Recall that scene in The Italian Job when Michael Caine's character taps into the computer-controlled traffic system, unleashing a chaotic traffic jam that paralyzes the city of Turin? Well, other than it leading to a wonderful car chase, could this slice of fiction have been nearly half a century ahead of its hacking time?In the debut episode of our three-part series Phreaked Out, we took a retrospective look at one day in August of 2006, when two Los Angeles traffic engineers, Kartik Patel and Gabriel Murillo, remotely accessed the city's traffic control system and tampered with the light sequences at four main intersections of the city, as part of a labor union protest.Continued reading over at Motherboard.