This weekend, I was surprised to find that my name, my email and password were posted on the internet for all the world to see. All because BART pissed off riders/hackers by intentionally interrupting riders' cell phone service as a way to suppress public protests of the most recent killing of a civilian by the BART police. So far no personal harm has come from the breach outside of a couple emails asking me to be Facebook friends with one of the hackers. Thanks, but no thanks.

But it does bring up some thoughts for me.

The first thing I want to do when I get to a BART platform is trust. I want to trust that the people working there will do everything they can to get me to my destination safely. I want to trust that they'll respect and protect my civil rights as we travel with them. I want to trust that they'll use my tax and fare dollars well, not waste them on pointless extensions to the airport. I want to trust that the police officers are well-trained and won't needlessly use deadly force against passengers.

And when I signed up on MyBART.org, I trusted my information to them.

But BART let me down again.

I support the mission of BART. A ride on BART from San Francisco to Fremont creates less pollution than one car ride across the bridge. We all need to take transit more often, but it gets harder and harder as BART repeatedly fails to earn the trust of its patrons.

To me, it's becoming more and more clear that for BART to meet its mission, its leadership needs to go. When a spokesman for BART can say that riders "don't have the right to free speech inside the fare gates" and dismisses our right to communicate as a "minor inconvenience," it shows that BART leadership doesn't care about their riders or about the public they are  in business to serve.

Please take a moment to contact your BART Board of director and ask them to make the major changes the agency desperately needs.