Passenger Rail, Technology and IT

‘Biohacker’ challenges Opal card cancellation

A “biohacking” scientist who last year made headlines for implanting his Opal card chip into his hand has said he will challenge Transport for NSW (TfNSW) in court after the authority finally cancelled his card in accordance with the established terms of use.

In April 2017, Mr Meow-Ludo Disco Gamma Meow-Meow removed the electronic chip encased in the card and had it implanted under the skin of his left hand by a piercing expert, allowing him to pass through station gates by placing his hand against the Opal reader.

Mr Meow-Meow said he noticed that his card had been cancelled last weekend, after it no longer worked at a ticket gate after his return from Body Hacking Con in Texas, a promotional event for cyborg technology.

The biohacker has now claimed that he will follow-up his scheduled court appearance in Sydney next month – where he will contest a $200 fine he received for travelling on a train without a valid ticket – by taking TfNSW to court over the Opal card cancellation, calling the move an unlawful infringement upon “cyborg rights”.

“This is case law in creation and it’s fun to be at the centre of this,” Meow-Meow was quoted saying by Fairfax media.

“This is a scenario so unusual that their lawyers never foresaw this happening because, if they did, they would have written it in there.”

The card was cancelled by TfNSW in accordance with its Opal Terms of Use, which explicitly forbid the kind of tampering Meow-Meow appears to have engaged in so fulsomely.

The terms state that the user must “take proper care of the Opal Card, avoid damaging it, keep it flat and not bend or pierce it” and “not misuse, deface, alter, tamper with or deliberately damage or destroy the Opal Card”.

Opal cards remain the property of TfNSW after they have been issued to users, which means that the transport authority maintains the right to “inspect, de-activate or take possession of an Opal Card or require its return at our discretion without notice at any time”.