Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
Photo by lmc_sf
BART’s disruption of cell phone service last Thursday led to the hacking of myBART.org by the group Anonymous, who also promised a live protest today at BART stations. We followed the coverage from our best sources as it happened.
Missed the madness? A photo gallery of the #opBART protest via Instagram:
Photo by tigerbeat
Photo by tigerbeat
Photo by miscellania
I looked away for a little while, then I noticed that everyone was looking over in my direction. I turned around and saw that three young teenagers had got on the train, and they were playing with yoyo-like toys that I hadn’t seen before. It was a ball on a string with a handle, and they were balancing the ball on the handle to showing off their skills on the moving train. The two guys who were eating their lunch were amused and asked the kids to show them how to play with it. And everyone in that corner of the train was smiling.
As the guys left, they gave the kids a fist pump and said good bye. I asked Willem, one of the kids, what the toy was. He told me that it’s a Japanese toy called kendama. You can see Willem showing off his best move on BART in the video I took above.
Thanks, Willem and friends, who brought a smile to our BART ride on Saturday.
The online hacker group Anonymous has hacked into myBART.org and released thousands of names, email and home addresses, and phone numbers, reports TheNextWeb. They’ve also defaced myBART.org, an independent website, with the hacker group’s logo, reports CNET.
The hacker group had threatened to take BART.gov off line today and also proposed a protest on Monday at 5 p.m. As of 3:15 p.m., the BART.gov website is still live.
All of this came from BART’s decision to cut cell service last Thursday in anticipation of a protest about the July 3 shooting.
Read more about it at the SFAppeal and the Bay Citizen.
What do you think: is this an effective way to protest BART’s cell disruption?
Photo by Black Hour
By now you know that BART temporarily shut down cell service on Thursday to interfere with a proposed protest over the shooting of Charles Hill. And now the agency is under a lot of heat.
According to CNET:
Hackers were calling for action against BART in retaliation for the cell service disruption. The Anonymous group of online activists started promoting Operation BART on Twitter, with one profile saying: “We are going to show BART (@SFBART) how to prevent a riot #OpBART.” … Meanwhile, they also released a digital flyer with the headline “muBARTek,” a reference to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted after demonstrations earlier this year. “
The SFAppeal reports that BART didn’t violate specific FCC rules. And once you’re on the BART platform, “free speech isn’t so free,” says the SF Appeal report (read the Appeal’s excellent coverage of the cell jam).
What do you think of BART’s decision to cut cell service Thursday?
Photo by Black Hour
Update (1:38 p.m. Thursday): SFist reports that a protest will take place at Civic Center Station today at 4:30.
Update (7:35 a.m. Thursday): BART was pretty cryptic in their message last night. We found this on SFGate: Possible protests related to July BART Police shooting.
Original post: I just don’t know what this could be (too many possibilities, really), but from the BART.gov website:
Please be advised that protesters may attempt to disrupt train service during August commute periods beginning as early as Thursday, August 11, 2011 in downtown San Francisco BART stations.
Read the rest of the advisory on the BART website. And plan ahead?
Word is that the project won’t be completed until 2017, but you should tell BART.gov what you think of the seats via the feedback form or at the open houses that BART will be hosting. The photo above is option A, featuring a center arm rest and head rests for window seats.
Here’s option B, featuring an “informal, open-style lounge” in the middle of each car.
Option C features artistic “S” shaped poles and “portals at the end of some cars for kids to see track and tunnel walls whiz by the front of the train as it speeds down the track.”
Here’s a nifty video of the proposals, set to music, even:
Of course, we know many of you have your own ideas of seating on public transit. And these proposed seats don’t look much like the comfortable subway living room in Prague. But maybe that’s a good thing.