CA: Phone cutoff stirs free speech uproar
We read:
"Police in riot gear. Masked demonstrators ready for a confrontation. And then government forces shut down the wireless network to try to thwart plans for the 'flash mob' protest coordinated by cellphones and Twitter.
It’s not a scene from the Arab Spring, but one from America’s beautiful city on the bay, San Francisco. It developed with a backdrop not of tanks and fires but of thousands of annoyed commuters trying to get to their trains.
Worried about a plan to disrupt service, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police this month decided to pull the plug on the system that allows underground cellphone service. It lasted only a few hours, but the decision continues to resonate."
Protests continue, this time about the decision to shut down the cellphones. Civil libertarians are alarmed. And First Amendment scholars are intrigued.
The BART decision may become “a historical marker of sorts as we navigate the intersection, with its occasional collisions, of new technology, public safety, and our First Amendment freedoms,’’ wrote Gene Policinski, senior vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center.
Michael Risher, an attorney for the ACLU of Northern California, called it “the first time in the United States that a government entity has shut down a communications network to stop a protest against that very government entity.’’
Source
I have mentioned this matter before but it does not seem to be going away.
5 comments:
I love it. The leftists mobs finally know what it feels like to be in the Tea Pary!
Welcome to obama's Amerikkka
I can find nothing in the Constitution, even among the imaginary "rights", such as the "right" to an abortion, or the "right" to privacy, or the "right" to marry, etc. that gives people the 'right" to engage in anarchy, which is precisely what these so-called "flash-mobs" are doing. And while for the most part, these mobs are made-up of gangs of blacks who's only intention is to steal everything in sight, it's still anarchy.
A govt. entity, or a private one for that matter, has not only the right, but the obligation to maintain order and to protect it's property, it's employees, and it's patrons. The First Amendment (does not) protect criminal acts.
Bravo well said. i think there is a need for mounted cossacks to get rid of the flash mobs.
I don't see the 1st Amendment issue here. Is the government required to provide cellphone service at all government operated venues? Are cellphones necessary to free assembling and speaking? If so, then how did citizens exercise their 1st rights before cellphones existed? Did BART confiscate cellphones upon entry to the system? No, so why couldn't cellphone users exit the station and make their calls?
I don't own a cell-phone. I don't want a cell-phone. Personally, I believe them to be the work of the devil.
I grew up in the 1950's when my family had to share a land line with 3-other families and we had no answering machine.
B.S.-ing is 1% emergency/important and 99% ego-inflating and flash-mob inciting.
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