupting public transportation is not a First Amendment free speech issue. It's childish.

BART had every legal right to shut down this "service" in their stations. Want to make a phone call? Go out of the station like everyone used to do before BART put cell-phone antennas everywhere.

This action by ANONYMOUS may make them feel like they are really edgy and hip, but it's counter-productive.

[kemcha]

02:30 PM on 08/15/2011

It is a violation of the First Amendment is you shut down the cell phone tower transmissions in order to prevent anyone from communicating with others over a legitimate "protest" because THAT is a violation of oour first amendment rights regarding free speech.

BART prevented American citizens from contacting anyone regarding the protest and because of that, they violated the first amendment rights of American citizens.

[krazykyote]

11:38 AM on 08/15/2011

BART trains smell like boiled cabbage.

[lhanderson86]

01:49 PM on 08/15/2011

And urine. Don't forget the urine.

[sacj80]

11:35 AM on 08/15/2011

Seriously I do not see why people act so suprised. "Anonymous" said they were going to flood their information hub. Secondly it is not a direct hit at the people in general. Bart is a government owned and operated site. Thirdly if the information that is stored was "Secure" and "Encrypted", then how else could it be exploited so easily? At least it serves to show people that the trust they put into the government while they sleep is really volunerable. Gotta love having an digital identity that can be stolen. =]

[Mirabai305]

07:21 PM on 08/15/2011

I think the folks whose names and addresses were published against their will due to an illegal hacking in the name of 'justice' when they had nothing to do with "anonymous'" moral outrage, they might consider this a direct hit.

[HHarvey]

09:14 PM on 08/15/2011

I think Anonymous hackers have already proven they have far superior capability at hacking than any low level techie employee would have working for BART and attempting to maintain their cyber security. Yet, they turn around and thumb their nose at the employees of BART for not being better than them? Sounds a bit like snobbery to me.

[Jimbo23]

11:49 AM on 08/15/2011

Terror attack? Really? Don't put the actions of all criminals on the Left. It is the Right that is squeezing the poor financially and simultaneously promoting their view that "might makes right". If you abandon all moral obligation to your fellow man then don't be surprised if the streets become uncivilized.

[jtgun]

12:48 PM on 08/15/2011

Poor ? They're all walking around with Blackberries . Poor people use a pay phone if they can find a quarter . If they were poor they would be stealing food instead of treats and cigarettes and beer . What's wrong with you ?

[H S]

11:50 AM on 08/15/2011

How is it "left wing"?

[kgb999]

12:06 PM on 08/15/2011

Next question: How is it a "terror attack"?