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California's Wireless Road Tolls Easily Hackable
An anonymous reader writes "Nate Lawson, a researcher at RootLabs, has found a way to clone the wireless transponders used by the Bay Area FasTrak road toll system. This means you can copy the ID of another driver onto your own device and, as a result, travel for free while others foot the bill. Lawson also raises the interesting point of using the FasTrak system to create false alibis, by overwriting one's own ID onto another driver's device before committing a crime. Luckily, Lawson wasn't sued before he could reveal his research, unlike those pesky MIT students."
Not yet. But he will be. We are seeing an irresistable force meeting an immovable obstacle. Society is creating a scenario where as technology moves forward the gap between truth, progress, science - and security, stability, state widens. They are not naturally in conflict, but we have chosen to make them so. The law and research are increasingly at odds. Corporations and governments have begun to build presumed ignorance into business and administration models, backing up security through obscurity with sanctions of threats, imprisonment and violence. The way it looks to me over the next 10 years research is not going stop, and neither is the landgrab for power and easy exloitation. Sooner or later these worlds are going to clash in a big way (many would say they already have as the economy collapses). Basic activities like the teaching and practice of chemistry, physics and computer science are being attacked to maintain a fragile status quo. Yet, economic development is not possible without research and education. It seems society has painted itself into a corner. It cannot progress without science and yet it is so threatened it will not tolerate it amongst its people. It's killing off the nutrients that feed it.
Ok, to turn this around a bit. Can you tell me exactly which pieces of asphalt/concrete you have paid for? Those would be the places where you (by your own logic) could drive whatever and however you see fit.
Now, as you might imagine, this really doesn't work in a society.