What the media is missing in all those counts about the MIT hackers and the Boston subway

Yeah, yeah, evil MIT nerdboys threatening to take down a vast transit system with their evil hacker ways.

If you actually read their DefCon presentation (thanks to the MIT Tech), though, you'll see that they start out by showing all the ways to "hack" the MBTA without any high-tech gizmos at all: By walking through unattended fare gates or unlocked regular gates, by peering through the windows of the sort of unsecured security kiosks the MBTA has installed in some stations, even simply walking into unlocked rooms where the authority keeps switches that run the fare network. Regular riders know even more tips: Wait until somebody comes out of the subway, then dash in through the open fare gate, for example - or, if you take commuter rail, play Fare Roulette - the trains are now so crowded that conductors often can't get through to check to see if riders actually have tickets. One wonders if maybe the MBTA should be concentrating at least as much on these as guys wandering around with bizarro warcarts.