Anonymous attacks BART for cell phone censorship

August 15, 2011 By Andrew Couts

Hacktivist group Anonymous is fighting back against San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit System, which blocked cell phone an Wi-Fi access last week in an attempt to subdue a protest against its police force.

Members of infamous hacktivist group Anonymous have launched a concerted campaign of retaliation against San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit System, known as BART, after the organization cut Wi-Fi and cell phone service at “select” downtown subway stations on Friday in an attempt to quell a citizen protests against BART police.

Dubbed “Operation BART,” or OpBART, the campaign includes a multi-pronged strategy of civil disobedience.

First, the group hacked the website myBART.org, an independently-operated website that uses BART’s open data services. A message at that URL says the site is “currently under renovation.”

In addition to the myBART hack, Anons released the names, email addresses, phone numbers and home addresses, of at least 2,400 or the 55,000 people who use the myBART website, according to BART.

“We apologize to any citizen that has his information published, but you should go to BART and ask them why your information wasn’t secure with them,” wrote Anonymous about its release of private data. “Also do not worry, probably the only information that will be abused from this database is that of BART employees.”

On Sunday, Anonymous followed through on its plans to take down the BART.gov website for six hours (though the exact duration of the take-down is not publicly known), and defaced the website with the Anonymous logo.

Anonymous has also urged supporters to help carry out a “massive” Black Fax and “email bomb action” against BART and its employees, which includes faxing a mostly black flier (to drain the expensive fax machine ink) to BART offices, and bombarding email inboxes with Anonymous messages.

To top off OpBART, Anonymous has organized a physical protest against the transit system, which is set to take place today (Monday) at 5pm PST at San Francisco’s Civc Center BART station.

“For the people outside of San Francisco, show solidarity by using black fax, email bombs, and phone calls to the BART Board of Directors. BART decided to cut off your communications and now we will flood theirs,” writes Anonymous in a press release.

“We request that you bring cameras to record further abuses of power by the police and to legitimize the protest. The media will certainly spin this in an attempt to make our actions appear to be violent or somehow harmful to the citizenry at large. Remember, this is a peaceful protest. Any actions trying to incite violence in our protest are not of our people, and they ought to be discouraged.”

The initial protest against BART that prompted the mass transit organization to cut cell phone service was in response to a number of questionable actions by BART police, including the deadly shootings of 22-year-old Oscar Grant and, more recently, 45-year-old Charles Blair Hill.

To keep up to date on Anonymous’ BART protests, follow @YourAnonNews and @AnonymousIRC on Twitter, and YourAnonNews.tumblr.com. The BART protest will also be streamed live via Qik.

Showing 8 comments

Benjamin Kubilus at 12:33am 16th August 2011 Anonymous doesn't truly stand up for anyone or anything. They don't support censorship, so they block a website. I'm not saying that it was or was not a bad thing to do, but that it's hypocritical, no matter which position you take. They are supposedly so concerned when Sony or other businesses aren't seemingly secure enough. So, what do they do? Do they say, "Hey, noticed these problems; Here's how to fix them"? No. They exploit it. It's basically, "You're customers' information is vulnerable - so much so that somebody could post all their information for all to see. Man, that'd just be terrible. We're gonna do that now. See how bad that is? We would never do anything like that." They just find reasons to protest anything and everything. I honestly cannot help but imagine they are a bunch of 12-16 year olds who don't have much else to do with their angst or talent. They are just a bunch of asshats and I really hope they get caught and shutdown, errr uhhh, "censored", some day.
Xtianholics Rombawa at 12:31am 16th August 2011 Illuminati nga ampota :)
Tonio Johnson at 10:06pm 15th August 2011 The way they went about it was silly to me. They exposed innocent people's private information for essentially the world to see. Aren't those the people they are standing up for ??
Sam Verhasselt at 9:36pm 15th August 2011 Illuminati
Vaan1993 at 10:43am 15th August 2011 People are afraid of what they can not comprehend.
Mike Dunn at 8:11am 15th August 2011 How is this not "harmful to the citizenry at large" if they are publishing the personal data of BART users, not just employees?Maybe they should hack the BART site and actually make it nice and keep the trains on time! Or maybe do something funny but not harmful, like changing the voice of the automated voice at all the stations. Ultimately by publishing user data and protesting at a BART station they are getting customers in the cross fire.
1. Trevor Whitlock at 9:40am 15th August 2011 They're just another terrorist group, err computer extremist. They want anarchy above all else and we see what happens in africa because a lack of govt. tribes killing, raping, pilaging, the list goes on and on(could you imaging talking to your mother and hear her say oh yea son i was raped again last week, jokes on him the last guy gave me AIDS.
2. Trevor Whitlock at 9:40am 15th August 2011 They're just another terrorist group, err computer extremist. They want anarchy above all else and we see what happens in africa because a lack of govt. tribes killing, raping, pilaging, the list goes on and on(could you imaging talking to your mother and hear her say oh yea son i was raped again last week, jokes on him the last guy gave me AIDS.