Government asks: when can we shut down wireless service?

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 and Charles 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."