An interesting post today from Bruce Schneier points to an article about hacking the MBTA CharlieCard (Boston's public transit system). I couldn't help but think back to Cory Doctorow's book Little Brother that came out in 2008. I reviewed it back in early 2009.
One of the major plot points includes the protagonists rebelling against an overreaching government by messing around with transit cards by reading and reprogramming them by simply bumping the reader against them in people's pockets. Apparently something more or less the same has been occurring since then up in Boston, made easier and easier with commercially available scanning equipment.
In the book, they were reprogramming cards to make it harder for the government to use people's travel pattern data against them. In real life, people are just getting free rides.
