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A rather amusing story out of Lodz, Poland today.

The 14 year-old created a remote control device that allowed him to change the track points and turn the tram grid of the city into his own private Lionel set. 4 trains were derailed and a dozen people were hurt.

He spent a great deal of time not only creating the device, but studying the tram system in order to gauge the best locations to alter the signals and cause problems.

“He studied the trams and the tracks for a long time and then built a device that looked like a TV remote control and used it to manoeuvre the trams and the tracks,” said Miroslaw Micor of the Lodz police.

Certainly this is an example of a situation where low security standards let to chaos being created by a person with only a fair degree of ingenuity. We can only hope the thousands of Philippines-produced Diebold voting machines are up to the highest security standards for the upcoming elections. Already, optical scanning devices have come under some scrutiny in New Hampshire, although there don’t seem to be any blatantly skewed results.

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