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This Is What an ‘Anonymous’ Protest Looks Like

News
Aug 16, 20112 mins
Data and Information SecurityMobileSmall and Medium Business

Protesters take to transit stations in San Francisco in response to a shutdown of cell network at one of its stations.

On the way home from work today, I decided to stop by the Anonymous protest to see what all the fuss was about. The group of hackers has made it their project this week to shut down San Franciscos BART subway system in response to BART disrupting cell phone service to ward off an unrelated protest last week.

Anonymous had already hacked into one of BARTs websites, and leaked over 2,000 usernames and passwords, but today, they wanted to make their physical presence known.

Besides disrupting commuters, Anonymous aimed to draw attention to BARTs behavior that supporters have compared to former Egyptian dictator Honsi Mubarek. To see for yourself, just check #muBARTek on Twitter.

What I saw at the Civic Center BART station looked a lot more like a press conference than a protest. Photographers and writers seemed to outnumber actual protesters 2-to-1, and the few protesters that showed up were being bombarded with reporters for interviews.

After briefly stopping the BART trains while shouting “No justice, no peace,” the protesters peacefully dispersed onto Market Street where they moved east towards San Franciscos Ferry Building to continue the protest. At this point, I went home. But you can see full coverage of the cyber circus at SF Appeal.

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lauren_crabbe

Lauren Crabbe is a former Macworld intern and current freelance technology writer specializing in photography applications for iOS and Mac.