{"id":44151,"date":"2011-08-16T14:38:37","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T18:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=44151"},"modified":"2011-08-16T20:13:37","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T00:13:37","slug":"for-what-its-worth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/fe-911-2\/for-what-its-worth\/","title":{"rendered":"For What It’s Worth"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> to prevent rioters from organizing for further activity.<\/p>\n

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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<\/a>\u00a0early July by BART police. This shooting comes on the heels of the shooting of Oscar Grant<\/a> two years ago, also by BART police, causing riots and looting across the San Francisco Bay in Oakland, where Grant was shot.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0Stop now. What’s that sound? Everybody look what’s goin’ down.<\/em><\/p>\n

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 \u00a0should give anyone pause.\u00a0In 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.\u00a0What 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?<\/p>\n

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Today, with the digital environment more fluid and vast, the flow of information is not a trickle through electrical wires, its a tsunami over 3G, 4G and wi-fi. And its not just the FBI, or the CIA. It’s government everywhere. We keep talking about the ramifications of the digital age here at Planet Waves for good reason. It’s the challenge of the era. Technology allowing unprecedented access on an individual and global scale is nothing new to government. Individuals having access to that same technology is.<\/em>\u00a0 Because of digital technology’s power, and its intrusiveness, the ramifications of its use and its censorship is the new moral and ethical litmus test for both the individual and the government, especially the government. Keeping up with the political and moral implications of the use of these Brave New Toys during these days of domestic terrorism, unrest and revolution affects everyone from Cairo to London and my own backyard.<\/p>\n

Here in San Francisco the Friday before the Full Moon weekend, BART shut down everyone’s cellphones within sight of a BART station. Friday was purportedly the day of a massive demonstration against BART’s police brutality. The shutdown was so offensive that\u00a0last Sunday\u00a0 Anonymous hacked MyBart.com<\/a>\u00a0 — a ride scheduling website — closing it down. \u00a0Adding irony to the drama, the highly anticipated Friday protest never happened.<\/p>\n

Then, on Monday Aug. 15, demonstrators appeared at Civic Center BART dressed in Guy Fawkes masks chanting “can you hear me now?” into cellphones. Some wore bloody shirts carrying signs that read, “How can I call 9-11 while BART police are shooting people?” BART police arrested them and shut down four of its primary downtown San Francisco stations instead of shutting off cellphone service, creating havoc for three hours during the rush, and gridlock on the roads. They must have gotten the memo that you don’t disrupt one’s communications for the sake of public safety.<\/p>\n

The recent history of the shootings at BART has been a hot topic in the Bay Area since 2009, starting with the death of Oscar Grant. Grant was a young black man shot New Year’s night by BART police who mistakenly thought he was carrying a weapon. The shooting led to riots on the streets of Oakland. The subsequent trial of former BART policeman Johannes Mehserle, Grant\u2019s killer, led to a reduced sentence, which instigated more protests and disruptions.\u00a0The recent shooting of the homeless man who was brandishing a broken bottle and who BART police could not subdue physically, is bringing up memories of Oscar Grant again. There has been no healing in the community following Mehserle\u2019s sentence \u2014 his trial was conducted in Los Angeles, 400 miles from the city where the crime happened, and factoring in his time served, Mehserle was freed in late June of this year, about a week before the shooting of the homeless man took place.\u00a0In terms of passing a government’s ethical litmus test, BART appears, at the very least, as though it panicked and failed.<\/p>\n

How are we individuals and the powers that be going to co-exist during times of civil unrest in this digital age? That’s as ripe a question in this the age of Arab Spring as anything else under the Sun, particularly while Pluto is in Capricorn.\u00a0Open Rights Group<\/a>, a UK-based organization dedicated to digital freedom, has been actively fighting against Cameron’s proposed Twitter-Facebook shutdown, and proposes an interesting list<\/a> of ways for how the government should protect individual digital access rights even when and especially during times of duress. The list included a reminder that any type of digital shutdown, particularly in the “free” industrialized world, sets a bad example for more repressive regimes to use as a justification for their own repressive tactics.<\/p>\n

Early this morning, I was alerted by an email from Eric, notifying us that Facebook has been selectively censoring the sharing of political information on their site. Though we do not know the cause yet, this is an alert to all of us Facebook users that it’s happening. These days of testing and proofing are just the beginning. For what it’s worth, it’s time to step up, stay alert. Battle lines are being drawn.<\/p>\n

There’s something happenin’ here<\/em>
\n what it is aint exactly clear<\/em>
\n there’s a man with a gun over there<\/em>
\n tellin me i got to beware<\/em><\/p>\n

i think it’s time we stop, children<\/em>
\n what’s that sound<\/em>
\n everybody look what’s goin down<\/em><\/p>\n

there’s battle lines being drawn<\/em>
\n nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong<\/em>
\n young people speakin there minds<\/em>
\n getting so much resistance from behind<\/em><\/p>\n

it’s time we stop,<\/em>
\n hey what’s that sound<\/em>
\n everybody look what’s goin down<\/em><\/p>\n

what a field day for the heat<\/em>
\n a thousand people in the street<\/em>
\n singin songs and carrying signs<\/em>
\n mostly say hurray for our side<\/em><\/p>\n

it’s time we stop,<\/em>
\n hey what’s that sound<\/em>
\n everybody look what’s goin down<\/em><\/p>\n

paranoia strikes deep<\/em>
\n into your life it will creep<\/em>
\n it starts when your always afraid<\/em>
\n step out of line the man come and take you away<\/em><\/p>\n

you better stop<\/em>
\n hey what’s that sound<\/em>
\n everybody look what’s going down<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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), … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1740],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}