BART Protestors. Photo by Cold Storage on Flikr
As I was sitting on the San Francisco Bay Area’s subway line (BART) yesterday, an announcement came on to state that the Civic Center station, in the heart of downtown San Francisco, was closed and would remain so until further notice. My suspicions on what caused the closure were confirmed when I pulled out my smartphone to check the news: there were more people mobbing the station to protest about BART’s decision on August 11th to shut off cell phone service during earlier protests, which themselves were done to protest the shooting of Charles Hill on July 3rd by a police officer.
That I was able to check this on my phone also gave me confirmation that BART had not cut off cell phone coverage again. The disruption of cell phone service for the August 11th protests was the first in US history, and in the discussion that has ensued, the BART Board of Directors recognized that they had touched on freedom of speech issues. There was talk of having a “right to cell phone service.” (more…)