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Coming up next is Off the Hook, followed by The Personal Computer Show.
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And the program is Off the Hook.
This is Mike here in the studio.
I'm joined by Voltaire.
And Jim.
Hello.
We have Bernie S. down there in Philadelphia.
Greetings from Philadelphia.
And Emmanuel is somewhere.
Yeah, I am somewhere.
I'm here with Kyle.
Hi.
And we are right now in Kiev in Ukraine, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the
Ukraine Republic, which, you know, for some bizarre reason, we wound up here on this
day without realizing that.
We just suddenly flipped open the book and discovered that, hey, it's Independence
Day on Wednesday.
And not only is it Independence Day, but it's the 20th anniversary of the
independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union.
So it's been a very festive period of time that we've been here.
First time for both of us in this particular country.
And it's really pretty cool.
I know there's a lot of Ukrainian-Americans in the East Village of New York.
So I think it's really kind of cool that we're making that connection.
Hey, Emmanuel, is there one of their political leaders still having Independence
Day or is he still locked up?
You're referring to Yulia, hard to say that from our part of the world.
Yulia, I can't do it.
Yulia.
Yes, it's like Julia with a Y.
Timoshenko, she is in prison.
It's not Independence Day for her then?
It's not Independence Day for her, no.
She basically was arrested for exceeding her powers as prime minister when she
was in control.
And the current prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, who was one of the leaders
of the Orange Revolution a number of years ago, is now it's kind of strange
because there's a whole sort of history about all this.
He was the underdog back then.
He survived being poisoned and was elected in a show of orange solidarity of
the Orange Revolution, they called it.
But now he's widely seen as somebody who's kind of representative of the ruling
class and trying to become more of a dictator.
So we basically yesterday walked down one of the main streets and we saw a couple
of different demonstrations carrying on at the same exact moment.
At first, we thought it was the same demonstration, then we realized these
were two separate groups of people right smack next to each other, each with their
own PA system.
And if you stood across the street, it was just a cacophony of sound.
But what we did was we walked around, we crossed the street and we actually walked
around within the camps of the demonstrators.
I'm going to let Kyle describe just what it is that we experienced doing that,
because it really was a very unusual and strange experience.
Yeah, this protest was actually pretty humorous from the other side of the
street. The two sides were facing each other with these megaphones and blaring
music or speeches or both or the opposite, depending on which part of their
schedule of noise they had planned.
And the one side was Julia's side with the tent city.
And we made our way and started there and they were very kind of open and let us
walk around, take some pictures.
They had a lot of pamphlets.
Each tent seemed to be sort of a booth where you could approach the protester
and speak with them and kind of learn about why or where they're coming from as
far as their support of her.
And we walked around, milled around there for a while and it seemed pretty
peaceful, very colorful, a lot of flags and posters and interesting
illustrations of their position.
So we slowly started making our way to the border, which was sort of these big
metal plate barriers, like thin, quarter inch sheet metal barriers.
And you would be able to go through a passage and there was about like about a
meter drive way separating you from the other side, the other, the opposition.
And that driveway, actually we learned later, is the entrance to the courthouse
where the trial is actually taking place and is continuing.
She's in jail, but she's also going to court.
So we walked over and we thought, you know, let's see if we can just kind of
walk along the shops and scope out the other side.
And they had these sheer black fabric barriers that you couldn't really see
what was behind the people.
The tent city was blocked off, but you could walk in and clearly see there were
people.
Well, the sheer black fabric had sort of text on it, but it was very hard to see
in.
And then you would see the flags and everything.
And occasionally they would wave the flags in unison.
It was a bit like wannabe math games participants, but not nearly the scale.
So we were walking by and trying to get a peek.
And what we realized is there was like a person every four feet and they were very
clearly spaced out and there weren't any tents, there weren't any people.
It was like young kids as opposed to the other side that was a lot of the older
generation, a lot of people with families, kids, that kind of thing.
But a lot of the older generation, well, this side was like all young kids.
They seemed like indoctrinated.
And I stood up and there was pamphlets that they would like kind of hand you
under this sheet sort of in the middle.
And I had my camera, which I can shoot from the waist.
And I kind of approached it and I was kind of gearing up to take a picture.
But, you know, I just basically was shoot away.
And this guy came up and brusquely said, no, no, no, no, no, no.
And so we kept walking and we made our way sort of to the other end because there
were two distinct squares for this opposition side that was so peculiar.
And we just basically, we couldn't go in, we couldn't really take pictures.
You couldn't really see anybody.
You could make out what was going on.
But they basically had a gate or a door that they were watching the entrance.
So anybody going in was controlled.
And it was peculiar.
And we ended up sort of being followed to the end of that.
And it was really bizarre.
When Carl says that it's the opposition, actually it's the opposition to the
demonstrations that are taking place in support of Yulia, I will say this name
if it kills me, Yulia Timoshenko.
And basically that means that these people that are the, quote unquote, the
opposition are actually the ruling party, the government.
And it was just very scary because we were walking past those demonstrators,
quote unquote, demonstrators, and any time we tried to look at them, we found
ourselves being surrounded by plainclothes security people, these rather
heavyset people in suits and ties.
And it's just that the mood was so completely different.
It was like on one end, it was like BAI listeners, a bunch of people just sort
of sharing information and pamphlets and brochures and things like that.
And then all of a sudden, you were like in some kind of military camp and you
were being viewed with hostility.
And it was very strange and somewhat scary situation to be in.
Hey, Manuel, do you have a sense if these two camps fall into any sort of
broader political ideologies or if it's just sort of politics for the sake of
politics or anything like that?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by broader ideologies.
Could you clarify that a little bit?
I'm just wondering if these two camps stand for anything beyond their favorite
leader or if they have more that they're interested in.
Okay.
Yeah, it was very clearly just for the release of Yulia Tymoshenko, we couldn't
make out a lot of the specific positions that people were representing in their
lives.
I think they were sort of unified around her as a symbol of the Ukraine that
they envision.
The other side didn't.
I mean, they had one sheet of paper.
It didn't seem very much bigger than just being there to be another side as a
symbol.
And what I wanted to clarify is that from the other side of the street, had we not
gone over and investigated from the other side of the street, you would not be able
to tell, unless you've looked very, very closely.
But again, the obscurity of how they had arranged these setups made it just look
like there were two opposing sides.
Of course, Yulia's side looked a little bit more homegrown and kind of a
ramshackle, of course, the tent city, which they were able to hold.
But yeah, it seems very specifically for this particular issue.
And I think it speaks to a broader issue.
The background of the story is that the current prime minister who put Yulia in
prison comes from the party that's aligned with the Russian ethnic minority
and is closer to Russia politically than Yulia's party.
And yeah, so that's one of the reasons why they put her.
And they're also a lot more authoritarian.
I'm not sure where they fall on the left or right spectrum though.
Well, it certainly seemed authoritarian.
They started playing this really strident, patriotic music.
But you could see the people walking by were not taking it seriously.
The kids were mocking it and people just were kind of rolling their eyes.
I just didn't think it would be such a stark difference between one side and
another of friendly people and hostile people.
And always when you have the hostile people, they're usually the ones that
don't last very long.
And by the way, I've learned how to say Yulia now.
I just did some practicing and I can say Yulia many times.
But we really can't spend too much time on this.
It is a joyous day here in Ukraine, 20th anniversary of the country.
But we also, right before that, just to give a couple of moments as to where we
were before Ukraine, we spent a couple of days in the Soviet Union, which you
might think no longer exists, but actually it does.
We found it. It exists in the form of a country called Belarus.
Hey, Manuel, you're sure you're not talking about Soviet Unterzogersdorf?
What in God's name is that?
That is monochrome's country.
Oh, oh, oh, well, Yohannes's, no, no, this is, this actually takes a theme of
Yohannes's and expands upon it to encompass an entire nation of about 10
million people. And oh my God, it's just, I've been there twice before.
This is Kyle's first time.
And I warned him it was going to be a bit weird.
It's just basically a very bureaucratic, you get yelled at a lot.
It started on the train when we didn't have the little tiny form filled out
exactly the way we were supposed to have it filled out at precisely the right
moment. Just got berated in English, too, by someone on the train, one of the
officials. But we got it filled out.
They let us into the country.
And we spent a couple of days walking around and exploring, but there were
just so many silly things that constantly would be happening.
Lots and lots of people standing around doing absolutely nothing in various
stores, hotels, you name it.
Rooms that were just way too big for what they were needed for.
Dimly lit concrete buildings for everything from department stores to
theaters. It just had this really grim overtone to it.
One time we walked into a, we were looking for some, some, some medicine
because I hadn't been feeling that well.
And we went into a, I guess one of those what looked like drugstores without
the drugs, apparently, because they just had beauty supplies and shampoo and
things like that. We walked in and there must have been about eight or nine
employees all standing in different positions throughout the store.
Not a single customer, just these people.
And you would turn around the corner and there would be a woman just standing
there staring straight ahead, waiting for you to come and buy something from
her. Of course, nobody ever did.
It was like some kind of episode out of the Twilight Zone.
It was very strange. Ironically enough, the place where everybody came alive
and seemed to be somewhat happy was one of the two McDonald's that they had in
Minsk. And boy, I didn't want to ever have to say that, but it did seem like
that was the place where people actually were encouraged to to be a bit open and
free spirited.
Emanuel, you missed an earthquake while you were away here on the East Coast of
the U.S.
I know what you're referring to, but go ahead.
You mean you just missed the excitement?
The Earth moved here on the East Coast of the U.S.
yesterday and we experienced mass mass mobile phone network outages for at least
several minutes while everybody called each other to say, hey, did you feel that?
So it just shows our our mobile telephony infrastructure is not what it's cracked up
to be. Well, you know, it's interesting because a few years ago I was also away in
this part of the world. I was in Poland when the mass blackout took place.
I missed that.
Now I'm over here in in Ukraine and there's an earthquake that everybody from
Virginia to Canada apparently felt and is using as excuses to not do anything
they're supposed to be doing.
It's bizarre and strange to hear about these things happening, but I heard that
the cellular phones and even landlines to a degree were affected adversely with any
other technological issues that came out as a result of this.
I know people on the West Coast are laughing at us because they have earthquakes
all the time. But you know what, guys, you try having a hurricane.
We're going to have one of those later this week.
OK, so, you know, we have a lot of things.
Try having two inches of snow and see how you deal with that.
Everybody has their strengths and weaknesses.
Poor Washington, D.C.
They can't deal with snow or earthquakes.
They must be. They must be good at something.
We'll find out what it is one day.
That's true. But anything besides the cellular phones or any other outages or
weirdness. My my wireless Internet connectivity through through a 4G carrier
called Clear worked just fine, like immediately after the earthquake.
As soon as I realized there was an earthquake, I logged on to the U.S.
Geological Survey's website.
USGS is one of my favorite federal government agencies, and they have a they
have a nice website or web page.
Did you feel it move?
And you can and you can you can fill out this form, this little survey questionnaire
with 20 questions about what you noticed, how much you vibrations were, that sort of
thing. And it was really well worded and I filled it out and I submitted it within
seconds. I saw it collated with the other information, hundreds of other submissions,
form submissions that people had made.
And it was really interesting seeing seeing what people's reporting was live from
the scene all up and down the East Coast and what they felt and how how severe it
was. Now, you're a little bit closer to the epicenter, but here in New York, I mean,
I felt it. I was on the 13th floor of a building at the time, but really there's not
a whole lot to report. Not much happened.
I probably was a little stronger here in Philadelphia.
I think central Virginia was the it was the epicenter of the of the magnitude 5.9
quake. And my I was actually still recovering from jet lag and from my trip back from
Europe. And so I was still in bed, but awake and the whole bed started shaking.
And I thought it was my imagination.
And I saw my leg was shaking.
So I looked out the window and there's a there's a garage building next door to where
I live and like a six foot pond of water on the roof where I guess they breed
mosquitoes. And I could see waves in the water, like like pretty serious vertical waves
in the water that were like a couple couple of inches, a couple three inches peak to
peak. And I thought, wow, the earth really is shaking.
So that's when I jumped on the website and saw there was an earthquake and I filled out
the USGS form.
So I don't know if it was a strong up your way.
And apparently animals all over the place know exactly what this is all about and started
acting in strange ways.
I've heard all kinds of reports of cats and dogs just all of a sudden getting all spooked
out, knowing what an earthquake is.
So I thought that was kind of interesting.
I also heard reports of buildings in New York and other
cities being evacuated.
Isn't that exactly the wrong thing to do in an earthquake is have everybody pouring out
out of buildings? It was like a big, massive smoke break.
You know, we don't really have a lot of smoking in New York anymore.
So people need a break for something.
They took an earthquake break.
You're right, Emanuel. You're right.
You're right. The best practices are in an earthquake is to get under something
substantial and and duck and hold on tight, preferably like
an archway or doorway that's going to be a little more supported above you.
But most people ran outside.
And, of course, the danger with that is that falling rubble from the facade of the
building or pieces of broken glass could fall on you right as you exit the building.
So people, people here on the East Coast ought to sort of brush up on their
earthquake skills and not do what most of them did.
But the most important lesson I saw from this was that our our mobile phone
networks are not nearly up to the capacity that they should be.
I think our carriers routinely oversubscribe customers onto the networks, kind of like
overbooking a hotel.
So if a serious percentage of people start using the network at once,
you can't make a call.
I was getting repeated reorder signals for a couple of minutes until I could finally
make a call through. So and a lot of people were calling 9-1-1 saying, hey, my
building's shaking. But there was no real emergency.
So the 9-1-1 centers were needlessly clogged with stupid calls as well.
So it's a denial of service on 9-1-1 service.
Yes, but just intentionally denied by the carriers who don't provide enough
capacity for the number of customers they have.
They are charging for access to that network.
Interesting. Do you think there's a solution or just something we have to deal
with? Not have another earthquake?
Expand their infrastructure.
Well, they should. I mean, I think that mobile phone carriers really should be
required by our FCC to publicly post their system capacity and the number of
customers they have in each market of their network in real time, along with
historical data. So the customers or new customers can actually know if they're
signing up to a network that's already oversubscribed.
Unfortunately, our carriers here, which don't have enough regulation, routinely
sign up way more customers than they can handle because they're greedy.
And frankly, I think that's unconscionable.
So I would be in favor of that being public information, like the number of customers
they have in any given market at any given time and what their relative system
capacity is. But of course, they can hold that all secret as trade secrets, I guess.
Bernie, I totally agree with this.
People don't understand how wireless companies are completely unregulated, like
normal land telephone companies or even an ISP, I can imagine.
I'm not too sure about that one.
But they really need to know that these little toys that they play with and spend
all their money on and are absorbed with, it's just like the
Wild West or some crazy thing where they don't really get a say.
They don't have any control over the people making all of this money off this
hot new information technology.
I just want to say that, but I support that.
Hey, Mike, do we have a guest tonight?
We will in a bit. Not yet.
Don't blow it, Bernie.
I mean, it's supposed to be a surprise.
All right. Sorry for blowing it.
All right. Listen, but speaking of Mike, Mike was in an unusual place last week.
I don't want to spend all the time on the crazy places that Kyle and I went to.
But Mike, you were in Iceland and unfortunately did technical problems.
You didn't really get to say much last week.
But what do you think of Iceland, the time you spent there?
It's very nice. The landscape in Iceland is quite...
quite otherworldly.
It's all a relatively new island as islands go because it's made out of volcanoes
erupting, some of which still are.
There are no trees there, right?
What?
There are no trees at all there, right?
There's some trees, not a whole lot.
OK. Is it above the tree line?
Is what above the tree line?
The country, the island.
No, well, it starts at sea level.
It's an island.
Reykjavik, the capital city, is pretty close to the water.
OK, well, I just thought maybe it was so far north that there were no trees growing,
but I could be wrong.
No, I mean, the soil is not very arable.
Not a lot of stuff can grow there, which is annoying for people like me who like to
eat things that grow.
The other interesting thing about Iceland is the openness of the society.
And we've talked on this program before about the Icelandic modern media
initiatives, which is basically a big program supported by all kinds of parties in
the government to reduce censorship.
And they already don't have a lot.
But even just the society itself is quite open.
I was just sort of wandering around the city one day and I walked into a building and
looked at the they had this like giant map of Iceland, three dimensional and other art.
And I was just sort of wandering around.
And then I realized that I was in City Hall.
And I don't know what would happen if I started wandering around City Hall in New York.
But I'm sure seeing art would not be the end of it.
You'd see a mail detector.
I'd see all kinds of things, I'm sure.
So it's a very interesting place.
I recommend anyone who can to go there.
But it is a bit pricey, unfortunately.
Now, did you meet any hackers over there?
And are there, of course, any hacker spaces in Iceland that you know of?
None that I know of.
I hope that means I hope they'll get some soon, but I hope that there aren't any because
I would be sad to have missed them if they already exist.
OK, now, Bernie, you were speaking to us from Belgium last week.
You are at a hacker space.
And I know you also didn't get a chance to really go into a lot of detail on both that
and your thoughts on the recently concluded chaos communication camp.
So is there anything that you'd like to share with us?
Yeah, I had a wonderful time at the chaos communication camp.
It was several thousand hackers from, I think, over 50 countries were represented
there. I think there were something like 150 villages.
And at one of the villages, I met a creator of White Space, which is a terrific
hacker space in Ghent, Belgium, a small city, a small medieval city of about two
hundred fifty thousand, not overrun with tourists.
It's really interesting.
Historically, Peter was kind enough to host me for a couple of days, showed me around.
And the hacker space there, White Space, is one of the nicest hacker spaces I've seen.
They they found a great location for it.
They've done a really lot of interesting uses of the space as far as how to control
their control, the infrastructure there with the power stuff, everything.
If a web based power control system, they can turn turn everything on and off from the
web. They they have a they have a they can they call to enter the building.
They can just dial a number on their cell phone and it opens the door.
And they're really a good remote control stuff.
And they're working on a lot of other interesting projects, too.
But it was it was a pleasure to meet the folks of White Space.
And I encourage all our listeners when they're in other countries to to find a
hacker space in that country and to and to visit it, because you will find more you
will learn more about the country.
They're probably visiting the hacker space than you would just sort of wandering around
on your own. Of course, the people there can give you a tour of their of their city as
well. But it's a it's a great experience.
So I hope I hope our listeners take up that challenge and visit more hacker spaces.
I hope they do, Emmanuel, any hacker spaces in the Ukraine?
We haven't we haven't found one hacker space out here.
I checked a little bit, looked around and there is no spaces officially not listed at
the hackerspaces.org site.
And I tried some other searches just a little bit and couldn't find much.
There is a university and there's a lot of like high technology companies here, specifically in
Kiev. The other countries that we visited, like Poland and Belarus, we were able to
access the Internet. Belarus actually had a fairly open Internet.
We accessed through a hotspot that was actually run by the national telephone company.
It's actually Bell Telecom.
And that was fairly free and open.
I mean, it worked really, really well.
And, of course, Warsaw had had quite a bit of of access and it's a very modern city.
But Kiev is bustling and we are actually right next to a university here.
And I don't know, it seems fairly progressive as far as that seems like it's ripe for a
space or community to grow.
And by the way, when Kyle says Bell Telecom, he doesn't mean Bell as in Alexander Bell, he
means Bell as in Belarus.
That's how they name their, I don't know what the exact name of it was, but it was a play
on Bell and Telecom and that kind of a thing.
Another really cool thing that they have in Belarus, which I wasn't expecting to see,
and something that you might see more of in the future technologically, and that is a
flat panel traffic lights.
It's like they just kind of hang them up wherever they feel like hanging them up.
They're flat panels and they're very bright and you just can, I guess, move them pretty
easily. It's not something I was expecting to see, certainly not there.
Did you see one in motion?
They are thin and light enough to actually move around a little bit, but they were just
hung very, I don't know, very easily.
And it'd be on all sides if it was a three-way or four-way and just had a big like, it
looked like one of the old parallel cables coming out of it.
And it controlled these massive LED, round LED lights of the three different colors, of
course, the standard ones that we have here.
Yeah, we saw them lighting up and sending traffic off and stuff like that, but not
waving in the wind so much.
They're fixed pretty securely to some of the older poles and infrastructure there.
I'd like to say for anybody in this part of the world or any other parts of the world
we've discussed this in time we've had so far, if it has anything to say to us, correct
us, or give us more information, write to us, OTH at 26700.com.
Also, if you experience something interesting in a technological vein with the
earthquake that took place yesterday, OTH, was it yesterday or the day before?
Yesterday.
It was yesterday, I'm sorry.
OTH at 26700.com, please write to us.
We'd love to hear from our listeners.
We always do.
Now, I believe we have a special guest with us.
And we're still working on it.
We're still working on it.
People are, it's a good guest, but you know, we'll get to her when we get to her.
Okay.
Are we having more telephone problems?
Because we seem to have more problems with the telephone or communications than any
other radio show anywhere.
Well, okay.
Can we discuss the topic that we will be talking about with our special guest?
Sure.
You can start.
Okay.
Well, there have been some demonstrations in the Bay Area concerning police
activity within the Bay Area Rapid Transit system involving a shooting of
innocent people.
It has happened a couple of times.
And recently there have been demonstrations.
And my understanding, and I have not read all the details on this, my understanding
is that when these demonstrations are taking place, the authorities are switching
off cell service or jamming cell service to prevent people from communicating or
coordinating, maybe in the same vein as recently happened in London, where all
kinds of people were able to communicate their location via various social
networking and SMS services.
So that's basically how I understand the situation to have been unfolding.
I think the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who we'll have a guest from shortly, has
been reporting that the Bay Area Rapid Transit or BART took it upon themselves to
basically shut off the power to the cell phone, to the micro cell mobile network
underground in their subway system.
And did so without really doing much consulting with anyone.
So this seems to be what the EFF is interestingly quoting this, saying this is
sort of a Mubarak, like Egypt's ousted president, like a Mubarak type movement
where you just shut off the cell phone network to keep people from talking to each
other and organizing.
I don't want to interrupt you, but we have Eva from the EFF on the phone with us
right now.
Great.
Hello, Eva.
Yeah.
Are you there?
Hello.
Hello.
Hi.
Okay.
Hello.
I wonder why this isn't working.
Hello.
I hear a voice, but it sounds like a...
All right, let's try again.
I don't know why this isn't working.
Sorry.
Hello.
What's echoing?
Very strange.
Hello.
I hear...
I hear all kinds of strange things.
Let's try this again.
You can continue introducing the topic.
Well, okay.
Like I said...
That was awfully weird.
What's going on back there?
Sorry about that, listeners.
Yeah, the EFF is reporting this as doing a Mubarak style, hashing Mubarak style
cell phone system shutdown simply to prevent people from exercising their
political speech.
I'm really interested in asking some questions about this because I think it
is a disturbing trend when you have a governmental or quasi-governmental
organization like a rapid transit organization just choosing on their own
to shut off a cell phone service to thousands of people because they don't
like what their message is.
In this case, the message is critical of the area of rapid transport, in
particular, critical of one of their BART police officers shooting to death,
apparently an innocent person.
So I would not like to see this repeated anywhere else in the United States or
the world, for that matter.
The U.S. has harshly criticized the Mubarak regime, the former Mubarak regime
in Egypt, for doing something very similar.
And I don't like to see this in San Francisco or anywhere else.
So I think we should start asking some questions and try to keep this from
happening anywhere else in the United States.
Do we have our guest back yet?
It looks like BART has shut down our telephones, too.
Well, Emanuel, did you have anything you wanted to express about your feelings
about BART shutting down cell phone service in San Francisco?
Well, I'm not really in favor of that.
I suppose the argument could be made that it's on their property and they can do
things as they wish when they're playing with their own equipment.
But when you're entrusted to provide phone service to somebody, I think you
carry a certain responsibility.
And it seems like they've completely shirked that responsibility by doing this.
Especially since people rely on the 911 service on their mobile phones.
And if it's shut off, they have no access to call 911 if there's an actual
emergency. So this is serious public safety consequences that a quasi-government
organization like BART just decides to really launch a denial of service attack
on mobile phone users who are trying to express their opinions critical of BART.
I think it's really a very Soviet type action that is just really smacks against
the First Amendment.
There's a second part to the story, which is that after the first protest, the
people that affiliated with Anonymous took up the cause because this is obviously
a case of infringement of...
I think we have Eva with us again, or for the first time.
Sorry about the telephone troubles.
We seem to have a lot of them at this radio program.
Are you with us?
Yes, I am.
OK. So maybe you could tell us, we've talked about it a bit, but maybe you could
tell us a bit like what prompted the BART to shut down these telephone systems and
what the response has been.
Well, a few weeks ago, there had been rumors of a scheduled protest at the BART
stations in downtown San Francisco.
And in response to those rumors, BART decided that it was going to try to break
up the protests by turning off cell phone service to the stations and the platforms
in order to make it more difficult for the people who are organizing to find one
another. And apparently it was successful because no actual protest took place on
that day. And shortly afterwards, BART posted an announcement saying that they
had turned off cell phone service and very proudly announcing the reason why.
And boy, was everybody very surprised.
And that's really when the public outcry started.
It should be noted that there had been several protests prior to the one that
was scheduled and that didn't take off.
And these were all in response to a series of shootings of BART passengers by BART
police. And the protest prior to the one which failed to manifest had caused BART
to shut down several BART stations for, I think, a couple of hours in the middle of
a very heavy commute period.
So they were deeply concerned and possibly motivated by a desire not to have that
happen again. It's fairly clear that that happened again several more times,
especially after it became known why they had shut down cell phone service in the
first place.
Is this even, I mean, for our listeners who may not know, the BART is sort of like
the subway, but different.
The stations aren't very big.
Is there even any evidence that the protesters wanted to use cell phones?
None that I'm aware of.
BART has made claims saying that they were aware that criminal activity was going to
take place. But I certainly haven't, I have not seen any evidence of this criminal
activity or what people were planning to do.
BART has not made a very compelling case for why they thought that these particular
protests were going to be criminal and violent.
Really, the best that they've managed to do is to point to the prior protests, which
were, again, not violent and not criminal, but that BART certainly felt had gotten out
of hand.
Hey, Eva, I had a question.
This is Bernie S., Philadelphia.
I had a question for you.
Maybe you could answer.
I've read on the EFF.org website conflicting information as far as what BART has
been quoted as saying.
I think there's one story that they contacted the mobile carriers first and consulted
them before shutting down the network.
And the other story is that they just decided to shut off the power to the mobile phone
repeaters in their system.
Do you know which is the fact, which really happened?
Well, I can tell you that in the first version of the letter that BART published
online, they claimed that they had contacted the carriers.
And shortly afterwards, they revised the letter to say that they had unilaterally
chosen to turn off power to the repeaters.
And that seems to be the story that they have stuck to thus far.
I cannot confirm or deny the way in which they turned off cell phone service to the
stations. But I can tell you that this is the story that they have consistently stuck
to ever since they came up with it.
Can you say whether BART, Bay Area Rapid Transit, is that actually a government
organization or a quasi-government organization?
Does it receive any government funding?
It does receive government funding.
Yes. Are there, in your opinion, and I know you're not a lawyer, but in your opinion,
is this actually even legal what they did?
Are there any FCC regulatory issues with them shutting off access to really a public
safety system, the 911 system?
And did this also maybe constitute a person in the violations, just shutting off phone
service for apparently a restraint of prior restraint of speech?
Well, you're right to point out that I'm not a lawyer, but the situation does bring up
some very troubling legal questions, including was this prior restraint on the free
speech of everyone in the four stations in downtown San Francisco at the time that the
cell phone service was shut off?
And did BART have the right to turn the cell phone service off in the first place?
And there's actually been a very excellent analysis of this very question by an
attorney, I think his name is Harold Feld, at Public Knowledge.
And he wrote a wonderful blog post specifically addressing the FCC issues and the
possible FCC statutes that, sorry, the possible FCC regulations that BART may have
broken over the course of turning off cell phone access.
And he has a wonderful quote in which he says, there are all kinds of people right now
who are asking, you know, is there a right to cell phone services if this was some sort
of novel question, when in fact, this is a question which has been answered over and
over again in telecom law.
And the answer has always been yes.
OK, so is there any way BART can be held accountable to the people who made these
decisions to just arbitrarily shut off power to the cell phone systems on the BART
system? Can you think of any ways they could be held accountable for apparently
violating FCC regulations?
Well, the FCC has launched an investigation where they hope to find out just that.
So the federal government is investigating the BART.
And there's actually a potential that they might punish the BART, or is that not on
the table? It's possible.
It really depends on what the FCC finds.
From my experience, Ava, there's a when the FCC finds a violation, they issue what's
called an NAL, I think a notice of apparent liability, which is a letter saying we find
you in violation of this FCC regulation.
And what do you have to say for yourself?
And here's what we have.
We're going to fine you if you don't if you don't provide a good argument as to what
you did. So maybe that would be forthcoming.
But I think I think what our listeners could do if they're disturbed about this
development is to contact the Federal Communications Commission and and in writing
and tell them they're not that they're that they're very concerned about about this.
And the FCC should take some firm regulatory action against BART for for what they
did. Even Emmanuel over here in Kiev, I want to thank you for being part of the show
tonight. But I'm also curious, the the federal government themselves, have they not
expressed an interest in shutting off cell phone service and situations of large civil
unrest demonstrations, things like that?
The United States federal government?
Yes. You may be thinking about the controversy over the Internet kill switch, which
was some proposed language in a bill earlier this year that may have given the
president the power to shut off the Internet in case of a, quote unquote, cyber
emergency. That legislation is no longer on the table.
That language is no longer in the legislation.
So that's that's not really on the table right now.
But I think that earlier this year, when Hosni Mubarak chose to turn off the Internet
to all of Egypt for five days in the middle of what he viewed as a time of civil
unrest, really showed us how important it is not to give the power to turn off the
Internet to any one man, whether it's Hosni Mubarak or Barack Obama.
Like I can't point to the specifics, I just know that this was a number of years ago
where it might have been a rumor, it might have been some evidence that equipment was
being considered for purchase of cell phone jammers that would be turned on in a
particular area where there would be a demonstration to prevent people from
communicating with each other.
Jamming cell phones is absolutely a violation of FCC regulations.
However, however, the federal government and through the Defense Department has has
quite a bit of equipment for doing just that, ostensibly for use in foreign lands.
Where they have used it, but, you know, there's a sense of this equipment actually
lives in the United States when it's not being used abroad.
You know, if there were if there were if there were major civil civil protests in the
U.S. where the government wanted to quell such disturbances, I believe our government
might either just contact the carriers and say, order them to shut off power to the
mobile phone system or or just jam it and let the chips fall later and worry about it
later. So I just think this is a disturbing trend to see BART getting away with this.
And I think we need to try to make as much make as many people aware that this could
happen so that it may not happen again.
Well, I'd like to say it is very important to to recognize that this is a slippery slope
and that this this one action by BART could make other other, you know, government
organizations think that they have the right to turn off cell phone service in order to
quell what what they may view as civil unrest and what we see as lawful protest.
But the best thing about, you know, the subsequent subsequent protests and media
coverage of this event really was that BART came to understand that what they did was
really profoundly unacceptable.
There was a meeting of the BART board of directors in Oakland this morning at which
some members of the board of directors essentially said that if if they had known what
the what the potential legal liability was, that they would have raised more questions.
There were members of the board of directors who said that they had not been consulted
and if they had been consulted, that they would have never let this go through.
And admittedly, there were also members of the board of directors who denied any
wrongdoing and said that they continue to reserve the right to turn off cell phone
service in order to prevent future protests.
So, again, I would point out that in subsequent protests, BART has chosen not to turn
off cell phone service.
I think they understand exactly what sort of immediate disaster this has been for them.
Eva, do you know how the members of the BART board are selected?
Can people vote out the ones who think this was a good idea?
As far as I know, this is not an elected position.
OK, well, maybe there's another way to get them out.
Do we know do we know at least is it public, the names of the of the BART board
members who were in favor of this action?
There should be some coverage of the there should be some coverage of the meeting
probably this afternoon.
All the articles are still kind of being written right now.
I do know that her name was Lynette Sweet, was really quite outspokenly opposed
to the to BART's decision to jam cell phones, to turn off cell phone service
in the patients.
Well, and this is a to your knowledge, Eva, is this a is this a precedent?
Is this the first time you have any knowledge of this happening in the U.S.?
I've not heard of it before, but to my knowledge, this is the first time this has
happened in the U.S.
We're hoping that it will be the last.
We shall discuss the ramifications for this in England, where the prime minister has
spoken about shutting down cell phone networks to during times of protests, which are
riots, which have happened recently.
Are you familiar with this story?
Yes, I wrote an article about this on the EFF website.
How was how is that how is that situation similar to this?
Well, the exact word that the prime minister used were that he proposed looking into the
possibility of maybe giving the government the power to shut down social media in times
of social unrest.
That's that's some fairly weak language, though, but especially when you when you
compare it to actually shutting off cell phone service in the United States, that's
shutting off cell phone service in in the event of or on rumors of a protest.
So in that way, these these things are very different from one another.
But on the other hand, it shows the same eagerness to trade off civil liberties in
exchange for some sort of vague promise of security, which EFF finds very disturbing.
Eva, if people want to learn more about this, is there more information about it on the
EFF website?
Indeed, there is.
And could you tell us a little bit more about the website and its address?
Sure. The EFF website is located at www.eff.org.
And all of our articles are located in the Deep Links blog.
And you've written some of the articles there as well, of course.
Yes, I have. I've written extensively about BART.
And I wrote a little bit about about David Cameron's talk in front of Parliament.
I guess my question, are there steps that our audience, be they in San Francisco or
elsewhere, can take to prevent this sort of thing from happening again?
Well, there are a couple of things that people can do.
The first, as someone has already suggested, is to write to the FCC and let them know how
deeply concerned you are and that they should take this investigation very seriously.
I do recommend that people educate themselves on the potential legal issues by reading
Harold Philp's analysis in the Public Knowledge blog.
I also recommend, I think Democracy Now has a petition that they're sending out.
And the ACLU has an action as well.
So there are lots of places that you can go to express your outrage.
And I highly recommend that you do that.
You can also, of course, donate to the EFF.
I really wanted to thank you for joining us tonight and all the work that you're doing
on this. And I just wanted to add to something I said earlier in the show about
mobile phones. And basically, if we can pull away from our iBerrys and our PalmDroids
and all of this and basically realize that those people were paying for services that
basically got cut off. They paid the company and it got cut off.
And I think I said a little bit about regulation and stuff.
And I think it's just like any other part of our institutions here in America, where
we need to be vigilant and we need to have access to our government.
In the same way, we need to take ownership of our mobile phone carriers, our providers,
and participate such that they aren't compelled to participate with authorities when it
comes to speech and speaking to each other, because that's essentially what we're
funding them to do for us.
And they need to make good on that.
I just want to add that.
OK, thanks.
Thanks for being on the show.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
We're almost out of time, but thanks again.
You're an activist, is your title at the EFF, EFF.org for people who want more
information or to donate.
Any last thoughts?
Oh, just that we are largely membership funded and EFF has close to 15,000 members all
over the world. So one of the ways in which you can help the work that we do is to
donate to us directly.
OK, well, thank you for coming on the show and for continuing to do this work.
Thank you. It's my pleasure.
We have just a little bit of time left.
You want to take any listener calls?
We could try. I don't know that we'll succeed.
The number's 212-209-2900.
If we want to do that.
Did you have a chance, Bernie, to talk about this story from Belgium about the
government?
Oh, about how they don't really have a real government there right now for the past year
and a half?
Yeah.
How does that work?
You know, I'm not as up on Belgian politics as much as I should be.
But Pieter at the White Space tried to explain it to me last week when I was there.
Basically, there was just a very, very close vote and kind of like we had back in 2000
and they just couldn't resolve it.
So neither party really was able to take power.
No party was able to take power.
And it's just basically government sort of been running on idle in Belgium for the past
year or so. And basic functions are surviving.
But the legislature is not able to pass any funding bills.
So they're just basically running with last year's budget.
And I kind of like to see that happen in this country, frankly.
The government was just sort of not passing any new laws and just running with last year's
budget. It might be more productive.
Hard to say how it could be less productive.
Right.
I guess we're about out of time.
Any last words from overseas, Emmanuel?
It's three o'clock in the morning here.
All right.
So you want to go to bed is what you're saying.
Well, you know that it's yeah, we're in the Ukraine here and it's really late.
And it's been fun, though.
It's great talking to people back home.
And we'll be back in the studio next week.
I think everybody's back by then.
Right. I'll be here.
I don't know. Well, we'll see you then.
All right. Good night, Emmanuel.
Good night.
And I want to thank Ken Gale for running the board tonight.
Thank you for engineering, Ken.
You're welcome.
Man, from intro to outro, it's absolutely rock solid.
From the bottom to the top and the top to the bottom.
Here's the outlook and how it reads.
Number one, we don't believe in other people leaving the ideas that our
syringes call to vain create.
But if it's still enough, that's a calculated mistake.
A combination infinite involved with digitized codes you can't break.
We believe in unconditional control and under supervision of another
upper layer. So what that means is our beliefs are bound to reach a level
balanced properly without restriction, limitation or revolt.
Point three, we don't believe in you controlling me.
That's point three. I'm not obligated to listen to this shit you're telling me.
That's not a thing that could lead to a felony.
I don't give a peep yelling at me at the top of your lungs, but you know that
otherwise it isn't going to get done.
I hold the reins in my tongue and decide when the holes in the door is deployed.
Point four, point four.
You've been warned.
So before we move on, just from point four on, just so you don't
distort the order, make us go back and forth once more.
Let's repeat what we recorded thus far.
Now, point one, we don't believe in other people leaving the ideas that our
syringes call to vain create.
Make no mistake.
We believe in unconditional control of our beliefs and our opinions.
Our souls, our growth and our dominion.
Point three, don't believe in you controlling me.
I'm not obligated to do or say or listen to any damn thing.
Point four, point four, point four, point four, point four, point four, point four.
We believe in all of the above just for the reasons given.
Uplifting, uplifting, not giving up, setting government in the venue.
So be self-sufficient, not tripping off of that subliminal stuff.
We're not just submitting, coming with a rough and tough.
We're going to supplement your knowledge with ourselves stunts.
We're not going to let an opportunity get left out.
We're not going to let some indecision stop over your belt.
We're not going to show no mercy overflowing the drought.
There's no doubt, no doubt, no doubt, no doubt, no doubt, no doubt, no doubt, no doubt.
This is what it's about.
Come on.
We believe in achieving the summit as expected.
Detonate the avalanche effect.
We bust a rat and watch a series of events connect.
Chain reactions set off like a fusion experiment.
Energy can calculate and not emit the elements and their effects.
We have to go and tell the science.
Hi, this is Donovan, and you're tuned to WBAI,
listener-supported, non-commercial radio in New York.