Opinion: Is BART actually fueling the fire for Anonymous protests?
23 August 2011 – By Damon Baldini
I have been following events surrounding the Anonymous #OpBART protest since the announcement of the first protest to be held on Monday 15 August 2011 at the Civic Center station. Normally, CYBERWAR_NEWS would not be following an on the ground protest but the opening salvos fired by Anonymous included hacking and posting personal information from the MyBART.org website. Members of Anonymous also hacked into the website of the BART Police Officer's Union and posted the personal information of just over 100 officers as well and that did catch my attention.
After members of Anonymous launched their cyber attack on Friday the 12th, Linton Johnson tweeted that he was called of from his vacation in order to deal with "those who think it is OK to put our passengers in harms way". After conferring with the BART police department, Linton Johnson decided that the underground mobile phone service would be cut off in order to keep protesters from using that service to coordinate their protest. Mr. Johnson indicated that he made this decision on his own and the BART board was not contacted in the decision making process. Mr. Johnson stated cutting off the cell service was a "gut-wrenching" decision and it was made in the interest of passenger safety over others rights to protest. My only guess is that this decision was made out of inflated fears over what was happening in the UK and the reports that the media made that the rioters were using mobile devices to coordinate the riots.
Here is where the issue could have ended. For some unknown reason, rather than apologize for turning of the cell phone service when the criticisms of violations of free-speech rights began to emerge, BART went out and began to publicly argue the validity of its bad decision. Rather than plead a mea culpa and emphasis that the decision was made in interest of the safety of their passengers, BART spokesman Linton Johnson went on the offensive and made several press conferences where he stated that there is no right to free speech on the BART platform and constitutional rights end the moment people walk through the turnstiles.
Here is where the metaphorical lose-lose situation occurs when an unstoppable force (Anonymous) meets and immovable object (BART). Anonymous is not an organization that can be stopped per se. Despite the pending FBI investigation into the hacks, Anonymous is not just one person that you can arrest. The organization is an entire idea whose whole raison d' etre is to fight against oppressive organizations and for the rights of the common man. Unfortunately, the world has no shortage of people, governments or corporations who think it is quite alright to wrong the rest of humanity. Anonymous is actively looking for the fight and quite frankly, BART played into their hands.
Here is the kicker, we all know from third grade civics class that it is not lawful to yell 'fire" in a crowded theater despite the fact we as American's have protection of speech under the U.S. Constitution. As Americans we all know the limits to our personal freedoms end when exercising those liberties cause harm to others. The fact that we as a society behave as such is called the "reasonable person standard" in legal circles. Yet for some reason, the BART leadership wants to make a point that its organization has the ultimate authority to interpret the constitution, dictate social norms and decide where and when free speech is allowed on its state owned and publicly funded property.
Unfortunately, the longer both Anonymous and BART both battle it out in the media for the legal and moral and high ground, the longer these protest will continue. The more and more BART continues to push back to and try to win their faulty argument, the more Anonymous will intensify its efforts at disrupting BART operations and make their point about personal freedoms. In the end I am afraid that the one thing that BART was trying to avoid will end up become a self-fulfilling prophesy. The losers in this no-win contest will be people of the Bay Area when the entirely avoidable injury or death takes place over an issue that could have been handled with more diplomacy.
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