San Francisco’s BART Subway Defends Protest-Stifling Cellphone Shutdown
Authorities said they shut down cellphone service on parts of San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit on Thursday night to stifle a planned protest on the subway system. A BART statement defended the move “as one of many tactics to ensure the safety of everyone on the platform.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation immediately described the move as a “Mubarak”; others noted the parallels with the United Kingdom’s proposal to limit phone and social media services in the wake of that country’s riots.