Hackers Post Names of California Transit Site Subscribers

Bay Area Rapid Transit district officials said they were attempting Sunday to shut down a hacker’s group website that lists the names of thousands of San Francisco Bay area residents who are email subscribers of a legitimate BART website.

The Mercury News reports that the site, run by an external vendor, contains more than 50,000 names of people who receive news alerts and other information from the transit agency.

Besides the names of the subscribers, the group known as Anonymous, also posted the names, street addresses, email addresses and phone numbers.

“We are Anonymous, we are your citizens, we are the people, we do not tolerate oppression from any government agency,” the hackers wrote in an online posting. “BART has proved multiple times that they have no problem exploiting and abusing the people.”

The posting comes in response to BART officials on Thursday cutting off underground cellphone service for a few hours at several stations to thwart a planned protest over the recent fatal shooting of a 45-year-old man by police.

BART spokesman Jim Allison has said that the cell phone disruptions were legal as the agency owns the property and infrastructure.

BART officials on Sunday were also working a strategy to try to block plans by protesters to try to disrupt BART service Monday.

“We’re making preparations to try to prevent any unsafe conditions on the platform,” Allison told the Mercury News. “I’m not going to discuss any specifics, other than to say we’re preparing.”

Allison did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press seeking additional comment.

The American Civil Liberties Union has also questioned Thursday’s incident. The ACLU has a scheduled meeting with BART’s police chief on Monday about other topics and cellphone issue will added be to the agenda, spokeswoman Rebecca Farmer said.