Ignoring the whole court case thing (it's ridiculous, but not really relevant to the tech itself), this story includes a most of the issues with using a smartphone for payments that are why I don't consider doing that to be a wise thing.
Her iPhone died. It led to her being charged as a criminal
11–20 of 32 posts
Re: Her iPhone died. It led to her being charged as a criminal
#12> Next, she heard that her court case had happened and she'd been found guilty. If she missed her court date then I don't know what she expected... You will lose by default if you don't go.
In Poland people have learned about lost court cases from Court debt collector in the middle of freezing their assets. All because there is no Service of process procedure, courts just send ordinary letter to the registered legal residency address.
Re: Her iPhone died. It led to her being charged as a criminal
#13> Next, she heard that her court case had happened and she'd been found guilty. If she missed her court date then I don't know what she expected... You will lose by default if you don't go.
I don't know about UK jurisprudence, but in the US, it should have been easy to file a continuance on the hearing, so it could be rescheduled to a later date.
If it's the same, then she just needed to send a letter to the court outlining the steps she had gone through, and was working on to get documentation for the case. Depending on jurisdiction, she may have had to appear before a judge to make the request.
It's up to the judge, of course, but in 99% of the cases, if you have a reasonable request, then you'll get your continuance.
Re: Her iPhone died. It led to her being charged as a criminal
#14I guess the moral of this story is, if you're about to get on the bus, make sure you have enough battery left on your phone to last until you reach your destination. I use my phone to pay for a bus ticket every day, but I only have to show it when I get on. If I only had 1% left on the battery, I'd probably buy a paper ticket before heading to the gate though, just to be safe.
In London the buses are entirely cashless, Contactless (Card or Apple Pay) or Oyster (Transport for London operated cashless ticketing system) only, no paper tickets are accepted.
On the tube one can purchase paper tickets, though these are somewhat rare now and cannot be purchased at all stations.
Re: Her iPhone died. It led to her being charged as a criminal
#15This scenario is like the early days of a dystopian future of course. But I am constantly irritated by people who carry only their cell phone and use it for everything, and if it goes out (runs out of power or dies) they are helpless. Geeze
Re: Her iPhone died. It led to her being charged as a criminal
#16The original FT story https://www.ft.com/content/e8a177d4-dfae-11e9-9743-db5a37048... Frankly, this remark by a zdnet journo was rather bizarre: >She's a writer for The Financial Times. Please don't let any personal thoughts about that get in the way of her story.
Many people with leftist and anti-capitalist political views attach a strong negative bias to anyone who works for an entity they deem supportive of the capitalist economic system, such as major financial media.
Well, sure. But that still looks just as out of place as it would in the Daily Mail.
FT is known for excellent journalism, zdnet is known for nonsense stories like https://www.zdnet.com/article/unsecured-mongodb-databases-ex...
Re: Her iPhone died. It led to her being charged as a criminal
#17I’ts not tech to blame but lack of care/ planning. If she’d had paid cash and get a paper ticket and lost such ticket the same thing would happened.
Re: Her iPhone died. It led to her being charged as a criminal
#18> Next, she heard that her court case had happened and she'd been found guilty. If she missed her court date then I don't know what she expected... You will lose by default if you don't go.
I don't know about UK jurisprudence, but in the US, it should have been easy to file a continuance on the hearing, so it could be rescheduled to a later date. If it's the same, then she just needed to send a letter to the court outlining the steps she had gone through, and was working on to get documentation for the case. Depending on jurisdiction, she may have had to appear before a judge to make the request. It's u…
They later quashed it, so she got it cleared up eventually. But I imagine this would have been resolved much quicker if she just showed up in the first place.
Re: Her iPhone died. It led to her being charged as a criminal
#19> she was charged with, well, not providing proof of payment.
How is this not guilty until proven innocent? You have to prove you paid, otherwise you're assumed guilty.
Re: Her iPhone died. It led to her being charged as a criminal
#20I think this is a systems design problem in the category of failing to include a functional system/business method for reversing an invalid record, i.e., an incorrect record of non-payment.
SF Muni also has a phone payment app, but even most people who don’t use it do not have a physical receipt. If for any reason the Muni inspector can’t scan your BART/Clippper card there needs to be a reasonable way to use other proof of payment to correct an erroneous record of non-payment. This is the same situation as if one's phone died after using Apple pay to get on the bus.
The failure to create system methods/business methods that allow for reasonable correction of erroneous records is unethical, but unfortunately common. Think of: cleaning up after “identity theft”, or trying to get removed from the the no-fly list. I privately think of this as a 27b/6 error.