
Guerrilla Public Service Redux (2017) - DerWOK
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/guerrilla-public-service/
======
jjeaff
I love a good forgery.

It's stories like this that can teach us how useless much of the things we
think are "secure" are actually not.

I'm always frustrated with the bogus security measure out there that do
nothing to stop the criminals and just serve as a hassle to honest people.

Checks are one of those. I have a micr font and a few nice check mockups in
Photoshop for "verifying" checking accounts for direct deposit. I'll simply
plug in the bank routing number and account number, print it out and write
"void" on it. As if that is some kind of security. I also keep some blank
checks in case I need to actually print a check. There is nothing special
about them except for the number placement (magnetic ink hasn't been a thing
for a long while, it's almost all optical now).

Another is a utility bill. I've had several occasions where a utility bill
with your name on it is required to verify your location and identity and I
either don't yet have the utilities in my name or they are in the name of a
roommate. A quick scan, clone brush, and type tool and you've got a utility
bill in your name.

I have never had anyone take a second glance at any of this stuff. It always
works.

~~~
emiliobumachar
If you get caught, there's no plausible deniability. No way to pretend you
just got confused, or that you were in a hurry and just marked "Yes" and
signed without reading.

If you were e.g. applying for state welfare while living out of state, a
forged bill with an in-state address would not get you caught, but may be
crucial for proving ill intent if you get caught by unrelated means.

A lot of security measures add just that much security. It's easy to break,
but breaking it removes plausible deniability.

Most home locks wouldn't stop even a person slightly below average strength,
bump it with your shoulder a couple times, and you're in. But you can't then
claim you got lost, confused, or thought it was your friend's house, or
thought you heard someone say "come in". A surprised homeowner will be less
hesitant to use available violence, and no court would believe you meant no
harm.

~~~
snowwrestler
This is an aspect of security that a lot of smart technical folks seem to have
problems reasoning about. Technical systems sit within cultural and legal
systems, and it is the totality of all of those that shapes our behavior.

~~~
brownbat
Schuyler Towne has (several?) great talks on this, going through the history
of physical security and our assumptions about perfect security vs. social and
cultural symbols.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqjacHSTd48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqjacHSTd48)

------
igotajob
Throwaway account for obvious reasons. I think I got a job offer from telling
this story.

I heard this Podcast a little while ago. I am a civil engineer and found it
amusing. I apply for a job in transportation engineering with a big agency and
go through the interview process. I passed the written exam and the second
oral interview. Next interview is with heads of the organization. They are
asking me good questions and I think they like me and my answers. One of them
asks how I keep up with news and latest things happening in civil engineering.
I mention podcasts as one of the mediums. Then to keep the conversation
lively, I tell them about this story that I heard through 99% invisible. They
all laughed and found it amusing. It’s a transportation engineering job
talking about a sign on the highway. I know my audience. Haha. And I followed
up that podcasts are a great news medium and I wouldn’t have heard this story
if I wasn’t listening to them. I like to think they liked me from my
qualifications but this story pushed them into picking me.

I ended up declining the offer because I got a better offer somewhere else.
I’m just glad to know I have a really good interview story.

~~~
vernie
Only a civil engineer would create a throwaway account to share such a mild
anecdote.

~~~
humanrebar
Maybe it's the main account providing the anonymity. Posting something
specific enough to be identifiable with a throwaway makes sense in that case.

------
acwan93
How it looks today:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@34.055603,-118.2563622,3a,75y,3...](https://www.google.com/maps/@34.055603,-118.2563622,3a,75y,39.45h,97.97t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sB26OdicvltC4P9pyiLJnOg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

That part of the LA Freeway System has always been a mess, with the
5/10/60/101/110 all mashing together in one spot.

~~~
jrockway
You can go back in time and look at the 2008 view and see the guerilla sign
too.

While I was looking, I noticed that there is barbed wire around the pole that
supports the sign, to prevent people from climbing up. But it's only on the
pole that's in the middle of the freeway, not the one that is near the side of
the road. Clearly not a lot of thought was put into this sign!

~~~
flomo
If I recall the story correctly, Caltrans replaced the guerrilla sign with an
official one in the same location, and returned the replica to the artist.

~~~
jrockway
Yeah, I think they mention that in the article. In 2008, you can see the
original. In the most recent picture, you can see the official replacement.

~~~
flomo
I mean they replaced it back in ~2001 so 2008 was the official version. Not
that it makes a real difference.

~~~
speg
> More than eight years after Ankrom’s sign went up, he got call from a friend
> who noticed some workers taking it down.

~~~
flomo
Ah, okay.

------
hinkley
The highway construction outfit is some excellent social engineering.

For some reason this reminds me of the stories after Manhattan (?) legalized
bee-keeping. People started confessing that they'd had clandestine hives for
years. My favorite was the guy who made a fake AC unit, installed it on the
roof, and bought a stereotypical AC repairman outfit that he wore every time
he went to do maintenance work.

~~~
jjwiseman
See also
[https://telstarlogistics.typepad.com/telstarlogistics/2006/0...](https://telstarlogistics.typepad.com/telstarlogistics/2006/09/what_is_telstar.html)

"The short answer is that it's a scam for parking illegally in loading zones.
The nerdy answer is that it's an ongoing experiment in corporate
phenomenology, urban camouflage, and brand development."

~~~
michaelt
Did you know you can get through the security cordons at international summits
by simply arriving with flags on your car and your own motorcycle outriders?
[https://youtu.be/TdnAaQ0n5-8?t=56](https://youtu.be/TdnAaQ0n5-8?t=56)

------
cxr
Rob Cockerham's site is part of the Olde Web and is filled with things that
are not-quite-similar to this, e.g. the "High-Profile Sculpture Replacement"
[http://cockeyed.com/pranks/mall/plazaprank.html](http://cockeyed.com/pranks/mall/plazaprank.html)

~~~
mprovost
Thanks for that trip down memory lane! Glad to see he's still at it.

------
zackmorris
I grew up during the Earth First! movement which started in the late 1970s on
the coattails of various other forms of environmental civil disobedience and
tree hugging.

I think what's changed today is that due to the national debt etc, most of us
know that things are going wrong but we're so disenfranchised/disempowered
that we feel helpless to do anything about it, even if we wanted to or knew we
wanted to. It's not just that we haven't had a raise in 20-40 years, but that
our bosses haven't had one, and neither have their bosses. We've reached
chronic, systemic ineffectualism.

It changes things when we go from a "how do we stop those guys" perspective to
a "how do we start helping society fix things" perspective.

------
Ididntdothis
I always wonder what system the LA area is using for their signage. They seem
to have a rule to mark exits as late or confusingly as possible. This leads to
people suddenly swerving across all six lanes. It requires a certain skill to
mark that badly....

~~~
toast0
Socal freeways usually have center signs every couple of miles letting you
know what named exits are coming up in how many miles, then the named exit
sign maybe half a mile before the exit, then the sign that just says exit with
an arrow. Highway interchanges have overhead signs with lane indicators
(although this particular one was deficient untill guerrila fixed).

It's pretty good as long as you're expected named exits. California built
their highways before federal standards on numbering, so they were exempted
from numbering exits until about 2000. In 2000, they decided to add exit
numbers when replacing signs, and signs have a planned lifetime of 10 years,
so anytime now everything should have exit numbers ;). It's gotten better, but
there was a while where all the map software would tell you to take exits by
number, but the numbers weren't posted (yet), a mix of better databases and
more posted numbers and me moving out of CA means I don't recall seeing that
in a while.

~~~
strbean
As Californian, I hate exit numbers. I typically know vaguely where I'm trying
to go, but navigation apps nowadays often favor the exit numbers. Exit numbers
are still poorly marked in a lot of places, and are typically harder to spot.

Missed an exit one time because Google Maps said "take exit 34C" and the exit
number was only posted far down the offramp, after it was too late. Best part
was Maps neglecting to say "for highway XXX", pretty much the most important
highway for the area, which would have made navigating incredibly easy.

------
livatlantis
Ah I'd heard about this earlier but the details are a lot of fun:

"He copied the height and thickness of existing interstate shields, copied
their exact typeface, and even sprayed his sign with a thin glaze of overspray
of gray house paint so that it wouldn’t look too new."

Of course, not everyone should be doing this, but what a brilliant story!

~~~
lima
The best part is that Caltrans inspected it and left it up!

------
barnabask
This is like the real-world version of applying a userContent.css file to
patch a UX flaw in a web application, except in this case he patched a UX flaw
in the freeway.

As users of web applications and freeways, I think we tend to overestimate our
expertise in designing solutions to the things that annoy us. This story had a
happy outcome because the expert user was careful and competent. Thankfully
the barrier to entry for submitting patches is relatively high.

~~~
lonelappde
He hacked the server, not the client.

------
otterley
(2001) - (the web page is dated 2017 but adds little to the original news
reports of the day, e.g., [https://www.laweekly.com/guerrilla-public-service-
the-man-wh...](https://www.laweekly.com/guerrilla-public-service-the-man-who-
would-be-caltrans/) and [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
xpm-2002-may-14-le-pea14...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
xpm-2002-may-14-le-pea14-2-story.html))

~~~
Someone1234
The comments date from 2015, not 2017.

------
Animats
The Charging Bull bronze is a piece of guerilla art. NYC towed it away after
the artist put it near the New York Stock Exchange. Its current location isn't
the original one.

It was a promotion for the artist, who wanted to sell four more of them.

------
GaryNumanVevo
With the decline in street traffic and large increase in pedestrian traffic
around my neighborhood, I'm thinking about buying a couple of street
barricades and putting up "local traffic only - pedestrian right of way"
signs.

------
hammock
In my experience the transportation authorities care deeply about proper
signage, and may have been happy to put up a new sign had he asked (did he?).
It's not hard to print one in the machine shop, and definitely would have been
less work than what this guy did.

------
et2o
I’m glad it worked out in this case. He seemed careful and diligent. If the
wrong person did it I could see this leading to people getting hurt (falling
off the catwalk) or damage to cars (improper fastening). Overall I love it
though.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
>If the wrong person did it I could see this leading to people getting hurt
(falling off the catwalk) or damage to cars (improper fastening)

I really don't like seeing this sort of whatifism whenever a story about
somebody doing something that is not their day job comes up. It's amazing it's
still considered safe to file your own taxes. The dude had the skills and he
did the job and did it well. Hand wringing over what-ifs adds nothing to the
discussion.

~~~
sevenf0ur
The risks should be discussed in order to discourage copycats. People have
died from objects dropped from overpasses.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The risks aren't significantly different than from other things people do on a
regular basis. People have died from objects falling out of the back of a
pickup truck. People have died from a long list of shoddy home improvement
projects. People have died (and killed others) from working in an official
capacity for the Department of Transportation.

The answer is to do the things that you do safely, not to never do anything.

~~~
et2o
No one was suggesting that nothing should ever be done.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Someone was suggesting that we discourage people from doing something because
of "risk", and that thing is not significantly more risky than other things
people commonly do.

------
lonelappde
Related:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_urbanism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_urbanism)

There's also a guerilla group that fills potholes in Seattle.

------
duxup
Not far from me there was an indication to take an exit to get to another
highway... but then no indication that you have to exit again to get to that
highway. It was a sort of "go here to get there and then you're on your own"
sort of sign.

I thought about doing something similar, but only as an amusing thought.

Fortunately they fixed the sign a few months later and gave extra indications
where you needed to go.

------
codazoda
I dunno if this story is authentic...

In high school, a teacher told me about an artist who was applying for a job.
The application required three pieces of art. The artist included two pieces
of art and a note explaining that the third piece was the postage stamp drawn
on the front.

------
triyambakam
These are the best kind of hacks. And it makes me think about the high
barriers that end up around fixing things like this. If he had tried to make
an appeal to get it fixed through official channels, how long would it have
taken? Would it have been fixed?

------
y-c-o-m-b
I've fantasized about doing this very thing for years!

There's a location here in Oregon that fails to tell motorists of a major
traffic merge coming. If you miss the merge, you exit the freeway. Granted
it's not difficult to get back on, but there's no way to know this in advance.
Prior to the pandemic - at _minimum_ once a month - there would be a traffic
incident here because people don't get any warning this merge is coming up so
make drastic changes at the last second.

Here's the location on street view. Notice there's nothing indicating a merge
is coming on the far right lane:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@45.3709178,-122.7485804,3a,75y,...](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.3709178,-122.7485804,3a,75y,264.53h,84.9t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sF7hEjMeKbyFey8qK-
gSq5g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

Once you enter the turn to go right, still no indication of an upcoming merge:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@45.3703302,-122.7526115,3a,75y,...](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.3703302,-122.7526115,3a,75y,316.55h,83.31t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9VrfwE5_IfPwIRE3Mijofg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

Here's the merge, but notice that it's not until further ahead that you're now
being notified the far right lane is an exit lane:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@45.37444,-122.7554676,3a,75y,13...](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.37444,-122.7554676,3a,75y,13.91h,65.91t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s91DvBwi8GWQF4vluqkXppA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

Result? A daily traffic nightmare and constant near-death experiences.

EDIT: BTW Google Maps makes it look like you have plenty of time to move from
the exit lane and back onto the free-way, but it's an illusion. People are
flying at high speeds on the left and you only have several seconds to get
into the correct lane.

EDIT: Forgot to mention this funny part. Conversely on the other side of
traffic for that same freeway (I-205), they DO make use of adequate signage.
Here's one that shows a merge is coming up:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@45.370089,-122.749564,3a,75y,52...](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.370089,-122.749564,3a,75y,52.45h,73.62t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sG_81ikj7rlgw4vDllYczHw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

About two miles down, they notify you well ahead of time that the far right
lane will be an exit lane:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@45.373263,-122.7342592,3a,75y,8...](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.373263,-122.7342592,3a,75y,82.24h,78.57t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sP5MeCDRt-
MmPUMDV5-MARw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

~~~
cfallin
Reminds me of this onramp to I-376 in Pittsburgh, where you have a stop sign
(!) at the bottom of the onramp (!!), which then dumps you into an exit-only
lane with a few hundred feet to merge left (!!!):

[https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4287854,-79.9328641,3a,75y,6...](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4287854,-79.9328641,3a,75y,61.44h,86.21t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srgJ-
yMNT1jxSMM3esna7_A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

I only took this ramp a handful of times before I learned to detour several
miles to avoid it...

~~~
leetcrew
unless I'm missing some important context, the full stop seems like a really
bad design choice here. where I live, that sort of entrance would just be
marked "no merge area!". in dense traffic, people should probably stop, but in
light traffic people could be going a lot faster; it really sucks merging into
65+ mph traffic from a full stop.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
I suspect the whichever department is responsible for the intersection has
some internal rules about where they put what kind of traffic signage and this
merging area is too small for a proper merge with a yield sign so they just
slapped a stop sign on it knowing full well that most drivers will treat it
like a yield it in light traffic conditions.

Of course this causes problems when dutifully law abiding drivers from out of
town follow the law to the letter and cause near misses or rear endings
because they are behaving unexpectedly compared to normal traffic but that's
not the problem of the people who put the sign there. Ignoring these kinds of
edge cases and expecting someone else (often the courts) to sort it out on a
case by case bases when it causes problems isn't exactly uncommon in
government. It's like their version of an unanswered bug report from 2010 with
a bunch of "hey I found this by googling and I have the same issue" comments
below it.

------
pieterk
How do we go about getting a bike lane across the Bay Bridge? From Market St
to the new section that already has pedestrian access.

~~~
novok
It's expensive, in the hundreds of millions of dollars:
[https://mtc.ca.gov/our-work/plans-projects/bicycle-
pedestria...](https://mtc.ca.gov/our-work/plans-projects/bicycle-pedestrian-
planning/bay-bridge-west-span-bike-path)

~~~
pieterk
It could start with a simple lane closure today, if traffic stays at the
current levels.

Thanks for posting the link. Will look for info on how to fund/vote for this
project. As mandelbrotwurst said below, it's a small cost to greatly improve
mental and physical health.

~~~
novok
I would love a 'temporary' bike lane like that.

------
1-6
Slipping in code without alerting anyone... Fun!

~~~
Uhhrrr
And he did it while it was running in production.

~~~
annoyingnoob
[https://www.oddee.com/wp-
content/uploads/_media/imgs/article...](https://www.oddee.com/wp-
content/uploads/_media/imgs/articles2/a97287_g183_5-fix-flying.jpg)

------
becausecombi
Kind of reminds me of the character of Archibald "Harry" Tuttle from the movie
Brazil.

------
mrfusion
It would be so cool if this turned into a movement. Kind of like open source
public works.

~~~
MattGaiser
I’m not sure we really want people trying this on their own initiative. This
was a very good quality implementation, but most attempts at this would’ve
consisted of a piece of cardboard and some spray paint.

