Two L.A. traffic engineers charged with sabotage, hacking traffic lights

One way to get what you want when it comes to contentious negotiations with your employer is to throw them into disarray and then go on strike. Or, it could net you a trial, and if you're lucky, a stay in the clink. Gabriel Murillo and Kartik Patel are going to trial on felony charges after they allegedly broke into a computer system and disrupted traffic flow at four of Los Angeles' most busy intersections. The reason for the discombobulation was an impending job action by the Engineers and Architects Association, according to prosecutors. The pair contend that their motive was not sabotage, but protection of the computer system that controls more than three thousand traffic lights. The city of Los Angeles had locked engineers out of the computer system in light of the impending strike, and Murillo's attorney asserts that his client merely took note of the changed settings and modified them back to what they were originally. Whatever the reason behind it, the traffic signal chaos took four days to set straight, although no accidents were attributed to the actions of the two engineers. They don't call it HelLA for nothing.







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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
paul34 10:12AM (10/16/2007)
Engineers >> politicians
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Jon 10:30AM (10/16/2007)
Did they exploit the 'kick-ass' algorithm??
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seoultrain 10:51AM (10/16/2007)
ah you beat me. and with a funnier post.
seoultrain 10:49AM (10/16/2007)
reminds me of italian job.
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J.Crew 11:25AM (10/16/2007)
That was my first thought too, just watched it again on Saturday. What a great movie.
Jason 10:54AM (10/16/2007)
is that picture a piece of art?
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Dazza 11:49AM (10/16/2007)
The picture is a piece of art which I believe is at Canary Wharf in London.
Philometalist 12:08PM (10/16/2007)
Bummer thought it was on a giant pole somewhere being held up by a million bolts and tension cables.
Robert Aitchison 11:58AM (10/16/2007)
Heh my brother is a Transportation Engineer for the City of L.A. I just fired off an E-Mail to find out if he knows those guys.
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SPG 2:36PM (10/16/2007)
That's playing with peoples lives.
Literally.
Selfish, foolish, and irresponsible.
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Nucbuddy 2:38AM (10/17/2007)
This probably just ecouraged more people to telecommute, making the traffic engineers' jobs even-more redundant.
http://news.google.com/news?q=telecommuting
Matt 5:27PM (10/16/2007)
So what exactly did they modify? Obviously they didn't change anything too serious, such as making all the lights green. I doubt thats even possible, theres gotta be failsafes against it. So what then? Just the timing of the lights?
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obie 7:00PM (10/16/2007)
yeah they just modified the amount of time the lights would stay red and green.
the adjustment had the red lights on for a couple mins longer and the green lights were extremely short.
it was in the newspaper the other day