I have spent most of the week poring over news stories, blogs and commentary on last week's decision by Bay Area Rapid Transit officials to shut off cellphone service to quash planned protests on its trains and platforms.
Opinions are many and range from BART spokesman Linton Johnson, who says constitutional rights end the moment people go through transit-authority turnstiles, to "X" of the hacker collective Anonymous, who protested BART's action and said our freedom to connect should be absolute and universal.
I tend to agree with "X," but adding my criticism to what has already been heaped on BART seems of little consequence at this point.
What does matter is the dangerous precedent set by public agencies that silence new media, and the need for clarity about our free speech rights regardless of the medium.
The San Francisco incident is not unique. Earlier this summer Cleveland's City Council passed an ordinance outlawing the use of Facebook and other social media to assemble unruly crowds. While a mayoral veto struck down the Cleveland ruling, the overreaction is part of a spreading official backlash against political organizing on new media.
Other governments have responded the same -- see China, Burma, Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and beyond. In many instances they simply direct the state-run service provider and cellphone carriers to shut down their networks.
In the U.S., though, companies often flip the kill switch on their own. Verizon Wireless blocked text messages in 2007 that a reproductive rights group sought to send to its members. The carrier decided that the texts were "controversial and unsavory" and implemented a rule buried deep within the company's terms of service that gives Verizon the power to cut off mobile communications "without prior notice and for any reason or no reason."
That Verizon reversed its decision after its censorship was exposed by the New York Times should offer little comfort -- neither should the notion that fierce public criticism has sufficiently warned BART against switching off mobile communications in the future.
These incidents reveal a growing pattern of abuse and a great measure of confusion over free speech rights in the tangled realm of new media.
"We have free speech rights everywhere. Or at least everywhere in the U.S. when government applies its power," argues First Amendment scholar Marvin Ammori.
"If the spokesperson for BART reflects BART's understanding about freedom of speech at stations, then BART's leadership is wrong," Ammori says, adding that dismissing the free speech rights of citizens in such a reckless and all-encompassing fashion puts BART on shaky legal ground.
While these are new technologies, this isn't a new issue. People have sought to speak out using the best means available, whether that's strapping a note to a pigeon's leg, handing out printed pamphlets on a street corner or tweeting from the subway.
Governments have routinely sought to shut down technologies that disrupt their authority. But our basic freedoms should remain intact. Whether public and private entities have the right to silence social media and cellphone networks has become a question for the courts.
That's why the recent uptick in U.S. censorship is cause for real concern -- and reason enough for our judicial system to provide clarity on behalf of free speech everywhere.
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Larry Magid: BART's Decision to Cut Off Cell Service Was Boneheaded
Mitch Joel: New Media by Design
Less service for higher costs. A Transit System unaccountable to anyone, building extensions within the system that were NOT originally designed for and providing "Cheap" Service for those who have paid into to if for the past 60 years.
Rancid transit with its "Big Brother" Communication System.
What if a Train derailed under San Franciso Bay or a train car caught Fire, stranding hundreds of people.
What a waste of the public's money!
They also get outsized media platforms, so if they can get more than a dozen people to show up somewhere, all the major news channels will cover it and angle their cameras (or use substitute footage) to make it appear as an enormous event.
This double standard has been going on for well over a decade by now.
Know where your cell phone bills wind up:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1726212/tech-corporations-political-donations-verizon-tea-party
http://responsibility.verizon.com/images/vz_uploads/VZ_Political_Contributions_2010.pdf
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000076
(AT&T does not post their donations in any obvious place)
http://www.credomobile.com/Mission/Nonprofit-Donations-current.aspx
Sprint http://www.politicalaccountability.net/index.php?ht=a/GetDocumentAction/i/5142
Given the choice between protestors clogging up the station and no cell service, I pick no cell service. And yes, if the relays are operated by BART, they have every right to shut them down.
But having a public agency make political decisions whether to turn the service off or on at any given moment is a violation of equal protection under the law.
But there are useful reasons to keep cell service on. In the event of an emergency, it's a lot easier to get more information out if many of the passengers have working communications devices.
So: no reason to turn it off, unfair to pick and choose, good reasons to leave it on.
No it doesn't. You are not guaranteed cell service by anyone, paid or not
See, it's not always about you!
But I still fail to understand how shutting off local cell phone service on a transit station would have any impact on a planned protest. Step away from the station, make your call, or post or whatever, and walk back in to raise a ruckus or do whatever nonsense you wanted to do. Whereby physical security would arrive and pounce on you, whether you got there as a result of receiving a text or not.
Other then temporarily blocking 'live from the scene' posts and videos of protesters (and violent confrontations with rent-a-cops), you might also be preventing legitimate emergency calls by innocent bystanders. This was a 'just in case' outage and not in direct response to an ongoing live protest or anything.
Overall, the cons in terms of PR, inconvenience, potential safety concerns, etc, outweight the pros in this case. IMO
-Me
The revolution will not be texted.
As much as you might like to pretend it's some meaningful new invention, it's basically a variation on the chat room. Woo woo.
You are the ideal consumer because you think you are not!