BART is the Bay Area Rapid Transit in California. You may remember it from the story about the BART police officer shooting a clearly unarmed man. Now BART wants to block cell phone signals at it's stations in order to prevent protests. My deal with it is this: Individuals already can't carry a loaded gun for SD in CA. Now someone was to take away their ability to call for help if needed? If someone wants to arrange a protest/flash mob all they have to do is tell everyone to meet at the station at 5pm. 5pm rolls around, innocents are getting attacked and no one can call for help. How does this make sense? Done ranting now...
I would never knowingly put innocent people in jeopardy by staging a protest while knowing that BART would stop all cell phone communication. That BART knowingly put people in jeopardy by stopping all cell phone communication should tell you loads about BART's concern for the safety of their customers.
BART may own the cell phone towers themselves, but they do not own the services. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the cell phone companies had their lawyers write some seriously severe letters to BART officials threatening a lawsuit if it ever shuts power off to their services again. I also wouldn't be surprised if the commuters launch a class-action lawsuit against BART for the same reason.
What's next? Prohibiting cell phones from being carried on their trains? That'll fly like a dropped hod of bricks... Then again, what do you expect from a city where people are (unprintable) each other in the (unprintable) left and right?
