BART's cell-service shutdown raises the question: Is this legal? Which raises the question: Do we have ANY rights left?

BART's shutting off of cell service to clamp down on demonstrations raises the question of whether this is legal.

"This may be the first time a government agency in the United States has ever deliberately disrupted cellphone service to defang planned protests, criminologist Casey Jordan told CNN. 'I haven’t been able to find another incident in which this has happened,' she told CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux Friday."

-- from Patrik Jonsson's Christian Science Monitor report, "To defuse 'flash' protest, BART cuts riders' cell service. Is that legal?"

by Ken

I don't know why people jumped on Willard Romney the other day for saying that corporations are people, when we know that while it oughtn't to be true, in the present-day climate of extreme right-wing dominion, and with the Roberts Court empowered to tell us what the law of the land is, it's patently the case. In fact, it's becoming increasingly clear that, legally speaking, corporation have far more of the rights of people than people do.

Willard, by the way, isn't backing down.

Romney defends corporation comment in NH

By STEVE PEOPLES, Associated Press

POSTED: 08/12/2011 05:44:41 PM MDT
UPDATED: 08/12/2011 05:45:14 PM MDT

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Mitt Romney says his recent comment in Iowa that "corporations are people" was not a mistake.
Speaking to reporters after a New Hampshire reception Friday night, the former Massachusetts governor said it was astonishing that President Barack Obama doesn't feel the same way.

Romney repeated several times that "businesses are people." He asked whether Democrats believed they were perhaps little men from Mars. . . .

(In my mind this raises the question of what celestial outpost Willard hails from. Have we seen his birth certificate? Are we sure it's gen-u-wine?)

Just remember that when we listen to Willard -- as President Obama and his team strive so mightily to make him unreelectable -- we may be hearing the next president of the United States. At least he should have solid backing from the right-wing cabal on the Supreme Court, in case the election should happen to come to that.

It seems to me increasingly that when it comes to the rights of people, if they aren't spelled out explicitly somewhere in legally binding form, we ain't got 'em. And if they are spelled out explicitly somewhere in legally binding form, it may be just a matter of time before they rise to the top of Jivin' John Roberts's hit list. (Always excluding the right to own guns, of course, which exists nowhere in the Constitution except in the demented minds of people who either don't know how to read simple English or just don't care what the Second Amendment says as long as they can get away with lying about it.)

This speculation is prompted by the intriguing legal question raised by the above-referenced report by Patrik Jonsson in the Christian Science Monitor:

The decision by Bay Area Rapid Transit officials to cut off cellphone service Thursday evening – to forestall a planned protest – raises a fundamental question: Do Americans have a basic right to digital free speech or to digitally organized assembly?

Because July protests against BART police shootings had turned violent, BART officials took the unusual step to protect public safety, they said. The tactic may have worked: No protests took place Thursday night at BART stations.

Temporarily shutting down cell service and beefing up police patrols were "great tool[s] to utilize for this specific purpose," BART police Lt. Andy Alkire told Bay City News Friday. The protests, planned for sometime between 4 and 8 p.m. in transit stations, would likely have disrupted service for many of the 341,000 daily BART passengers.

This may be the first time a government agency in the United States has ever deliberately disrupted cellphone service to defang planned protests, criminologist Casey Jordan told CNN. “I haven’t been able to find another incident in which this has happened,” she told CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux Friday.

Iran used cell-phone-jamming technology to hobble protests in 2009, and Britain has considered doing so to thwart the social-media-driven riots that dogged London and other locales this week.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) forbids jamming cellphones, but BART's move had a different legal context. Because the transit system contracts with five large telecommunications firms to provide underground and station service, BART did not use jamming technology, it simply turned off a service. . . .

Ah, so now we're being compared with Iran? Noted.

#