A computer programmer / analyst named Joseph Tartaro thought he had a great idea for a vanity license plate. He decided to get the plate "NULL" which in programming parlance indicates something that has no value. He thought it would be even more funny if he got his wife's vehicle with the plate "VOID", so their driveway would read NULL and VOID. But he had other ideas about why Null would be such a good choice: Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) would put "NULL" in the license plate field and he would not be charged for tolls because the computer would think the plate couldn't be read. That was the plan; it simply backfired.
Instead of getting out of tickets, instead his car was assigned the violation or expense any time the ALPR misread or couldn't determine the plate of a vehicle. If someone else from a different city drove past an ALPR and the reader couldn't determine the tag clearly, it assigned the value "NULL." That meant the fee was then assigned to Tartaro. Now he's looking at a bill of $12,049. After Tartaro contacted the DMV and the Los Angeles Police Department, they helped erase the fines from his account and advised him to change his plates so it doesn’t happen again, since there are no plans to alter the processing system that was assigning him the tickets in the first place. He refused, insisting he "didn’t do anything wrong." Since that time, Tartaro has received another $6000 in misattributed tickets.
Credits:
https://www.wired.com/story/null-license-plate-landed-one-hacker-ticket-hell/
No comments:
Post a Comment