Yes, the BART case is different because we are talking about a public safety functionality. It really does not even matter who owns the repeaters. Let's say one of the carriers suddenly shuts down their very own cell sites to purposely deny public service. You can almost guarantee that an FCC enforcement action will result because carriers have a public safety responsibility. The state communications commission could even pull your license for that and the FCC could ultimately pull your spectrum licenses for using a public resource in a way not beneficial to the public. BART disrupting cell repeaters is tantamount to you doing anything to disrupt 911 service which is illegal whether you own the gear or not. I don't know what the exact rule currently is but I'm sure it would take someone like Homeland Security to shut down a cellular network for "national security" reasons. For example, interrupting a cellular bomb detonator or a coordinated terrorist attack. The legal concept of "greater good" comes into effect at that point.
As a common carrier, I know I would not shut down anything that affects 911 service deliberately without either the proper notifications taking place or a federal court order in my hand (and it better be federal because those are the laws you are asking me to throw out here). The funny thing about cell service (or repeaters in this case) is that there isn't usually a mandate to provide coverage in any particular area but once you provide it you are on the hook to maintain it and not purposely disrupt it. Again, it is the intent in this case that matters. If BART had a maintenance problem or the equipment was damaged, they would be off the hook but they purposely interrupted the service to deny communications services to a group of users. Cell sites go down all the time for maintenance scheduled or otherwise but if you are doing it to purposely deny service, it's another story. Again, intent matters...a lot. I definitely see abuse of authority (not really a criminal act in itself, but not nice for sure) and for sure civil liability, not so much a 1st Amendment issue since the government is under no real obligation to give you the means to communicate (like repeaters). It's the 911 service disruption that is most criminal here. Steve >However, that's not what was being discussed in the BART example. In this >case, repeaters with unclear ownership operated by cellular providers were >shut down by BART authorities to try and disrupt a protest. That's not active >jamming, so most likely, not an FCC issue. There are other >areas of concern, >however, such as 1st amendment violations, abuse of authority, potential civil >liability if anyone was unable to reach 911 in an expected manner, etc. >Owen
