On Friday, we reported on the chilling story of BART shutting down cell phone services in an effort to avert a protest. The move created quite a stir and now, Anonymous, is threatening to take action.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
It’s the latest in a series of controversies around the world regarding censorship. Previously, British prime minister David Cameron wanted to stop people from communicating on social media in an effort to stop some of the riots that were happening. More recently, BART ordered the shut down of all cell phone services in a sub way because a protest might have occurred.
It caught the attention of many and that includes Anonymous who wasn’t exactly thrilled about what went down. In a recent statement, Anonymous described the actions by BART as an “outage was unacceptable”.
The posting also goes on to describe what actions will be taken:
1) We have begun at once a massive Black Fax and E-Mail Bomb action, where we will fill every inbox and fax machine at BART with thousands of copies of our message that this outage was unacceptable.
2) Tomorrow, Sunday – August 14, 2011 at High Noon Pacific Time we, Anonymous – will remove from the internet the web site of BART located at www.bart.gov for exactly six hours. That’s twice as long as they shut off the cell phones for.
3) On Monday – August 15, 2011 at 5:00 PM Pacific Time there will be a physical protest at the Civic Center Bart Station. Expect us !
The statement also goes on to say, “We sincerely hope that this series of actions will serve as a warning to BART and every public organization in the USA to NOT engage in this sort of dangerous and human rights violating behavior.”
No doubt BART will be in damage control in the midst of all this even if their website isn’t “removed” on Sunday. It’ll be interesting to see what will occur in the next 48 hours to say the least.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
