14 DAY TRIAL // The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) service has attracted the unwanted attention of the Anonymous hacktivist collective by deciding to cut off cellphone service in several stations to thwart a protest attempt.
On Thursday, the BART administration had its staff shut down power to the nodes providing cellphone service at the Embarcadero, Montgomery Street, Powell Street and Civic Center stations.
The decision came amidst reports that individuals were using mobile phones to organize a protest related to the fatal shooting of a transient by a BART police officer in July.
"Organizers planning to disrupt BART service on August 11, 2011 stated they would use mobile devices to coordinate their disruptive activities and communicate about the location and number of BART Police," BART said in a statement.
The unusual decision prompted strong reactions from civil liberties groups. In an article entitled "BART Pulls a Mubarak in San Francisco" the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Eva Galperin writes that "cutting off cell phone service in response to a planned protest is a shameful attack on free speech."
"BART officials are showing themselves to be of a mind with the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, who ordered the shutdown of cell phone service in Tahrir Square in response to peaceful, democratic protests earlier this year," she adds.
As usual, the hacktivist group Anonymous plans to do more than criticize. "We are going to show BART (@SFBAR) how we prevent a riot. #OpBART," the group announced.
For now, possible attack techniques discussed by hacktivists include flooding BART with emails and faxes and filing a complaint with the FCC, however, DDoS and hacking are also to be expected.
Hackers recently broke into into the official BlackBerry blog to warn RIM not to assist police in their investigation of the UK riots, after the rioters used the BlackBerry Messenger service to organize themselves.