As the group planned for a protest on Aug. 11, BART's spokesman, Linton Johnson, fearing that the rally would snarl the evening commute, proposed cutting off cellphone and wireless service, which the agency controls underground.
The government tried to control the momentum of unrest by cutting off cellphone coverage in large cities for most of the day, and in Islamabad, it sealed exits in the city after Friday Prayer.
But it responded to the 50th anniversary with force rather than reason by sending in thousands more troops, ordering monks to stay indoors and cutting off cellphone and Internet services.
The military began by rounding up "potential troublemakers" after cutting off cellphone service and restricting food and medical care to the camp for several days, said Mr. Sunai of Human Rights Watch.
The Chinese government, fearing civil unrest among six million Tibetans, has locked down the vast areas, which make up a quarter of Chinese territory, by sending in thousands of troops in the past few weeks and cutting off cellphone and Internet services in some locations.
Anonymous, the loosely affiliated group of computer hackers, is planning a flesh-and-blood demonstration Monday afternoon in San Francisco to protest the Bay Area Rapid Transit cutting off underground cellphone service to thwart protesters.
His cellphone kept cutting out, or there was a zooming in and out of his voice.
After cutting off electricity and cellphone service, the government began storming Douma on Thursday, activists said, arresting hundreds of people during house-to-house searches before pulling back to the outskirts at night.
There's also the possibility that the proliferation of cellphone video could cause police and governments to adopt tactics that suppress freedom of expression, such as attempting to stifle the flow of information by cutting off access to cellphone networks and the web, or pressuring hosting sites into censoring video.
Though most of these children have formal elementary education, most also have informal work experience, such as fixing cellphones, babysitting, cutting coffee crops, or milking cows.
