Cell Phones Silenced

I have my opinions on what has happened with the transit authorities and cellphones in the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel and the Queens Midtown tunnel of NYC. But I will let this Washington Post article explain what exactly is going on before chiming in.

This is what the Washington Post "know[s] to be true right now".

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey cut cell-phone service last Thursday in the tunnels that link Manhattan with New Jersey, Brooklyn and Queens.

Security was the reason. The MTA runs the Brooklyn-Battery and Queens Midtown tunnels. The Port Authority supervises the Lincoln and Holland tunnels. We're talking a lot of vehicles and plenty of opportunities for terrorist mayhem.

Verizon Wireless spokesman Jim Gerace has been quoted saying:

[I assume] it was to avoid a repeat of the London attacks, in which terrorists may have used phones to coordinate or detonate bombs. Gerace says the Port Authority has been mum about when, or even if, it plans to restore power. The agency has only told the company that power will stay off 'until further notice'.

It's important to note that according to the Washington Post the service has never been shut off and not even after Sept. 11, 2001. Here's where the situation gets crazy:

MTA spokesman Brian Dolan [said] late Monday that his agency restored cell service to its tunnels. The decision to shut it off last Thursday was the result of a "miscommunication" between the authority and the New York Police Department. An NYPD spokesman confirmed that it never asked anyone to cancel service in any tunnel.

Or not...the Port Authority's Lou Martinez [said] that the outage will continue, either for as long as the Orange Level endures or until the authority decides otherwise. 'We feel it is the proper decision for security's sake,' he said.

Peculiar. Well, the person who wrote this article, Robert MacMillan, went on to investigate and see if other authorities were cutting cell phone service. He checked out the Maryland Transportation Authority (in charge of Fort McHenry and Baltimore Harbor tunnels), the tunnel connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, the Chesapeake Bay & Bridge-Tunnel, and the Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel in Colorado. Nobody was planning to cut cell phone service as a result of the London attacks. In fact, Neal Belitzky, who manages and runs the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor said that Homeland Security issued no advisory calling for cell phone service to be cut. Also, a spokesman for Homeland Security, Brian Doyle, says an advisory is not likely to be issued.

That leaves me with this conclusion. The town of New York has taken it upon themselves to undergo security measures that the government has not called for. And I think, as far as I know, they have the right to do so. There is just one problem. The cutting of cell phone service won't make them safer.

The New York Post had this to say on why it is useless to cut cell phone service:

A police source said disabling cellphones in the tunnels is a good security measure, but not a foolproof one. Last year's deadly Madrid terror blasts were detonated by cellphones. But in that case, the blasting caps were connected to phones with alarms. The timers were set so that when the alarms went off, the power ignited the blasting caps, detonating the bombs. 'You didn't have to call in to that phone,' the source said. The source noted that if terrorists use timers, cutting off cellphone service in the tunnels would not help. 'Even if you were to shut power, [the bomb] would still go off,' the source said.

I did a search on this through Google.com to see if I could turn up more information. I was only able to find this on MTA.info.

Cell Phone Courtesy
As a courtesy to our other customers, we kindly ask that when using cell phones you 'Talk low so no one will know'. Keep your conversations short or move to the vestibule area for more privacy

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Now, if you believe guidelines are only as good as their enforcers, than you believe someone is on that train with passengers to oversee that people follow this "cell phone courtesy" guideline. Someone in the past has had to ask a person to talk lower or has been asked to move to the vestibule area so that customers aren't disturbed any more. My point is, if people are 'talking low so no one will know', what do authorities accomplish by cutting cell phone service?

Let's be logical. The terrorists will be covert. Had they intended to use cell phones to contact someone when they got into the tunnel, they would be screwed. But, I think that would raise the risk of someone cloe by overhearing a conversation and then going to authorities. So, let's be logical and say that terrorists aren't affected by this at all and would do all the talking beforehand and only come on board with cell phones set up to detonate bombs. Now consider that a person could see something suspicious and call in. This would be a good thing, but authorities have chosen to not allow this to happen. And if it's because they don't want terrorists to overhear the person who calls in saying they look suspicious, than they need to rethink their decision to cut cell phone service because the guideline says "Talk low so no one will know." Also, if a terrorist is on board, I really do not think that any New Yorker is going to talk loudly about it over the phone. They would only create chaos.