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Speak Out
What does freedom of assembly mean in the digital age?
 By John Vettese, Student Voices staff writer
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” It’s a fundamental freedom that allows citizens to gather as a group to picket, protest, speak out and otherwise unite with a common purpose.
Things begin get tricky when citizens assemble not so peaceably.
Recent years have seen a global upswing in mass gatherings orchestrated via online channels. In 2009, protests in Iran were organized largely through Twitter and text messaging; the current anti-government uprising in Libya and Egypt came together in a similar fashion.
This summer alone, digital organizing has been a driving force behind the politically charged riots in London, as well as the youth gatherings (dubbed “flash mobs” by the media) popping up on the streets of Philadelphia all the way to the Wisconsin State Fair. Whether motivated by social inequities, or just for reckless kicks, these gatherings tend to involve looting, property damage, assaults and other types of violence.
It is in this climate that officials at San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit Agency (BART) decided to cut off cell-phone service on their subway lines, heading off potentially dangerous protests, but igniting a debate about First Amendment freedoms.
On July 11, about 100 demonstrators converged at the Civic Center BART station to protest a recent shooting in which transit police killed a reportedly unarmed man. It was one of several protests at stations along the subway line, calling for transit police to receive better training on the use of lethal force. But the scene at Civic Center turned unruly. Protesters climbed on top of subway cars and blocked doorways. About 45 arrests were made, and the station was effectively shut down.
An investigation revealed that protesters used their cell phones to determine which stations to target. So when authorities got wind of a follow-up protest a month later, they took an unusual step. BART officials temporarily shut down four cell-phone transponders that provide service underground.
This sent the demonstrators, as well as First Amendment advocates across the globe, into a furor. BART was widely accused of violating the protesters’ right to assemble, and its website was attacked by an international hacker group. In a Twitter post, one organization said that “BART pulls a Mubarak,” comparing the transit agency to the authoritarian former president of Egypt who used cell-phone jamming technology to attempt to hold back the violence in his country. Cell-phone jamming was used in Iran as well, and British officials considered using it during this summer’s protests in London.
Though the Federal Communications Commission has deemed cell-phone jamming illegal, BART’s situation was different. According to a report in the Christian Science Monitor, it contracts with five private cell-phone companies to provide service underground. Because of this, their actions are different from trying to thwart signals in the free and open air above ground. Instead, BART simply switched off what is essentially privately purchased service.
For some, this might place the transit agency on the safe side of the constitutional question. But others don’t buy it.
Gene Policinski, director of the First Amendment Center at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University, told the Christian Science Monitor, “Government can legitimately stop speech for public safety purposes, but it has to be the narrowest possible response, it has to be reasonable, and there has to be an imminent threat. It can’t be done on mere speculation.” In Policinski’s eyes, everybody on the subway was punished because of a perceived threat from a few.
BART counters that it had “reliable intelligence” that a protest was planned. And other experts take their side. In a CNN interview, criminologist Casey Jordan said, “They didn’t try to shut down the protest, they simply turned off the cell service so it couldn’t become viral.”
The situation in San Francisco shows just how much of a challenge it can be for governments and law enforcement agencies to operate in the digital age. New York City has the only police department in the country with a Social Media Unit. And while Los Angeles doesn’t have an officially designated department, its police are social media savvy, hunting down criminals by searching Twitter hashtags.
In early August, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson vetoed a City Council bill that would have made it illegal to organize public disturbances using social media. He said that it impinged too much on the First Amendment and that reacting to criminal use of technology “without throwing away the Constitution” is a challenge across the country.
It’s a global challenge as well. Germany recently banned police from using facial-recognition software, worrying it would violate individual privacy rights. In Vancouver, police attempted to match photos from riots after the Stanley Cup series with photos in the state driver’s license bureau database, but stopped when similar concerns were raised.
“Social media creates a web of people involved in criminal activity and who might know those people, and to be able to see those networks is a pretty amazing thing from a policing perspective,” said Kristene Unsworth, an information policy expert at Drexel University, in a Christian Science Monitor interview. “But that’s also an incredibly wide, wide net to be searching for wrongdoing. … We have to be really careful that we’re vigilant about questioning these [police] activities, to make sure the checks and balances are rigorous enough that they can deal with this kind of technology.”
What do you think?
What does freedom of assembly mean in the digital age? How do you feel about BART shutting off cell-phone service? Did the agency violate the First Amendment? What do you think about law enforcement using Twitter or facial-recognition software to track down criminals? Are these smart tactics or violations of privacy? How can authorities protect against crime organized through technology without violating the Constitution? Join the discussion!
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