Reminds me of the movie Hackers.
Back in August, the union representing the city's traffic engineers vowed that on the day of their work action, "Los Angeles is not going to be a fun place to drive."
City officials took the threat seriously.
Fearful that the strikers could wreak havoc on the surface street system, they temporarily blocked all engineers from access to the computer that controls traffic signals.
But officials now allege that two engineers, Kartik Patel and Gabriel Murillo, figured out how to hack in anyway. With a few clicks on a laptop computer, the pair — one a renowned traffic engineer profiled in the national media, the other a computer whiz who helped build the system — allegedly tied up traffic at four intersections for several days.
Both men pleaded not guilty Monday morning to felony charges stemming from the case, and Murillo's lawyer said his client meant no harm when he signed on to the system that day.
But authorities say the pair picked their targets with care — intersections they knew would cause significant backups because they were close to freeways and major destinations.
They didn't shut the lights off, city transportation sources said. Rather, the engineers allegedly programmed them so that red lights would be extremely long on the most congested approaches to the intersections, causing gridlock for several days starting Aug. 21, they said.
Cars backed up at Los Angeles International Airport, at a key intersection in Studio City, onto the clogged Glendale Freeway and throughout the streets of Little Tokyo and the L.A. Civic Center.
The engineers' arrests last Friday point up the vulnerability of L.A.'s complex traffic control system.
City leaders said Monday they also underscore the delicate balance that employers must strike in a highly technical environment in which workers must be trusted enough to have access to important systems.
Some officials Monday called for an immediate review of ways to tighten security of the computer system, which manages 3,200 of the city's 4,300 traffic signals.
"The issue here was public safety," Councilwoman Wendy Greuel said. "What if there had been a major accident and we were not able to control the lights while the officers were on their way?"
Details of the case emerged Monday in interviews and court documents.
After access to the system was cut off for all but top managers, Murillo signed in as one of them, according to the criminal complaint. Murillo had helped design the nationally recognized system.
By signing in, the engineers allegedly obtained the codes needed to unblock the computers that control traffic lights throughout the city. Soon, the lights at those four intersections were reprogrammed with a code that prevented city officials from fixing them.
"The red signal would be on too long for the critical approach and the green signal would be on too long for the noncritical approach, thus resulting in long backups into the airport and other key intersections around the city," said one source in the traffic department, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-trafficlights9jan09,0,7005703.story?coll=la-home-local
