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Comment by anewpersonality | Hacker News Reader

Why is this a big deal.. a signal of the end of the world perhaps? Or nefarious forces at play?

I imagine it would be a bigger deal if they had the same seal. _That_ would suggest someone was trying to steal cargo, or commit some kind of customs fraud.

It’s like having two cars with the same plate

Isn't it more like 2 cars with the same VIN? The plate in this analogy would be the seal.

Sounds like it, but I’m still interested in finding out how big a deal it is. A quick search shows that there have been cars found with duplicate VINs and making a container with the same serial number seems like pretty pedestrian crime in comparison. That is not to say that this is a crime, could just be plain old manufacturing mistakes and it’s also obvious that not all container management systems check for it (even if it did, unless both end up in the same registry it won’t matter anyway).

It’s not a big deal per se but is a sign of a potential big deal. Or a minor f’up

I have a custom license plate on my car in my state. A friend of mine told me they saw the same custom license plate on the same vehicle make/model in another state. The only bummer was that that car's color was red, whereas mine is yellow. So two cars with same plate is totally doable if issuing authorities are different. Two cars with same plate from same issuing authority, that's the problem

There are special cases where two (or hundreds of!) cars can have the same plate.

https://patch.com/img/cdn20/getty/22887410/20200526/033010/s...

https://www.thedrive.com/content/archive-images/ap_111036136...

oh no! now how will they track us!!

Unless that number is the only thing they're using to route the container, it's more like having two guys named "Joe".

> _3u10 - It’s like having two cars with the same plate

I wish I could have the same plate as everyone else... or no plate at all like Steve Jobs used to do (https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-car-apple-ceo-l...).

This is a completely different issue.

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