Government Asks: When Can We Shut Down Wireless Service? : govtslaves.info

(Matthew Laser)  Nine months ago, a tremendous controversy began with a simple e-mail: ”Gentlemen, The BART Police require the M-Line wireless from the Trans Bay Tube Portal to the Balboa Park Station, to be shut down today between 4 pm & 8,” wrote Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) construction supervisor Dirk Peter on August 11, 2011. (The Transbay Tube runs beneath the Bay, moving people to and from San Francisco; Balboa Park is a residential city neighborhood.) “Steve,” the note continued, “please help to notify all carriers.”
The message was addressed to Steve Dutto of Forzatelecom, a wireless project management company situated across the Bay in Oakland. BART requested the wireless network shutdown in response to an expected station demonstration that day to protest the killings of Oscar Grant andCharles Hill by BART officers a few days earlier
Two hours and fifteen minutes after sending the e-mail, BART had its answer. “We have been told that we must shut down the DAS system from the Oakland portal to the Balboa St. Station [in San Francisco] from 4-8 pm,” Dutto wrote back, referring to BART’s radio system for amplifying mobile signals through tunnels. “We do not believe that any of the carriers need to do anything, the nodes will be turned down from the Civic Center Headend [near San Francisco City Hall] and then turned back up when given the ok from the BART police.”
Design specifications for BART’s Distributed Amplifier Radiating Cable System (a type of distributed amplifier system, or DAS) indicate that it operates in the 800MHz public safety band. The DAS provides below-ground radio coverage through the rail network’s subway stations and tunnel areas, and it’s built to be redundant—amplifiers can “feed” the wireless signal into tunnels from both ends. The nodes link to each other via fiber optic cable. In addition to providing cell phone access to passengers, the system also serves BART’s Mutual Aid Radio System for police, fire, and medical responders.
“The system shall be provided with a Network Management System that permits remote interrogation and control of the equipment for the purposes of adjustment, diagnostics, and alarms,” the specifications note. Also—for shutting it down when people protest.
And so it was done. While protesters occupied a BART station with their placards and chants, BART security shut the network down for four hours. “The BART DAS is now back up and functioning normally,” Dutto reported at 8pm.
full article here Government Asks: When Can We Shut Down Wireless Service? : govtslaves.info