Also today, Bay Area Rapid Transit officials were bracing for a second protest scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. PT (8 p.m. ET) to highlight the civil liberties concerns raised by silencing mobile devices. Today's protest was organized by the group Anonymous, which appears to have been behind an intrusion into a BART Web site over the weekend.
It's unclear whether BART will disable service again. BART spokesman Linton Johnson told CNET this afternoon that he would not reveal his agency's "tactics," and declined to elaborate.
Preliminary reports on Twitter this afternoon suggested that BART police -- the agency maintains a uniformed division, which was involved in a fatal shooting that sparked the initial outcry -- would shut down the subway station where today's protest is scheduled to be held. The location, at the Civic Center BART, is adjacent to San Francisco city hall.
"I can not talk about our tactics tonight because we are obliged by the Constitution to balance everybody's rights," BART spokesman Johnson told KRON TV this morning that he would not reveal what BART plans are in preparation for the protest.
"We were forced into a gut wrenching decision" to cut cell service in order to protect BART users' "constitutional right to safety."
There is, however, no right to safety in the U.S. Constitution, only a right to speak and assemble freely -- which, some legal experts say, BART violated. The word "safety" appears in the state constitution, but in a section that talks about individual rights, not police powers...
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Elinor Mills @'cnet'
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