Her iPhone died. It led to her being charged as a criminal

https://www.zdnet.com/article/her-iphone-died-it-led-to-her-being-charged-as-a-criminal/

by scotteh • 7 years ago

48 31 7 years ago

Eh. In Easter Europe passengers beat up inspectors.

Also, it's illegal not to have an ID with you at all times. So people usually carry wallets. I carry cash all the time. Better to get robbed (small chance) than get stuck somewhere without money (i.e. CC doesn't work because the bank is having "software issues" or the POS terminal is broken or whatever...)

gnode• 7 years ago

This isn't about being caught without cash. Whenever I've gone to London I've used my contactless credit card to pay for transport, not because I don't carry cash, but because it's convenient -- you just hold it near the gate and go through; no need to visit a ticket machine.

A problem with this convenience is that you don't get any kind of physical receipt to prove you paid. Perhaps in my case, a ticket inspector could scan my credit card to check it was used to pay, but in the case of a dead phone, it can't be queried.

milankragujevic2• 7 years ago

It helps to have cards that are bought and topped up online, that last for a month and cost 10€ and you can ride anywhere everywhere unlimited for a month. You just need to carry the card and "tap it" on the NFC reader, and have an ID in case of inspection. Or you can use a phone to buy a "temp" card, except it causes so much trouble nobody uses it, including for reasons of bad chips in the readers that refuse to work with some phones, bad app, bad infrastructure (i.e. no 3G signal and the reader in the bus can't validate your ticket so it refuses it, but the phone app already took your money)...

Technology is great when it's thought out. If not... may the deity of choice be on your side in the bureaucratic maze of modern society intertwined with digital/electronic and paper/human-based data carriers.

slededit2• 7 years ago

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.

rasz• 7 years ago

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.

Scoundreller• 7 years ago

Heh, I had an account with HSBC for monthly AdSense payments.

When I moved, I guess only the mailing address got changed, not the « registered » address.

So I continued getting monthly statements and all was well.

Tax time comes and I realize I hadn’t gotten statements in some months.

I go to the branch and they said the accounts been closed. Uh oh.

Turns out they sent all those communications and a draft for 5 figures to the registered address I didn’t live at anymore.

Ugh.

daotoad• 7 years ago

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.

slededit2• 7 years ago

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.

zaroth• 7 years ago

You know what irks me? Besides the fact that the fine for not paying is atrociously high, besides the fact that such a transgression can even show up on a Visa query, besides the fact that this couldn’t be resolved without a court, besides the fact that the reporter missed their court date...

What irks me is that some company spent millions of taxpayer dollars designing this contactless payment system and couldn’t be bothered to provide a real-time readout to the ticket inspector where the passenger could just provide their name to confirm they paid.

But even more than that, I irks me that TFA came away from this experience hating Apple Pay. This singular component in the entire chain which was completely blameless.

htfu• 7 years ago

In my reading that's how it would've worked if she'd registered, am I off? Not sure how it'd be possible so sort out on the spot without that.

But of course ridiculous that it took such hoops to fix after the fact.

dv_dt2• 7 years ago

I find it ridiculous that the payment was accepted if the requirement was that the source of payment needed to be registered and that somehow, if you had the app or phone on you, that is valid without registration of the source, but if later you're trying to avoid a fine that payment isn't valid without registration.

ViViDboarder• 7 years ago

Yea. Very strange perspective in this article.

At the end they are acting like Apple Pay (or ant mobile payment) is a risk of sorts. This type of transit issue is actually quite unique. Their example of someone buying coffee at Starbucks with their phone is completely different. If your phone doesn’t before you pay, boo-hoo, no coffee. If it does after you pay they’re still going to call out your name and you grab your cup.

Almost exactly like you are suggesting (and I agree) the transit system should work. When you pay, they have a record of it.

fortran773• 7 years ago

Why do you have to stick your neck out for Apple Pay?

ryanlol2• 7 years ago

The 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.

pjlegato• 7 years ago

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.

ryanlol2• 7 years ago

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...

kretor• 7 years ago

But then there's also this -- leftists preferring the Financial Times: https://www.cjr.org/special_report/why-the-left-cant-stand-t...

fortran773• 7 years ago

FT is fairly left-leaning. More left than I am.

perl4ever• 7 years ago

Regarding ZDNet:

"ZDNet is a business technology news website published by CBS Interactive, along with TechRepublic. The brand was founded on April 1, 1991, as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication owned by CNET Networks."

I'm confused about why one would expect them to have "leftist and anti-capitalist views" extending to general opposition to "the capitalist economic system".

I rather thought most people into enterprise IT were down with the whole corporate capitalist system and stuff.

o_nate• 7 years ago

I 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.

Tsiklon• 7 years ago

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.

JohnFen• 7 years ago

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.

NotSammyHagar• 7 years ago

This 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

neuralRiot• 7 years ago

I’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.

deogeo• 7 years ago

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.

fortran773• 7 years ago

This is not the United States of America.

londons_explore• 7 years ago

There is a specific law in the UK requiring production of a ticket to a railway inspector. Doesn't matter if you paid - you are convicted if you are unable to produce a ticket when asked.

Considering that, I'm very surprised this reporter had her conviction quashed - it looks like she broke the law, even if she didn't intend to. (Intent is not required for a conviction for this law).

elipsey• 7 years ago

I 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.

Her iPhone died. It led to her being charged as a criminal

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