In San Francisco, hackers park for free
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Jul 31st 2009 9:59AM
posted Jul 31st 2009 9:59AM
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?
save the parking meter, save the world.
Hack The PLAnet!
Totally ZeroCool OneLove
Nobody loves Parking Meter so i think it is fine to hack it (physical or via software).
No, they should take the Chicago way out - get a bunch of predatory tow-ers to start patrolling the city so it won't matter how much you put in the meter anyway.
Should have just stuck with coins. I've yet to meet the hacker good enough to hack a quarter.
It's called a properly sized washer, or a 5 pence coin :P
Sorry, that's to hack a loonie (dollar coin), and that's in Canada ;)
actually there are many tricks like tapping a piece of string to a coin to trick coin meters.
We actually managed to do that when I was at Northeastern. Someone (unrelated to us) backed into a parking meter and loosened it from the ground. We found it and snuck it into the dorm and cut it open. (I also made like $4!) Seeing the guts of it, we took a dremmel and cut up a piece of metal to make a hook that went in the coin slot and grabbed the mechanism and allowed for free parking. It was actually really simple to do.
Dear Engadget. You are spamming my google reader. I will now unsuscribe and never comeback. Bye.
Yeah, damn you engadget-person for spamming my google box with articles about technology. I don't know what I added you for, but it certainly wasn't that.
Oh no don't leave, you're such an important part of the community!
Maybe you should check YOUR settings with YOUR Google account. Arrogance and Ignorance are a dangerous combination.
Dear Engadget,
You are spamming my RSS reader via the RSS feed I subscribed to. Please stop.
Also, I have found a large sum of money in an African bank that has been abandoned.
Dear adsfasfasf- No one cares.
We have the opposite problem here. The spaces are all marked, and electronic pay meters are stationed around campus to allow people to input their space number and add more time. If you really don't like someone, all you have to do is find out where they parked and buy a new ticket for their space for 1$. It cancels out the old time, and the predatory ticket writers take care of the rest 1 hour later. Bam, 25 dollar ticket they'll be completely unable to defend themselves against. And if mr.malicious decided to camp your car and take the paper ticket so that you don't know about it until bills come round at the end of the semester, it turns into a 50 dollar ticket (after 14 days).
Which campus is that? We're have a similar system installed at University of Maryland, and I'm wondering if they are susceptible to that as well.
give me an F will you? $1000 in parking tickets! take that prof :)
Nice try, Wack, but something tells me that the profs aren't parking at meters...
I experienced this system in Montreal. Seemed unfair to me that you couldn't get lucky once in a while by parking in front of a previously stuffed meter. After all, whoever paid for the time then took off early would probably rather see another person use it than see their money go to waste. I hadn't even considered the possibility for malicious activities like this.
These machines exist on many campuses, and you can both use them for good and bad as I've discovered.
Using them for bad involves as previously mentioned simply taking the spot number of poor unsuspecting so-and-so, and recharging their parking time with a quarter. 15 minutes later, their time is expired, even if they just put $5 in the meter half an hour ago. (Defense: keep the receipt. I always do.)
Using them for good involves cheating the system: on many of these meters, one can "add more time" to one's spot (you know, what used to be known as plugging the meter). You lose nothing by selecting the "add more time" function instead of the "purchase new time" function, except maybe a few seconds. If the previous time on that spot is in fact expired, it will say something along the lines of "That option isn't valid." If the previous time on that spot is still good, add a small amount, like a quarter. See how much time that buys you, and then add yet more time once you know how much free time you've snagged. It adds about 30 seconds to a minute to the whole spot buying process, depending on the speed of your machine, but you might save yourself a good $5 for that extra minute. (Downside: people get pissy if the line for the machine is long and you're taking 3 minutes to pay for your spot.)
awesome.
And the fact that its a pain in the ass when you are out of change for parking.....
MUAHAHAHA! We will hack everything!!!!!!!!!!!
It's not "hacking", it's "post-release quality assurance"...
Good. Parking meters are a nuisance.
Parking meter rates in SF have gotten to be atrocious, and there is no way to avoid the meters. (I think it's like 25 cents for every 2-1/2 minutes in some locations, and then a limit on the time you can stay, besides.) This is what happens when a power entity abuses its power beyond reason, just like what has happened to the music industry--people revolt. The powers should listen.
A quarter for 2.5 minutes? That is absolutely ridiculous! I complain about the parking meters on campus in Iowa City but most of them are 25 cents/30 min. I guess I won't take that for granted anymore...
@Brennan
most of the Iowa City meters are $0.75/hour, most of the University meters are $0.90/hour. But, you can't beat the free parking after 5:00 PM rule!
I live in SF and yes, the parking meters here are ridiculous. I actually buy these cards because dealing with that much change is a total pain. I've stopped going certain places because of the meters. By my friend's apartment it is $.25 every 2.5 minutes with a one hour limit. Who has $6 in change for a one hour visit? Give me a break. They should have let them accept credit cards in the first place - I have no clue why they didn't.
Well, now they will end up paying to upgrade to those block-style machines that require you to use a credit card or cash to get a sticker. Tax dollars will fund it, but at least they will finally be able to raise parking rates to something reasonable and stop subsidizing people's ownership of cars by providing free parking to them.
We already pay to make the roads, we shouldn't have to pay to park on them.
If they didn't charge to park, no one would move their vehicle and all spaces would be taken for days on end by people who live in the area. Charging is the only way to assure spaces actually open up every couple of hours.
Yeah, it's more than just a tax. It's a method for keeping the down town parking system from jamming up. Besides, I'd rather have parking meters partially pay for roads. That way I pay a smaller share of the cost if I ride my bike or walk, which is fair since I'm reducing the wear-and-tear on the road surface.
In New Plymouth, New Zealand they charge $2.30 an hour.
Thats just a $1.53 in real money.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=ORx&q=2.30+new+zealand+dollar+to+usd&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
Why don't they just switch to sms payments, they won't need meters anymore.
This is more techie but less amusing that a similar "work around" I saw a few months ago. i parked in a spot that had something like 40 minutes still on the meter. When I came back it still had around 40 minutes. I looked closer and there was a plastic sticker over the display. it looked perfect from a few feet away. Low tech but very convincing to anyone walking by looking for expired meters.
That's why fixes have to come and people get busted.
For upping the meters to $999.99.
If they had any intellect they'd have kept it quiet and been able to simple tap a fwe dollars into a metere every time they wanted to park someplace and no one would hav caught on for years.
If you partake in shady practices - keep it quiet.
Because they don't want to park for free. They want everyone to know they have the ability to park for free because of their ingenuity and skill, even if they do not get a name credit they can still go on Engadget and other sites and say to themselves, "Yeah, we did that."
[Why he was cutting the heads off parking meters]
Luke: Small town, not much to do in the evenin'.
Well said from the original parking meter hack(saw)er.
San Francisco is a rip off.
In Russia, parking space hacks you!
Death to the revenuers, especially in Chicago.
Here here!!! I second that. And maybe, just maybe we'll be able to get our public assets, such as the parking meters, back from the greedy hands of Morgan Stanley. Death to Mayor Daley's greedy, corrupt regime!!!
Actually the "Chicago way" is to sell off all of the city's meters to a private company such as Morgan Stanley and watch them jack up the rates to a$$ rape like levels. Gotta love King Daley... @$$hole
"Is nothing sacred, people?"
It's darwin's work at its best. Cause the people at the top of the evolutionary chain (gov't wonk charging for parking) are the less intelligent ones...
I always wondered where you get those cards.
I was shown pirated cards that work in our San Francisco parking meters over a year ago.