Compass Card Hacktacular...The Hatman's Final Revenge.

HowDoYouCreateAProblem
WhereThereIsNoneVille


Well, well, well, whadd'ya know.

Cubic's 'Compass' system, which is holding folks up at Skytrain/CLine stations everywhere throughout Lotusland, is easily hacked.

CTV's John Woodward broke the story and Charlie Smith of the G'Straight followed up, but the rest of the local proMedia herd appears to be cowed on this one.

Gosh, I wonder why.

Luckily for us, ''Zweisystem' writing in the transit blog 'Rail for the Valley' has a trenchant analysis:

Not well reported in the mainstream media is the fact that the $200 million Compass Card/Fare gate system is now next to useless because not so honest people can hack through the system.

The Compass Card is old tech, sold to TransLink after an orchestrated campaign by the mainstream media that fare evasion was rampant and that fare gates were needed; and yes former premier Gordon Campbell’s best buddy, and senior bureaucrat at the City of Vancouver, Ken Dobell, just by coincidence was the lobbyist for Cubic Industries, trying to flog their dated wares.

This debacle is not TransLink’s fault, rather it is the BC Liberal’s fault forcing yesterday’s tech on today’s transit system.

Sometimes the old way to collect fares is the best way and really, $200 million would have been better spent improving transit, rather than financing another boondoggle...


Ah, yes, the self-described man of many hats, the good Mr. Ken Dobell.

And, when the going got tough the original fare evasion dodge from days of yore reared it's terrible, scary ugly head again recently, guess who did the rearing?

I think you are going to be surprised.

Or.

Maybe not...

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And the flying surrender monkeys working the digital refs sure must be happy that the herd is keeping quiet on this one...After all, just think how hard they would have to work to come up with a way to blame the 1990's for this.


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