In San Francisco, hackers park for free

In High School civics class we learned that besides voting, feeding the meter is one of the most important things we Americans can do. But just like e-voting, it looks like you can add parking to the list of things that hackers have spoiled for law and order-types everywhere. According to the kids at CNET, a group of nogoodniks were able to decode the smartcards used by Guardian XLE-series meters manufactured by J.J. MacKay Canada — from which point it was a simple matter of boosting the card’s value to $999.99. Its unclear how the city of San Francisco (one of several around the country that have dealt with the company) is going to address the problem, but one possibility is flagging accounts with suspicious activity and reprogramming parking meters to ignore the offending cards. Is nothing sacred, people?