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NULL license plate not such a bright idea

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Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#171

Post by LanceH »

rebuilder wrote: post #168
yongjik wrote: post #141

Reminds me of the story of Ireland's worst Polish driver who never got caught: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7899171....

I've also heard a similar story of a Finnish man who got a ticket in the UK, and on closer inspection found his name on the ticket listed as Mr. Ajokortti Körkort. Thats "driver's licence", first in Finnish, then Swedish, and is written at the top of the driver's license card. That said, I find these stories a little hard to credit, since you'd expect police officers in the EU to be fairly familiar with the standard…

I've been at some tournaments where a couple of the kids had the last name "Bye". They picked up a fair number of forfeits during the season.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#172

Post by mieseratte »

astura wrote: post #14
mieseratte wrote: post #8

Guess I should FOIA the DMV to find out what my state's default value is.

These tickets were issued by a privately operated citation processing center.

My state doesn't allow for private companies to automatically mail you a ticket but requires an officer pull you over and cite you.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#173

Post by close04 »

tapland wrote: post #169
hammock wrote: post #153

Could someone devise a SQL injection attack using a custom-made license plate? I'm imagining someone printing up x'; DROP TABLE drivers; -- on a plate, and driving up and down the highway past automated license-plate readers.

With how these systems seem to be written, absolutely.

https://hackaday.com/2014/04/04/sql-injection-fools-speed-tr...

Another picture (which I can't seem to find now) purportedly showed how one of the screens over the highway was displaying just an error message after triggering this exploit.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#174

Post by cannonedhamster »

xxs wrote: post #21
cortesoft wrote: post #11

I love when people double down out of principle, when the only person getting hurt is themselves. He refuses to change it because he did nothing wrong...sure, but you are also the only one being hurt by it. Is this really the hill to die on?

Die on? But how - he can challenge the fines in a court of law. Since it's a vanity plate, adding an extra notoriety won't hurt.

He can challenge the fines but still has to pay court costs most likely.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#175

Post by kccqzy »

linker3000 wrote: post #132

A colleague used an app's "generate secure password" feature to change their ISP's web portal login - which then also became the WAN router's password - which they didn't realise. It was about a week before the router dropped its connection and needed to re-authenticate - and that's when I was called in to investigate the loss of connectivity - which Windows 10 very unhelpfully reported as the network cable disconnec…

I had a backtick in one of my passwords very long ago. When I first got my iPhone I couldn't figure out how to type that backtick until I realized one needs to press and hold and apostrophe.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#176

Post by asdfman123 »

ryandrake wrote: post #127
cortesoft wrote: post #11

I love when people double down out of principle, when the only person getting hurt is themselves. He refuses to change it because he did nothing wrong...sure, but you are also the only one being hurt by it. Is this really the hill to die on?

It reminds me of the guy who owns nissan.com, who probably blew his life savings on lawyers defending himself from Nissan Motors lawyers for decades.

I wonder how much you could sell that to them for if you were really good at negotiating. Maybe as much as $100k?

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#178

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

ldoughty wrote: post #36

I have a family member who's license plate started with "&". The DMV accepts it, plates were ordered online fine, but police systems can't handle it apparently, to my family members ultimate discomfort. I commonly joke it probably gets the individual out of automated tickers for speeding and red lights, but when an officer pulls them over we sometimes need to explain that the "&" is dropped in the system (or so we've…

I had a standard 8-digit Indiana TK series truck plate which would get flagged as "unregistered" by the broken ALPR systems in other states.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#179

Post by cr0sh »

jspash wrote: post #66
exfed wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of that, if anything, forcing the government to fix it's bad code ( insert snarky ambiguity between software code and legal code ) can't be a bad thing. I'd buy the guy a beer.

The problem is it's a "a privately operated citation processing center" that's causing the problem. They might even be instructed to hand-enter a NULL for these cases. I'm don't really see an incentive for the govt agency to do anything about it. It's no skin off their nose. They'll just keep sending the tickets.

> "a privately operated citation processing center"

In a way, this is the real bug - one that affects more areas of local government than most people know or understand.

Our local governments are constantly seeking - and usually getting - private companies to do what should be public. The potential (and actual) repercussions to the system are serious.

For instance, how do such arrangement affect FOIA requests? What about other forms of transparency? Are we really getting our money's worth as taxpayers? Is the money actually being used properly or are costs being inflated?

It's a form of government privatization "by a thousand cuts" - we already know of the problems inherent in the system of privatizing out and contracting of private prisons; plus the loop they cause because of recidivism rates, because a repeat "customer" is better for the bottom line than one reformed for society. Which may be better for the private company, but has huge costs to society itself.

I wouldn't doubt that similar issues are happening with the privatization of other parts of our local government. It is sickening to me, personally.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#180

Post by BWStearns »

linker3000 wrote: post #132

A colleague used an app's "generate secure password" feature to change their ISP's web portal login - which then also became the WAN router's password - which they didn't realise. It was about a week before the router dropped its connection and needed to re-authenticate - and that's when I was called in to investigate the loss of connectivity - which Windows 10 very unhelpfully reported as the network cable disconnec…

I had something similar happen with (iirc) spectrum of the power company a couple years ago. Their customer portal let me use a complicated password to sign up, it sent me the confirmation email prompting me to log in, and refused my password for forbidden characters. But then I couldn’t reset my password because I hadn’t verified, and I couldn’t modify the account cause I couldn’t log in. I was just trapped in limbo. Customer service said they couldn’t fix it for me. I had to pay my bill by phone until I moved.
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