Anonymous BART Protest Shuts Down Several Underground Stations

Anonymous BART Protest Shuts Down Several Underground Stations

www.pcmag.com

Supporters of Anonymous took to the streets and subways Monday to rally against BART's suspension of cell phone service during a previous protest, forcing police to shut down several BART and Muni underground stations in San Francisco.

"I'm here to fight censorship and shutting down people's right to protest with cellphone usage," said one Anonymous supporter wearing the global activist and hacking collective's trademark Guy Fawkes mask to protect his identity.

(visit the link for the full news article)

The article goes on to say

Last week, Bay Area transit authorities shut down underground cell phone service on BART trains and platforms during a protest over the shootings of two men by BART police. BART authorities said they shut down cell service last Thursday from 4-7pm in an attempt to prevent protest organizers from communicating and organizing via mobile devices.

While dozens of protestors at the San Francisco event wore masks of some sort, many more of the people on hand wore no masks. And while the event was ostensibly organized by Anonymous to protest the cell phone shutdown, chants yelled by the crowd as it marched down Market Street were clearly aimed at BART police for a series of incidents in recent years that have left suspects injured and dead.

Gathering at about 5pm PT at the UN Plaza near the Civic Center BART and Muni station, the protestors began marching northeast on Market Street towards Powell station at about 5:25pm, right around the time that SFPD and BART police officers emerged from Civic Center station to inform that public that the station was being shut down for safety reasons.

Later, as the protestors descended upon Powell station about three blocks away, that station was also shut down. Several more stations on Market street were reportedly shut down temporarily, but all had been reopened as of Monday evening.

Justin Minnich, an Anonymous supporter at the San Francisco protest, defended Anonymous' tactics.

"There always is [collateral damage] but that's like any battle you take, if you stand up against anything, if you believe in something, if you fight a fight, there's going to be collateral damage," Minnich said.

"There's collateral damage on their side," he added, pointing to several BART police and SFPD officers at Civic Center station about 15 minutes before they shut it down, along with Powell station on Market Street.

"They consider what they're doing is right, protecting people, serving the community. Well obviously there's collateral damage on their side, there's people getting shot."

Well there wasn't a whole lot of people wearing Guy Fawkes masks and wearing red t-shirts like i predicted but there was a half decent turnout. IMO a masked protest isn't a good idea as to many people would find it threatening. Also when people are prepared to put their faces to a protest its always taken more seriously.

The protest wasn't exactly peaceful like Anon called for so i imagine there could be a small amount of backlash. You can see in one of the videos that at least one person was getting annoyed at the disruption to the train service. But this was far from the violent demonstrations we have seen by students in the UK in the past months.

All in all i say good job Anon lets hope this brings some much needed attention to the shootings and what BART did to the cellphone network cutting off peoples right to free speech and protest.

www.pcmag.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Anonymous:1 BART Police:0

Looks like someone's about to have some problems....

Can't help but feel bad for the cop in the second to last video. You can tell he really didn't want to be there, his face expression says all. That said, the anonymous guy playing the "we are legion" tape was epic. I am glad people are now raising their voices, and i know a few cops very well agree with them.


I have several frat brothers who are also cops, i speak to them about what is occuring and they agree with me. These things can be avoided if some laws were changed to benefit people. They also told me that some laws are too outdated considering the rise of levels of peoples mentality and open mindedness. They also agree that the war on drugs is a failure.


So please people, I understand the need to raise our voices and frankly I applaud the fact that finally people are rising up. But keep in mind, that not all cops are bad. Like I said in a previous thread, they are as much as a victim of the system as you are. They too have family, sons and daughters they need to feed.

If US folk want real change then they need this on a massive scale!!!

More reports :

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3c39324b68a1.jpg[/atsimg]

The decision to interrupt wireless service has been widely criticized and reported worldwide, and already spurred a data breach by hacker protest group "Anonymous" on the agency's myBART.org website, which is used for marketing and to announce deals near BART stations.

Turner said she did not participate in other protests, but decided to participate Monday because Anonymous organizers said it was going to be peaceful.

Turner said she was there because of the July 3 shooting as well as Thursday's wireless disruption.

"It's everything combined," she said. "You can't separate these things."

While the protest was peaceful, it led to the temporary closures of four downtown BART stations during rush hour, which left some commuters frustrated with the demonstrators.

BART officials closed the Civic Center station at around 5:30 p.m. and the crowd walked down Market Street to the Embarcadero. BART police shut down the Powell Street, Montgomery Street, and Embarcadero stations as the crowd made their way along the train route.

Along the way, demonstrators met with some angry reactions from thwarted commuters who shouted out insults.

One of the protesters clad in a Guy Fawkes mask like the ones featured in the movie "V for Vendetta" said he welcomed their angry responses and that he appreciated that freedom of speech was their constitutional right.

"Good for them," he said when a man called him a nihilist and another made an obscene gesture.

The demonstrators ended their walk at Embarcadero Station, where officers in riot gear lined the street and blocked the station entrance.

Source sfappeal.com

The decision by BART to briefly cut cellphone service at four stations last Thursday drew widespread criticism by free speech advocates, a promised lawsuit by the ACLU, and a hack of a BART website by the online activist collective Anonymous, which posted personal information of thousands of BART website users on a separate website this weekend in retaliation.

After meeting with BART officials Monday, the ACLU said it won't file a lawsuit over last week's service disruption. The transit agency took that step out of concern that the planned protest would become violent, as did an earlier protest, on July 11, held to condemn the shooting of a homeless man by BART police. The civil liberties group said, however, it is disappointed that BART left the door open to future cell service disruptions. The Federal Communications Commission has opened an investigation into whether BART broke federal law by turning off four agency-owned cellphone transponders last Thursday.

Source www.csmonitor.com

Thanks to those who posted on this thread. I appreciate the information that you have shared.

When I saw this (and a brief clip on my local news) I smiled ear to ear. It is a beautiful thing to see.

United States of Autocracy?

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

August 12, 2011 1:08 pm "Organizers planning to disrupt BART service on August 11, 2011 stated they would use mobile devices to coordinate their disruptive activities and communicate about the location and number of BART Police. 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. BART temporarily interrupted service at select BART stations as one of many tactics to ensure the safety of everyone on the platform."
Source: www bart gov

By MATT RICHTEL
Published: January 28, 2011
"Autocratic governments often limit phone and Internet access in tense times. But the Internet has never faced anything like what happened in Egypt on Friday, when the government of a country with 80 million people and a modernizing economy cut off nearly all access to the network and shut down cellphone service."
Source: www nytimes com


What are we supposed to about this sort of thing? When your own government is so overtly corrupt and totalitarian what's to be done? What's it going to take to wake people up to how bad things have become? Orwellian posters everywhere showing a silhouetted figure and the caption "Big Brother Is Watching You" like those old neighborhood watch signs?
And just how dya shut down reception in so specific an area anyway? Seems odd the technological ability for doing so woulda existed built-in like. Did someone come along at some point and say they have a way to jam very small areas or what?
I fear that this generation of Americans is so wrapped up in online life that as long as the lights are on, and tv works they'd rather entertain themselves and pay attention only to their individual bubbles of reality instead of effect change around them for the benefit of all. Marx said that "religion is the opiate of the masses." But I think if he'd been around today he'd have said "the internet is the opiate of the masses." Good as it is for letting us know what's going on, it seems there's so many ways to ignore reality and just sit spellbound paying attention to other things. Maybe if a cataclysmic power outage occured something significant would transpire. Then we'd all walk outside blinking in the harsh sunlight and start looking around and once more - notice.