Shut Down the Web? That's Just How the West Is Giving Moral Support to the Arab Despots

At four in the afternoon last Thursday in San Francisco, rush hour was beginning, with multitudes heading towards the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to take the train home. In four stations, however, something unexpected happened. For three hours, until seven at night, all cellular phones stopped working. Doctors on call, managers, anxious parents and a host of others were reduced to staring at blank screens, nonplussed as to the cause of the blackout. What they wouldn’t find out until the next morning is that this was no ordinary technical failure: BART made the unprecedented decision to knock out the cellular signals of its own customers without notice.

What is it that pushed BART, a public authority, to do what many on the web have branded as “a Mubarak” (reminiscent of the deposed leader’s attempt to block cellular phones and Internet during the insurrection just a few months ago)? Just yesterday, BART declared security reasons as its motivation. Demonstrations were planned on Thursday at the same time as the blackouts in protest of the July 3 killing of a homeless man by BART security agents. BART attempted to indiscriminately block — with apparent success, as demonstrations have not been held since the blackout in any stations — the cellular signals in predetermined “hot zones.”

Let’s review for just a moment: A transportation company, in a completely internal decision, decides without warning to block private citizens’ ability to communicate (a privilege for which wireless customers pay), invoking some generic concern for security.

The Internet community’s indignation is hardly surprising. This same outrage is shared by two main American civil rights associations, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which both condemned BART’s actions, foreshadowing legal battles to come. Infringement on the freedom of speech, in this instance to peacefully demonstrate, is evident.

It is striking that at the same time that BART prepared to halt wireless activity, the Prime Minister of Britain, David Cameron, announced that his government had seriously taken into consideration the possibility of suspending service to Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry in the event of “the credible threat of violence.”

This is the official reaction to the role of technology in the recent unrest in England. After this Californian “Mubarak” fiasco, will we soon have one in London? After Tahrir Square and Embarcadero Station, will Trafalgar Square follow?

It is important to remember all of those despots who tried to cut the switch just a few months ago on those same technologies which are celebrated, and rightfully so, as important contributing factors to the Arab Spring.

In other words, at the moment, the West is running the grave risk of becoming hypocrites. That which in Tehran or Cairo is called censorship is instead deemed a reasonable security measure in San Francisco or London. Authoritarian countries such as Iran and China won’t wait around to throw our criticisms of them back in our faces and perhaps, with great peace of mind, buy our best surveillance technologies at the same time.

At the moment, the West should resist emotionality and demonstrate with actions that which we preach to others: fully respecting the rights of citizens, even if this may bring about more work and greater complexity. In doing so, we can assure that the next time a cellular phone stops working, it is because someone forgot to charge it.