Do you guys have these in your town?

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

I just want to say I dislike what you're saying, but I don't want to downvote it.

I just dislike revenue generators.

I frequently see them at various beaches in Southern California but nowhere else.

They also replaced the individual coin operated parking meters with credit card only centralized kiosks at the beaches about six years ago.

Old way = grab some coins from your ash tray and dump them in the meter in front of your car as you head out...New way = walk 100's of feet to a kiosk, wait in line, scroll through the GUI to select the desired amount of time, insert credit card, key in license plate number (if you don't have it memorized, abort and walk back to your car to take a picture of it and start over from step #1), enter parking spot number (if you don't have it memorized, abort and walk back to your car to take a picture of it and start over from step #1).

I have a small side business that I operate on three Southern Californian beach front piers.  I visit my locations at least once per month so at a minimum, that's 6 (years) times 12 (months) times 3 (piers) times $1.00 per park = $216.  I flat out stopped paying for parking six years ago when they made it so ridiculously inconvenient and I've gotten one $65 parking ticket.

So, $216 - $65 = $151 in savings.

Way to go California, yet another example of destroying entry level jobs (parking enforcement) and replacing them with Silicon Valley jobs (software engineers) and if I'm representative, another $151 and counting pi$$ed away; brilliant!

How easily can it be hacked? 

Hacked to do what. 
 

that looks like a private citizen who wants to get hit and sue someone. 

I've seen cars scanning plates in parking lots--boring sedans that you'd never notice. Somewhere I have a video of one scanning plates at the Publix near our office.