Criticisms aimed at the San Francisco Bay Area's subway system for temporarily pulling the plug on cellular service have raised "very valid points," a federal regulator said
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FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said that the agency is still investigating what happened when BART pulled the plug on cell service on August 11 in four subway stations in downtown San Francisco in anticipation of a protest. (A BART board meeting is currently under way--check back later for CNET coverage.)
"What the heck happened, what precedent does it set, were there any laws that were broken?" McDowell said at a technology conference here yesterday. "Let's continue with the investigation. We'll draw conclusions after we have all the facts."
The August 11 protest was intended to call attention to the fatal shooting of an apparently homeless man named Charles Blair Hill.
The protest might normally have gone unnoticed outside the San Francisco metro area. That's what happened after a July 11 protest, during which train doorways were held open and some stations were shut down. But disabling underground cell service--a move more associated with authoritarian regimes in the Middle East than supposedly progressive California cities--drew national attention and criticism.
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