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Munoz's ordinance, a draft of which he gave to The Associated Press, explicitly prohibits the police from "shutting down mobile tower communications" during the summits, "using confiscated equipment to monitor or block mobile phone and Web access" and selectively blocking access to the Internet and social media sites. McCarthy told reporters recently that police will not "do anything about the First Amendment except protect it." But the City Council recently gave Emanuel extraordinary powers to make decisions regarding the summits in certain circumstances. And a spokeswoman for McCarthy would not say definitively that he wouldn't change his mind about needing to block communications in an emergency. Blocking cellphone and Web access is both exceedingly simple and complicated
-- with the physical act of rendering cellphones and other hand-held electronic devices useless being as easy as flipping a switch at a base station of a cellphone tower. Officials also could use signal jamming devices similar to ones used by the military in war zones. The legality of such steps isn't always clear, however. "Under most circumstances they're not allowed to do that, (but) if there is a riot and rioters are burning a building, we don't know whether a temporary shutdown would be constitutional," said Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor who specializes in constitutional law and cyber law. He said things get murky if police tried, for example, to take down a Facebook page where people are exchanging ideas about politics because one person is urging others to throw a Molotov cocktail at a particular building. But some officers say the city ought not rule out blocking communications if protests get out of hand. "I'm just concerned about officer safety and citizen safety," said Mike Shields, head of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police. "... If we have to take this action, if it's within the framework of the Constitution, then we have to consider it."
[Associated
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