Last week, for the sake of public safety and as a means to quell further expansion of riots throughout the UK, British Prime Minister David Cameron was considering the blocking of Twitter and Facebook to prevent rioters from organizing for further activity.
Last week in the San Francisco Bay Area, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), the Bay Area’s regional subway system, blocked cell phone and Twitter feed to prevent massive public demonstrations at San Francisco’s principle downtown stations over the shooting of a homeless man early July by BART police. This shooting comes on the heels of the shooting of Oscar Grant two years ago, also by BART police, causing riots and looting across the San Francisco Bay in Oakland, where Grant was shot.
With a uniquely 21st century twist, all this Uranus-Pluto square activity had the music of the 1960s ringing through my head for breakfast. These days specifically, the lyrics from the Buffalo Springfield song seem to jump out of my memory and blaze right across the bandwidth of the Internet. Stop now. What’s that sound? Everybody look what’s goin’ down.
In this day and age of Wikileaks and a pro-revolutionary band of hackers called Anonymous, the protection of freedom of speech as well as the public’s safety is the challenge for both sides of the governmental monolith. Being experienced in what government can do with you and your communication device should give anyone pause. In the Sixties phones were wiretapped, disrupting communication. They still are being tapped. Infiltration of a revolutionary group and co-opting of its members was common practice by the FBI and CIA. And today, because of my little lime-green Samsung cellphone, Big Brother knows exactly where I am on earth. What is the definition of public safety in this day and age? What are we to be made safe from? And should our Constitutional right to assemble be suspended for our safety’s sake?