Countries such as Egypt and Libya tried to end protests by shutting down Internet and cell phone service. This is interesting....

Rick

San Francisco Subway Shuts Cell Service to Foil Protest; Legal Debate Ignites

• By David Kravets

BART workers remove a man atop a train during a protest at the Civic Center station in San Francisco last month. Authorities closed the station where demonstrators condemned the fatal shooting of a man by transit police the week before.

For apparently the first time in the United States, a government agency shuttered mobile-internet and phone service in a bid to quash a demonstration — the same type of speech suppression exercised by Middle Eastern tyrannies to quell dissent.

Thursday’s move by Bay Area Rapid Transit authorities was greeted by an uproar of comparisons to Egypt and Libya. The hacking collective Anonymous responded in typical form over the weekend by defacing the agency’s website, and stealing and releasing the private account information of some 2,000 San Francisco–area transit riders.

The controversy, which the Federal Communications Commission is investigating, began when officials removed the power to underground service towers Thursday at four San Francisco stations in anticipation of a planned protest — which did not materialize — over the shooting death of a knife-wielding man by BART police last month.

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