Slashdot Mirror
Embedding Chips Into Paper Money
Khelder writes: "RF tags have been getting smaller and smaller. Now Hitachi has made ones small enough to put into paper money, according to
this article on CNET news. As the article says, 'Though the chip requires a reader unit to work, its size carries big implications for the future of identity technology.'" I can think of lots of other cool uses for a chip this size, especially once they're programmable with a little desktop box, but do you really want a record in place every time you pay with cash?
Fine by me. Then we Virginians will just park a couple of Trident submarines off the coast of Texas and lob a couple of nukes your way. Oklahoma rejoice!
Fat lot of good them Texas Rangers would do you then...though it's unclear if you meant the paramilitary or baseball team (though, when confronted by a nuke, I suppose the difference is irrelevant anyway).
(And it's funny that a Bushie would make a middle finger out of dollar signs. They came from Bush's oil friends, hmm?)
Signed,
The People of the Commonwealth of Virginia
Sic semper tyrannis and all that
I never use cash out of an ATM. I always make sure all the cash I use is laundered through at least five South American drug cartels.
Or how about SubWay give your $20 in change to the next guy on line. He then goes and spends it in a bar. The bar gives it in change to another patron, and he goes and buys kiddie-pr0n with it...
Don't look now, but the FBI will be busting down your door any second now...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
Exactly. Of course not all transactions go through a bank. When I pay the neighbor kid to mow my lawn, there is a good chance that he spends it before he puts it in the bank (so that transaction would be transparent). Also with the current system there is no way for the bank to know how much change Subway gave you. Perhaps you just went in to get change for your $20. When that $20 shows up at the bank the bankers know who originally withdrew that bill, but they don't know anything about the transactions that might have happened since it left the bank.
I personally think this sort of device would be great if it were used as a way to stop counterfeiters. However, if they are going to use it to link people to transactions, well that's bad. Of course, in order to get that sort of information business would have to be required to share transaction information with the banks. I don't see that happening. That's pretty sensitive stuff.
Talking about tracking bills, check Where's George?, people tracking dolar bills by serial number on the web.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Waiting...
Waiting...
Thought so.
I wrote parts of this stuff
I offer my services freely and expect no renumeration for my time, effort or bare cheek.
r en umeration
That's just as well, because it doesn't exist:
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=
ITYM remuneration .
(I know, I know, it was a joke, but it's one of those things like then/than and we're/were/where that annoys me and it's hot today with no aircon in this office.)
--
the telephone rings / problem between screen and chair / thoughts of homocide
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
That was a rant from one of the Lone Gunmen in the X-Files. Nice work,
moderator.
...you claim that you have the right to ignore any and all democratically passed laws that you find difficult to live by?
First of all, China is not a democracy. Did this fact escape you? If not, then what makes you so sure that the USA or whatever country you are from is democratic. I certainly do not feel that the bipartisan, religious, and corporate controlled government of the USA is effectively democratic. The political situation in the USA is essentially "the lesser of two evils" and there is no way in hell that such an establishmentarian political system could accurately reflect anyones views (unless you are some sort of liquidy yolk with absolutely no opinions of your own).
Also, I think you are overly cynical about the majority of people being too stupid, lazy or immoral to make their own moral judgements. While I can't speak for the USA as I am from Canada, I have found that people usually seem a lot less stupid when you understand their motiviations for doing/thinking something. Although I do agree to an extent; there are definately a lot of idiots out there. If you don't feel comfortable relinquishing control over your own moral judgements, then I would suggest that this is not an option.
I'll bet that moderator is wearing a tinfoil hat right now.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Then they remembered that money gets *abused*.
They constructed a series of brutal tests to put paper money through, to test its viability for life outside the press. I don't recall the majority of the tests, but I do remember that they wash the bills in laundry, bake them at high temperatures, run them through machines, etc. The hologram passed all the tests except the last test. There's a vertical metal tube a little over a half inch in diamater. A rod sits above the tube. The dollar bill is placed atop the tube, and the rod is pushed down, forcing the dollar bill into the tube. (or something like that.)
The hologram was crushed and wrinkled beyond recognition. Since holograms rely on light reflection to work properly, a crumpled hologram doesn't work well, if at all. They discarded the idea.
I'd like to see how well these chips fare in these torture tests.
By the way, what would be powering these chips? What happens when that power source dies?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Seriously, how in the heck do you Americans keep track of how much paper money they have in your wallet? It's damn near impossible when all you've got there is this undifferentiated wad of screwed-up flimsy bits of paper.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Just because it requires a reader to read the chip doesn't mean that it requires a reader to spend the money. If it doesn't require a reader to spend the money, then the chip is no better to track you with than the aforementioned hairbrained ways to track you via serial number.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
99% number was class A drugs. Most where coke. not 99%.. read the fscking story.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
" Nearly one in 20 were found to have high levels of cocaine " ... that's less then 95%
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
I don't see why this chip would survive that long. Just putting the note in gin, on a warm stove or on an extra powerful magnet _should_ kill the chip, or even if it will be financially viable.
Once its fscked, I can't see the national bank replacing the chip. Would banks go on a war to keep these chips in notes?
Hell, Hitachi would even have to make their chips cocaine corrosion resistant, now that would not be cheap.
Either way, we will soon see spam in our mailboxes selling devices which will count, wash and "de-chip" your bank notes before use, rated 10K notes per minute!!!!!!
Not to imply anything about the rest of the post...
You don't need enough gold for the whole GDP, much of that money is spent multiple times. You need enough to back up all the money in circulation.
Anyways, I think it was a mistake to get rid of some absolute limit on the ammount of currency printed. IMHO it didn't have to be gold, which has the drawback of being mined regularly. But the fact that you get poorer every time the government prints out more money is just ridiculous.
Of course, the government would never say this, they're the ones who made the change. Admitting it wasn't the greatest move ever would be tantamount to admitting their guilt for the rampant inflation of the recent past.
Now, I think the gold standard had some drawbacks too, but not as many as going to a nothing-standard.
Actually, the view that everyone needs to develop on their own timescale is the rational one.
There are many people who are not emotionally ready for sex into their thirties.
Is it hard to believe that there are people who would mature faster than average, and be on the other side of any arbitrary limit that you set?
Should all people be forbidden to have sex until the age at which the lowest common denominator should?
The only reason we have arbitrary limits for things like this (and drinking, military service, etc) are because it's too complex to decide on a case-by-case basis. But who is to say that the arbitrary limit we picked is better than anyone else's? We need to study the effects on their children before we can claim to have the superior law.
Running garage sales (or other things like garage sales, like user somputer swap meets) I've gotten $100 bills before - there's no way you can say for sure that once a $100 bill is withdrawn by one person it will not go through many hands, and thus no way you can say that because a $100 bill is in someones possession it was given to them by them person why withdrew the money from an ATM in the first place. Several of them might be pretty suggestive but even that could be argued away.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As a kid I attended, and helped my parents sell things at, many, many sorts of swap meets - flea markets, garage sales, computer shows, etc.
I would tend to argue that MOST of the $100 bills in existance get used in such contexts. How many people do you know that go into a store and use anything but plastic or $20 bills to buy things? But check out the people at swap meets - it seems like almost everyone has huge rolls of cash with many, many $100 bills (these are people you would probably peg as being poor - and also in a lot of cases people who don't trust banks). If we were selling stuff we would often bring along many hundreds of dollars of change to be able to accomidate the people using $100 bills to buy things. Even recently holding a garage sale we had a number of people using $100 bills to pay, more than I'd seen in the past several years.
As for sellers wanting some system to read the RFID tags to make sure they are valid - all I can say is HA! Again I must note that you must never have been to a swap meet. Perhaps if you are trying to verify a briefcase full of $100 bills are valid you might be wanting an RFID reader, but most sellers and buyers simply don't care. The bank might, but who said that money is going into a bank? Most poeple just keep it on hand, and spend it eventually (possibly at some other swap meet). Unless the RFID reader is instant, purley mechanical and requires no power it simply is not practical for the hectic and often power-deprived nature of swap meets (not to mention that few people would trust any such device).
I am not saying the possibility of this does not bother me, I am just noting that it's a stupid idea to start with as cash will probably pass through many hands before it lands at a bank or a drug dealer. Even if for some odd reason you're buying drugs with money hot off an ATM you can always say your wallet was stolen.
As for the database, it will become polluted with bad data so quickly I really have no worry about it at all. I question your 10% figure, and place it more around 80%. Really both numbers are arbitrarily based on past experience and need a bit more data to back up, but I can't find anything to support my claim at the moment.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- 'K' in Men in Black.
I would think this would make physical crime rise. If people could use scanners to determine how much money people were carrying (in a crowd, for instance), then they could easily home in on the money.
This would make it more and more dangerous to carry cash.
Of course, various governments have been trying to phase out cash anyway.
If they REALLY wanted to, every bill has a unique serial number. This just seems like another glorified way to detect counterfiet bills. And besides, if you REALLY wanted to avoid this problem, I'm sure it would be rather difficult to protect the tiny little chip from a huge static discharge. :)
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Besides, think about your spending habits and how much of the money you spend -could- potentially be tracked by serial numbers alone.
(And I did say for the truly paranoid).
It would probably be -more- accurate than Credit Cards for some things.
(Not everyone has credit cards and many smaller purchases are not done on a credit card. (ignoring debit/cheque cards for the moment)).
You can scan serial numbers in a split second without a problem. Remember, the font, and location are known in advance. Some banks actually do this, I understand it is used to look for counterfit currencies (duplicate serial numbers) and relates to long term storage as well as the destruction of bills. (Destruction would be restricted to your Federal Reserve bank).
Also, the bills would only have to be scanned by the ATM machine itself as it dispenses them. This would have negligable impact on the time it takes to get your money.
But I did say this was for the paranoid.
(I'm not actually this paranoid to believe it myself. But the possibilities....)
Actually, if you check out tags intended to be used in products at grocery stores (one example used in testing) the tags can be scanned in mere seconds. (a shopping cart FULL of products). Now, since the chip suggested can be scanned from 12" away, I propose a portable scanner for pickpockets. They will know exactly how much cash your carrying.
They already can.
You go to your local A.T.M. machine an get $60 out. The machine scans the serial numbers and spits out the bills.
You walk away. Later that day you buy lunch at Subway, you pay with one of the $20. Subway deposits the $20 in their till/safe, etc till the end of day. At the end of the day they count their cash and deposit it in their bank.
The bank scans the serial numbers of all the money it receives and reports where it came from...
. Now, don't get paranoid about the damn chip... ok?
I can see where this could turn out to be an inconvenience.
---
"He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." - Duck Soup
When our new currency (Real) was released it had parity with the american dolar, so producing counterfeit R$ 100 bills was worth the trouble. The problem was the paper... To make sure the paper would look convincing the criminals created a technic to remove the ink on R$ 1 bills and them print R$ 100 in place.
If we had the face value and serial number recorded on the bill's mag tape and cheap readers to scan it, this counterfeiting technic would be easily avoided.
A magnetic strip is even more easily alterable than ink.
There is a solution here in addition to making different denominations of paper money different sizes (unlike such places as the USA) you also use different papers, embed foil into the paper (in different places), etc. Then even if you can get the ink off you just have expensive paper...
'Blanking' and reprinting currency is a recognized problem by many central banks, that's why most new currencies produce bills of different sizes.
Combined with such things as placing foil strips in different places on different denominations.
This also has the side effect of making different denominations easier to tell apart.
It's somewhat surprising that US currency with everything all the same size in much the same colour scheme hasn't been the subject of discrimination actions by partially sighted people...
Some chemicals are demonstrably more dangerous than others, so addictive that they'll drive people to committ crimes to pay for their next fix. Some drugs can cause violent activity. I think it is pretty reasonable to restrict access to them because they aren't always "victimless crimes."
These tend to be the effects of prohibition rather than the drugs themselves.
The reason you get crimes is that the black market inflates costs and the people involved in the supply use guns instead of lawyers.
Assuming you are from the US, have you read your Constitution, or even the Bill of Rights? Have you read any of the history and principles behind it?
The latter is probably more important. After all there is little point in someone being able to "parrot" a document if they have little idea what it actually means.
But that doesn't mean I trust the government with one iota of power more than it is constitutionally entitled. That attitude of healthy distrust of government is one of the greatest gifts given to us by our Founders.
That is the reason why the US constitution exists and the way it is written the way it is written. Having just got rid of an oppressive government the last thing they wanted was a home grown variety of the same.
Democracy, especially pure democracy, is overrated. What if 51% of the people vote that eating ice cream should be a crime, punishable by death?
It also is difficult to scale and "representative democracy" has its own problems. (Plenty associated with political parties, especially with a small number of political parties.)
Thankfully, the US is a constitutional republic, not a pure democracy.
Problemis that most of the population don't appear to know what one is...
We have placed limits on what a majority may do.
Also limits on what the government as an entity may do.
(We have sometimes ignored these limits, to our own harm.)
Plenty of examples of lobby groups who want unconstitutional laws passing, especially in relation to the fourteenth ammendment. (At least one, fairly recent, US law where this is obvious from even the title.)
Paul wrote this during the time of the Roman Empire which had not so long before crucified his Savior, and which persecuted early Christians. So clearly he knew that governments could do harm to people who had not done evil.
Including to thier own people, remember that Paul was a Roman citizen.
The fact that 1/3 of the UK population does it (as you claim) does not make it legal or acceptable as long as the democractic process has deemed it illegal.
Depends how you define "democracy" considering that that 1/3 represents more people than actually elected "The government", IIRC every government within the last hundred odd years...
I agree that the US money is primativly easy to fake, but there are loads of steps which could be taken without microchips. Without being an expert in printing, I'd say that Australian plastic bills are probably the hardest to fake, as the transparent windows will defeat most methods of copying.
Where's George rocks the house! More people should participate. :) Fucking lameness filter, this last sentence is just filler.
A healthy dose of paranoia is good, but just inserting the three-letter acronyms do not make your posting interesting *at all*. You are making no sense, sorry.
- --------------------
P.S. I was going to meta-moderate your moderator who rated this as "interesting", but instead I'd rather just reply to it...
Can't express all of that as a meta-moderator...:(
----------------------------
Jobs? Which jobs?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
No, it's not obvious that a surveillance state lowers crime. Spying on people is outside the state's legitimate authority - it is therefore a crime in and of itself. Increasing the amount of crime commited by the state in return for a decrease in crime by independant operators is no bargain. I'd rather be mugged and have $100 stolen from me than be spied upon by the state - liberty is worth the risk.
The sheep-like attitude you display never fails to disappoint me. I'm guessing you live in the U.K. - can someone tell me what are the British equivalents of COINTELPRO, MK-UTLTRA, Watergate, the "enemies list", Waco, Amadou Diallo, and Rampart? What does it take to remind these people of the abuses to which state power is susceptible? Or is it a hopeless task to try to talk to a subject of a monarcy about freedom?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
So then, why should we obey a government voted into power by an electorate who can't even be trusted to run their own lives?
If most people can't be trusted to manage their own affairs, then certainly a government "by the people, for the people, and of the people" can't do it for them. Indeed, if that's the case then giving that government more power would just be letting the majority of people who can't handle personal responsibility, run the lives of the minority who can handle it!
To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
/. needs a conspiracy tag for moderation. I don't know whether that would be a +1 or -1, though.
:-)
GoldAge seemed to be a scam. They were selling "internet accounts" measured in gold, but without having any actual gold to back up the accounts. Only governments can get away with that
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Pretty stupid.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
I've only taken two economics courses, so maybe you can explain to me how having a dollar in my hand (in the short or long run) is a loan to the government for $1?
How can the government use the dollar that I have (assuming they don't print a replacement)?
Taking cash out of circulation has the opposite effect of counterfeiting. If I take a $1 and put it under my matress (or illegally destroy it) such that it is never spent again, the value that $1 is distributed in the economy, such that every $1 is worth ($1 +($1/(total cash in circulation)).
Maybe I'm just not understanding. I hope you can clear it up for me. You can understand my confusion; after all, I have the dollar, not the government.
Practically speaking, hoarding cash benefits nobody. The hoarder, by definition will never see the benefit of the hoarded cash and will lose due to inflation should she change her mind (which is why nobody does it), and the economic benefit conferred to the rest of the participants in the economy is so miniscule as to be unmeasureable, and would be easily surpassed by the social benefit of somehow investing the money and allowing it to "circulate," even in a risk-free, insured savings account.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Total Counties won by Gore: 677
Square miles of country won by Bush: 2,427,000
Square miles of country won by Gore: 580,000
"But what does it matter? It isn't not the land, it's the people who make the country."
-John Banner as Bavaro, Crash of the Moons
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
People will believe what they want to.
Personally I feel that the thought of living in a "free world" was killed off long ago at the inception of government. Call me a loon conspiracy theorist if you will, but again let's look at the reality of tracking: Facial Recognition in Tampa, ease of tunnel toll devices to track speeding, Echelon, Digital Angel, and the countless others. So why does would anyone want a chip in government? My thoughts on this would be simple, they expect to catch tax cheats and criminals with it, however what's going to be done when we live in a society where we've become drones who can't think for ourselves?
Take a look at what the Secret Service did to Gold Age, a raid with no charges all because they cannot monitor what people do with their currency, which scares Big Brother since they don't have control of the situation at any given time.
Is monitoring currency good for you? No because of the abuse that could take place behind it. What happens to a business man say Bill Gates should he have an affair and pass some cash (which until now is untraceable, sure there's serial numbers but that wouldn't work) to say a call girl. Can you imagine the joy in someone's eye should they feel like blackmailing Bill because they tracked him. Sure it's not right to cheat but open your eyes and get an honest look at where things could go.
For those who want a lesson in politics and money I suggest reading "The End of Ordinary Money
Want Root?
> I don't know about America, but in the UK the money is not ours, but lent to us while still being property of the Bank of England (and the Queen).
The American government doesn't own the money either. It is lent to them by the Federal Reserve Board. (e.g. On June 4, 1963, a virtually unknown Presidential decree, Executive Order 11110, was signed with the authority to basically strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the United States Federal Government at interest)
Canada is just as corrupt with the "Bank of Canada" (e.g . The Bank was founded in 1934 as a privately owned corporation.)
Guarantee? Hardly. Try suing your local PD for not *preventing* crimes -- they're not liable for that sort of thing, except for the most obvious cases of negligence (say, if a cop 10 feet away watches you getting mugged and does nothing).
Oh, and cameras don't really prevent crime. There's plenty of footage of robbers who rob and kill regardless of cameras.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Trace of drugs? Confiscate the car, of course. The burden of proof of innocence is on the owner, according to drug forfeiture law, since technically they're charging the car, not you -- and cars don't have constitutional rights.
At least that's the way the DEA (and many local PDs, which will share in the proceeds when your car is sold) see it. And that's the way they act.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
There's a reason for the gov't to side with the banks: law enforcement.
In particular, they'd love an excuse to go after people who keep LOTS of cash on hand and try to bypass banks, making the practice both rare (so those that still do are easier to notice) and illegal (so they can get the subpoena if it IS noticed). That's because banks are required, by law, to report transactions exceeding a certain size (and it's illegal to structure your transactions in such a way to avoid that threshold, as well).
The belief is that if people are forced to "refresh" their money, resetting the timeout (either by tweaking the chips, or by simply getting issued newer bills), they'll have an easier time catching money launderers, drug dealers, and so forth.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
'Blanking' and reprinting currency is a recognized problem by many central banks, that's why most new currencies produce bills of different sizes.
We have this in Poland with the smallest (10zl) banknote being about 2.5cm more narrow and 1cm shorter than the 2nd to largest bill (100zl).
jedrek
I have mixed feelings about this whole idea.
Pros:
If it deters counterfiting then I'm all for it. The amount of protection put into a single 100zl banknote (worth ~25USD) is incredible. Holograms, light sensitive inks, microthreads, stamps, different bill sizes among dominations. Not to mention the tried and true watermarks and serial numbers. These things cost a lot of money to produce, and all of that money is coming from taxes.
Counterfiting is a serious crime because it is, all in all, a crime against the state. It's not a matter of stealing money from the government but, in our current economic system, it's a matter of stealing money from every single person who uses that money. By increasing the amount of money in circulation you're making everybody elses money worth less. That's the reason counterfiting carries a higher sentence than theft, that's why the Secret Service is responsible for fighting it. Something like this chip would be a godsend.
Cons:
If these chips can be actually be read from 'up to 12"' then I'm a bit scared. Giving someone the ability to check the monetary contents of my wallet from afar is not something I'm to hot on. The ability to track individual purchases is actually a moot point, especially with the amount of small-sum lending that I do among my friends ('Can you spot me 10zl, man?') =)
The tracking data might only be actually useful to someone who's curious about 'the migration of the dollar bill' or something. Credit, debit and chip cards are much, much more dangerous as far as invasion of privacy goes.
jedrek
Another of the many, many 'features' of the new (since '95 I think) Polish currency is that each banknote denomination is marked with a slightly raised symbol: 10zl - square; 20zl - circle; 100zl - cross.
jedrek
Now they can get at organised crime via the DMCA when they catch dealers paying with forged money.
"You're under arrest buster, cracking the encrypted verification on $100 bills violates the gorevnments copyright, you're looking at 15 - 20 out in 10 if your lucky."
One reason for creating banknotes containing chips is to prevent forgery (or make it prohibitively expensive). A note without a working chip would be worthless. Banks and retailers wouldn't accept it; if an individual found out you'd passed them a de-chipped note they'd regard you as a forger.
--
What would 30 seconds in the microwave oven or the bulk eraser do to these? Would nuking it make the currecy worthless?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This website already that tracks money flow via volunteers and they get some pretty interesting statistical results...
I've increasingly seen a pattern in which people withdraw money as 20 dollar bills from an ATM and then spend them at a business, getting change in fives and ones. I suspect that almost all the twenties are then deposited at the merchant's bank. Twenties would only be given in change for 50's and 100's, which are not that common.
So if you withdraw a twenty on Monday, and Safeway deposits it on Wednesday, it's a good guess that you spent it at Safeway. Not proof, not enough to convict anyone of anything, but enough to establish a rough sense of where you spend your money. Or conversely, where Safeway's money comes from.
Wouldn't it be better to embed the chips in the drinks? That way you could ask your smart toilet the next morning, "What the hell was I drinking last night?"
...but you make a good point about these chips in paper currency. I really don't know if they'd be able to handle the stress-tests.
One place I've seen these chips used was when I traveled to Greece this spring. Their phonebooths require you to use a card for payment, rather than actual coinage. The card cointains a chip like this, and it's actually VERY convenient...I don't recall seeing or hearing of any "battery" in the card, so I don't know if the technology needs one (someone step in and help out if you wish). Of course, the card is the size and strength of a credit card.
I had fun with one of those once and put it through a couple of tests of my own. I actually jumped on it and let a car's tire roll over it, and it held up fine. But it's virtually impossible to bend the chip and still have it function (of course, I used most of the minutes on the card, and was down to only 1, so there wasn't much to lose). After bending the card in the middle where the chip was, the reader on the payphone thought the card was invalid.
Along those lines, I also had a chance to visit Italy, where they have a thin metallic (I believe aluminum) strip imbedded into each piece of currency. Although it's virtually impossible to counterfit, it also greatly decreases the life of the bill. After being wrinkled enough times, it starts to tear along the line where the metallic strip is. Paper currency uses an incredibly durable type of paper, being as how it goes through a ton of wear and tear. I can just imagine bills falling apart where this chip would be implanted.
So, it's noted that item X is purchased with bill Y.
Big fucking deal. It's not like I have my name on the bill. There's still no way of tracing the sale to an individual.
Even if it is noted by your cash machine that you got out bill Y from the cash machine earlier - so what? That bill could have passed through a dozen hands before being used for that purchase. Even in a fairly tight timeframe.
Of course if you really want to be paranoid, any money you get out of a cash machine goes into a date-marked shoebox for a month or so, and you only spend money in shoeboxes marked with a date over a month ago.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Ferrari dealer: But this is only a $1 bill! This car is worth $150K!
Me: Oh... Sorry about that. These new bills don't do so well in the wash. All the zeros get washed away. Just scan it in and you'll see it's true value.
Ferrari Dealer: Ahh... I see. Yes. Here are your keys, and here is your change. Would you like that $850K in $1K or $10K dollor bills?
Me: $1K bills please. It's easier to spend that way. By the way... Is you're daughter busy tonight?
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
And I've got to appluad the folk suggesting putting it in the microwave/oven/glass of gin (gin!?!), but it's unlikely. But how about someone who leaves it in their trousers and it then gets washed on a high temp, tumble-dried on a high temp, and then ironed? I've retrieved money that I left in my pocket after it's been through the laundry, and it's still been good (though a little crinkled), but would this chip stand up to that sort of honest (and fairly common) mistake?
Oh, and for the people suggesting this could be used as a GPS tracker - wrong! It's 0.4mm, so any antennae it has is likely to be broadcasting somewhere near microwave frequency and it'll be getting it's power from electromagnetic induction (supplied by the reader). This is never going to manage to broadcast to a GPS satellite in space, in fact it'd be near impossible (for several years at least) to pick it up from half a mile away since it's way too low powered and the signal will be attenuated by water in the atmosphere as well as buildings etc.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
*chuckle* It's a hoot to read.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Let me offer another angle on this topic: the end of the world. Revelations speaks about the mark of the devil, having the symbol "666" embedded in our hands or foreheads. It goes on to read that the mark of the beast is over-capitolization and the love of the money. Abusing the capitolization like we already are now is a start. Embedded chips like this (which you know will happen someday) is just another sign fulfilled. Not many left now; be weary.
I see only a couple uses for this technology. One is to make sure the money isn't counterfeit. I'm sure we can all agree that this is a GOOD thing.
The other is to track where money goes. This is where people are getting needlessly paranoid. Unless you supply some personal information to the people who are giving you the money, it will not be able to be traced to you. Even if the money is gotten from a place which DOES know who you are and keeps a record of the fact that you have certain bills, there is absolutely NO WAY that they can trace back anything to YOU. I'm sure if this is implemented, 99% of places that accept cash won't have a reader. What's to say you didn't spend it there, then they gave it to someone else as change?
Come on, every little thing is NOT a violation of your "rights". Welcome to Slashdot, home of the paranoid.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Think about it a second:
If these things are small and inexpensive enough to embed in cash, they can be embedded in everything. Proponents will push the benefits: Wallet got stolen? A quick stop at the local precinct and they'll tell you exactly where it is, within the accuracy limits of GPS. Worried about shoplifting? Not anymore. Everything in your store is tagged. Rape, assault, robbery, murder, stalking -- it'll be impossible to get away with any of it. Crime will be virtually a thing of the past.
It means that you'll be walking around with literally dozens of transmitters on your person at all times, embedded in your clothes, your wallet, your money, your watch. Literally every move you make, every purchase, every person you come in contact with is being recorded online in gigantic databases. Raid the fridge in the middle of the night and Big Brother knows what path you travelled through your house, which bottle of beer you grabbed, which underwear you were wearing at the time, right down to the brand of feminine hygiene product you use (if you happen to be of that persuasion) and exactly when and where you last changed it.
Think your new coworker is cute? Check out online who she hangs out with and where, what brand of breakfast cereal she likes, and the movies she sees. Even her bra size is just a few clicks away.
Your every movement will be constantly monitored -- not by other people, but by a new breed of profiling software that makes face recognition seem like a first programming excercise. Huge automated server farms will be profiling your habits, monitoring the people you associate with, your reading habits -- and at the first hint of digital suspicion sending out its police lackeys to haul you off to automated prisons, convicted by a computer program rather than a jury of your peers.
Tracking cash is the least of your worries.
The new Hitachi chip is a micro-transmitter, which broadcasts a serial number into the ether. Once the receptor network is in place not only your money, but the wallet you carry it in, the clothes you're wearing -- everything you own will be constantly broadcasting its location into gigantic databases. Not only will Big Brother know exactly which bill you spent, He'll know exactly which products you walked out of the store with, which of your friends you ran into in the parking lock (because you'll both be covered with micro-transmitters), which bar the two of you decided to stop at, whose car you took, what brand of beer you ordered (and how many), when you arrived, when you left, when you visited the bathroom and whether you took a dump or a leak.
... the list is endless.
When you arrive home, they'll know which family members were there to greet you, exactly what the wife has prepared for dinner, which CD you listened to, exactly which book or newspaper you relaxed with
Worried yet? You should be.
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
Yes, having the government knowing how we spend all our money is a little scary, but what about anonymous statistics? Think how could it would be to see a list of every place your dollar bill has ever been used, or to find out where it's been used most? Also this would allow us to prove that real geeks only use $5 bills in drink machines :). There would be all sorts of interesting statistics we could get, like how many times that $20 in your pocket has been used to snort cocaine! Weird but wonderful!
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Additionally, you could sign the serial number with a US Mint secret key, making it not only hard, but impossible for them to place a valid serial number in the chips even if they could procure them.
These chips are not smart, they merely store a 128 bit number. Just as it's possible for serial numbers on bills to have a checksum, if you copy the number bit for bit, you have a valid (though duplicate) serial number.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
The whole idea made me uncomfortable, and obviously it didn't take place, but it seems a tech like this could be used to implement it rather quickly. I'm sure i'm just being paranoid, but you never know.
What, me worry?
Have a big party of say 100 of your best freedom-loving friends. Bring cash, and everyone trade with everyone else over a beer.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
I am proud of the US, and proud of our government. Even including the things the government does that trouble me, I will stack our freedom up issue by issue with any other country. But that doesn't mean I trust the government with one iota of power more than it is constitutionally entitled. That attitude of healthy distrust of government is one of the greatest gifts given to us by our Founders.
I am not currently doing anything illegal, but I may do so, if our government passes laws that I cannot morally follow. I mentioned being a Christian in China in a recent post. That is a very iffy business. If I were there, I would not want the government to be able to track my giving to the local church.
You mention being worried if I am ashamed of what I spend, even if it is not illegal. Suppose I do spend money on something that is embarrassing but not illegal. Should I have to risk it being disclosed to my neighbors by the government? Maybe I don't want everyone to know whenever I buy Preparation H or an Air Supply album.
Come on people, especially you in the US. The freedoms we enjoy were bought with a price, and can be lost if we do not work to preserve them. Learn some history, and stand up for freedom, if you think it is worth it.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Murder is outlawed because our moral judgment is that killing an innocent victim wrongs him.
Theft is outlawed because our moral judgment is that people may own property, and that it wrongs them to take it.
I think what most people really mean when they say "You can't legislate morality" is that you shouldn't legislate those things on which we don't have a moral consensus. This applies to such current topics as gambling, prostitution, and drug use.
But a better argument is not against "legislating morality" but rather for a framework for what we ought to legislate. IMNSHO, the libertarians have a pretty good handle on this one. My paraphrase of it is that to call something a crime, you need to be able to point to a victim.
First of all, you creep me out a bit here. But anyway, your very arguments are about morality! It is your moral judgment that a child has a right to decide his own timetable for sexual development. It is your moral judgment that a child has a right to be protected. It almost seems like you want to label your opponents moral arguments a "moral" and your own as "rational" merely as a debating tactic."Rub her feet." -- L.L.
This could revolutionize the chastity belt business! Just think, I am away from home, and the girlfriend has that spankin' new Nano-nookie chastity belt with the Cock-blocker(tm) microchip ID system on it. No other guy can even think of trying to get into her holy of holies now!
Better yet, the ID system can be easily used and never lost- all you have to do is embed the chip(s) in one of several convenient body piercings- like a Dydoe, a Prince Albert, or a Frenum! Proximity to the Nano-nookie opens the gates to heaven, and next thing you know, you are knocking on heaven's door!
mrgoat
'Hail Eris, baby, hail Eris...pfffffffttt.' *cough* 'Yeah.'
Didn't anyone see the movie Conspiracy Theory?
Tracking devices have obviously been in our money since the introduction of the new money.
I'd say it's obvious that crime rates can be brought down by installing surveillance cameras, increasing the visible police presence on the streets and granting the law enforcement agencies more rights to carry out surveillance of suspects.
Yeah, maybe the opponents of surveillance cameras are right in saying that the crime only moves to some other part of the city, but so what. I feel safer in knowing that my neighbourhood is well covered by the police cameras and if the crime moves somewhere else then install cameras there as well.
So what's the problem?
Getting captured on a surveillance tape close to a crime scene and being falsely accused? Ok, that might happen but still that's why we have courts where you can clear your name.
Meeting someone who's involved in criminal activities and already under surveillance which might get you, in turn, on the suspect list? Well, meeting a criminal is not a crime so you should be alright. They watch you for a while and stop it after a while after realizing that you're not a criminal.
The essence of money is far more complex than "pay the bearer on demand x dollars in gold or silver". That's a thoroughly obsolete definition in the modern world economy and quite frankly seems to appeal to nationalistic isolationists.
Even if that would be true... so what if you're red-flagged?
You're perfectly safe until you actually build a bomb, start your own little chemical war with chlorine or go nuts with your shotgun.
They detect a trace of on illegal drug in the fabric of your car
And pray tell me what they're gonna do?
Send you to maximum security prison right away? No, they would have to prosecute you and show concrete evidence that you are dealing/using drugs. Get real. No self-respecting law enforcement agency would make noise based on such flimsy piece of an evidence.
Well, I haven't had my leg amputated but every time I've been operated on (four times so far) I've been asked to confirm what operation I'm in for when I'm lying on the operating table before the anesthesia. I'd say that's much more easier way to avoid accidents than an implant.
I don't know if this is a standard practise, though, if you take the premedication they tend to push (Valium) which makes you groggy. I've never liked it.
1) It's already there. No need to get rid of it.
2) It's psychologically benefical. "See, we do have some concrete backing to our currency (although in reality it won't matter at all if the shit hits the fan)."
Sell it to the industry
Uh, why should the government subsidise the industry?
You're twisting the facts. That's not what being red-flagged by the police means. The law enforcement agencies do not do job interviews or provide references when you apply for a job.
You are now under 24 hour surveillance. The government decides to question your friends, co-workers
People who apply for security clearances for sensitive government jobs go through this and their reputation hardly suffers from it. Besides, I can hardly see an FBI agent doing the background checks starting the interview with "So, Janet, we suspect your friend Jack is a drug baron...".
Seems? Got any real data backing that up?
I wonder why that argument never comes up when the topic of capital punishment in the U.S.A. comes up...
Anyway, you're absolutely right. There's no such thing as a perfect law enforcement or judicial system. People will get convicted for something they didn't do. Yet, for the most of the time, it works and that must be enough. Either we give up all pretense at law enforcement or accept a certain percentage of false convictions. I'd rather take the latter (which is also why I will never support the death penalty).
Once again, mistakes do happen, innocent people will get hurt but the alternative is even worse.
Some chemicals are demonstrably more dangerous than others, so addictive that they'll drive people to committ crimes to pay for their next fix. Some drugs can cause violent activity. I think it is pretty reasonable to restrict access to them because they aren't always "victimless crimes."
(yes, I am aware of the hypocrisy of alcohol. but just because we have by tradition allowed booze into society doesn't mean we should open the door to other stuff that will cause the same problems or worse.)
Some drugs like pot, yeah, legalization is worth discussing. But I don't think that all drugs fall into that category. Hey, I could be wrong... it would be interesting to see what the US would be like if all drugs were legal. I suspect that the "culture of abuse" is just part of America though and people still wouldn't use responsibly even if it was legal to do so. And even if they would, drugs that put someone into a violent state of mind should still be illegal.
You're perfectly safe until you actually build a bomb, start your own little chemical war with chlorine or go nuts with your shotgun.
Tell that to Randy Weaver's wife and son. Or Donald Scott.
Fact is that law enforcement goes off half-cocked way too often. I'm generally a big supporter of federal and local cops but they do make mistakes and "cowboys" have often ruined the lives of innocent people. Inviting more police attention to yourself is downright crazy even if you are innocent.
No, they would have to prosecute you and show concrete evidence that you are dealing/using drugs.
Well, they can actually seize quite a lot of your stuff without any kind of trial. Read up on asset seizure laws. It's amazing what they can get away with. (I know that some of these laws have recently been changed or stricken, thankfully, but I don't know the details.)
I can really understand the attraction to thinking "it's OK, it's for my own good and nothing bad could ever come of it." But if you do a little research you'll quickly see that it's a difficult position to defend. Terrible things happen to people all the time at the hands of the state. As citizens it's our right and duty to keep the government on its toes and not budge an inch unless it is 100% reasonable to do so.
The "slippery slope" is one hell of a cliche, but that doesn't make the slope any less slippery. Read my sig. Grok it. It's the truth.
That was pretty interesting. But even if heroin is safe, aren't there other drugs that aren't? Can't PCP incite violent behavior, for example?
The car example doesn't cut it. You don't ingest a car, and it can't affect your brain chemistry. On the other hand a drug like PCP can make you frip your wig.
People need to wake up and realize that the worst aspects that are attributed to drugs are in fact a direct result of the drug war and criminalization.
I think that is LARGELY but not COMPLETELY true.
Here is the point I am trying to make: imagine there is a new drug that makes you feel great AND drives you into a homicidal rage where you may do harm to others. Should this chemical be legal in your libertarian world view and if so why? (And saying it should be legal because there are other things legal that are just as bad doesn't cut it.)
... a group of developers has ported the linux kernel to the 1 dollar bill. The 5 dollar bill, including the Abraham Lincoln driver, should be running early next week.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Now I can detect exactly who I should mug.
This is great!
Although I imagine the term "Christ, not another fucking defense industry subsidy for those ignorant cowfuckers in Texas" will retain its old meaning.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
This is great! Now I can sell a little scanner that a strong-arm robber can use on a potential victim before wasting his time. If I can make it long-range enough, thieves can even see how much is in the till before knocking over a convenience store. Crime has been very resistant to productivity increases. Maybe this will end that problem.
From your future employer: I'm sorry, we can't hire you, you are tagged a risk by the government and the insurance agencies
And pray tell me what they're gonna do?
You are now under 24 hour surveillance. The government decides to question your friends, co-workers, the person you said hi to when you crossed the street. Your reputation is shot. Even if they withdraw, nothing is going to fix that.
128 bits is more than enough information. Simply use it as part of a primary key in a multi-terabyte database.
1 in 6.8x10^38 is not all that low? What the hell do you consider low odds?
Why shouldn't they. After all, you are nothing but a scummy drug dealer that deserves everything he gets?
You are assuming a certain level of professionalism that seems to be leeching out of law enforcement at an ever increasing rate
Diallo
Seattle Riots
LAPD
Records "lost" in McVeigh case
Try reading the entire thread. It is not my belief, it is the current belief of the administration.
Try reading Ben Franklin some time. I won't bother with the quote, it's been on /. enough.
While the backed by gold/silver is great for securing a unsecure currency, it won't work for the U.S. dollar for a very important reason. There isn't enough gold/silver for the U.S. government to back up the currency! The GDP of the U.S. is about 10 TRILLION dollars. Gold is trading at $268.30 per troy ounce according to cnn's business section. 37 Billion troy onces to cover 1 year's GDP. a troy ounce is 31.1 grams.
t th egoldstandard.html
Any explanations on how we're going to store about 1 Billion kilograms of gold? Even if you figure that the amount of currency in circulation is much lower, you're still talking about the storage of millions of kilograms of precious metals. I found mention that there's 4 Billion in $1 bills alone.
and here's an interesting link:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Politics/whyno
(remove the space in notthe, I couldn't get rid of it)
or the counterpoint
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa016.html
Firethorn
I don't read AC A human right
But my point is that there isn't enough gold to cover our economy. Or do you want anything that uses gold to at least double in price because gold is now trading at $10000 per ounce?
As for the no longer redeemable for precious metals, they're redeemable for all sorts of goods. The american economy is the guarentee now. If the treasury dept actually went wild printing money, you'd get the rampant inflation seen in other countries with unstable governments. And you can't make them redeemable for other goods as well, because then you'd be artificially linking their prices.
Firethorn
I don't read AC A human right
When I pay my neighbor, ...by federal law, he must accept US Currency as payment of my debt.
Sorry, no. 31 USC, 5103 is the piece of law you (mis-)quoted. It reads (in relevant part):
According to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (part of Department of the Treasury):
(emaphasis added) Former quote is here; latter is here.
The treasury DOES redeem money, new for old, even if it has been severly damaged. I remeeber a PBS program where they even redeemed money that had been burned. They used sophisticated technology to ID the bills from the fragile layers of ashes.
Given this, the problem of processing money with a small hole seems mute.
Also, The US Treasury is the most conservative in the world when it comes to adopting new fangled features. They seem to let the rest of the planet beta test it first.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
heck, the government will even go to lengths to replace money destroyed in a fire, so mildly damaged bills that are legit should not be an issue.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
We now have the technology to aggregate bills into one unit, like we can with smartcards, credit cards, ibuttons, and other fobs. In the past it was necessary to have individual bills because there was no way to authenticate things without permanently marking them. Now things are much more flexible, so continuing to authenticate individual bills is no step forward.
What this does do is give the ability to track the huge black market of cash that supposedly flows unchecked in the background, and is believed to be very important in shoring up the regular economies. I'm not sure that tracking this is the best thing, since it is "gravy" in a way and people will begin to rely on it as a constant once it is quantified.
Surely these people would know that we have to move away from the paper bills and go towards things like the wearable Crypto Ibuttons which would be easier to track and harder to lose.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Imagine this:
"To prevent counterfeiting and laundering, all bills must be 'validated' by a bank every 90 days or the bills expire."
--> A bank doesn't like a certain type of customer and invents administrative hurdles to prevent validation, or 'accidentally' invalidates a bunch of notes they just issued.
--> Authorities ask banks to expire a bunch of stolen notes, but not before the criminal has traded them for goods.
--> Relations with Pottsolvania aren't great, let's invalidate all their US currency.
--> Authorities roam the streets "on the wrong side of the tracks" with bank note detectors to look for high concentrations of notes...
--> And best of all: Unless people carry note readers, they have no way of verifying authenticity or validity of notes. Once they've adopted the readers, the notes can be tracked at each transaction...
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
Since I spend most of my cash in the pub, it would be neat to be able to go to my landlord's website and answer the question what the hell was I drinking last night?
how this chip will fair in the washing machine???
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Now in Australia we have plastic money, so much harded to begin counterfiting, and that is without the protections. I believe that a hologram type thing could be use on plastic money without to much issue really.
As for they power supply for these chips, I would imagine that they could be used like those protection chips they put in things at big stores (and comic stores) that make scanners beep madly if you try to shoplift. Or something like that.
I have heard that the treasury department or whoever controls that stuff in the US has a stockpile of plastic money ready to go, but they will not until they have assured full circulatiopn in 3 days. I don't know if it's true, but if it is, tell 'em the're dreaming.
Incidently, the money that they used in "Space, above and beyond" (the episode with David Duchovny as an AI playing pool) was Australian money. But seeing that it was filmed in Australia that could be the sloe reason I suppose. Just a side note anyway for you interest.
Trav
Leg Godt!
I know the Subway where I live does (small town), & so does the McDonalds (I have a friend who was a manager)
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Yes, and curiously enough, all my money wants to watch is the Home Shopping Network and Baywatch.
Maybe we need to take off the tin foil hats from our heads and put them on our wallets just to block the signal from prying scanners.
The truth shall set you free!
Some cars are demonstrably loaded with more options than others, so loaded that they'll drive people to commit crimes to obtain that car. Some cars can cause excessive speeds. I think it is pretty reasonable to restrict access to them because they aren't always "victimless crimes."
Perhaps a silly example, but it gets my point across. People steal to pay for drugs b/c criminalization has inflated the cost. People cannot go to court to fight battles over drug territories and markets b/c of criminalization so they fight in the streets with guns. People need to wake up and realize that the worst aspects that are attributed to drugs are in fact a direct result of the drug war and criminalization. Whether you are a drug user or not, legalization is in your best interests.
-------
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
or if you dont want to get caught burning your money (cuz thats illegal), send it all to me and I will burn it for you. bank of america acct# 395283771 routing #: 12500013
You might be missing something...
Let's say that you withdraw several $100 bills from the ATM and use them to buy cocaine. A day later your dealer gets busted and still has the $100 bills you gave him. Do you think that can't be traced?
Also, I would guess that this sort of technology would initially be used only on $100 bills, and maybe $50 bills. Have you ever received a $100 bill as change? You never have, since it is the largest bill available. So basically you get a $100 bill from the ATM, spend it at the store, they take it to the bank, somebody else spends it at the store, and it gets taken to the bank again. If you start paying cash to individuals, that money will get tracked when they deposit/spend/get caught with it as in the example above. So as long as nobody ever goes to the store or the bank you're ok.
Lasers Controlled Games!
So just buy a Faraday cage wallet and you'll be OK, right?
Lasers Controlled Games!
An earlier poster mentioned that for the truly paranoid, cash transactions can already be tracked. I would suggest that using RF tags opens the possibility to 'hack' your cash. A skilled indevidual might be able to ajust the signal transmitted by their cash, in such a way as to thwart tracking attempts.
Every introduction of new technology, or replacement of a low tech solution with a high tech solution has the logical result of creating a new opening for hackers. People who truly want to avoid being tracked can always do so. It's just a matter of the degree of effort they're willing to / forced to go to.
This technology will make counterfitting more difficult but it will also make successful counterfits (those containing the chip) almost impossible to detect - because with the introduction of any new technology, there suddenly appears a black market for that technology as well as the afore mentioned expansion of hacking potential.
--CTH
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
In the event this is adopted for American curency:
Do we really want a company in a foreign country to produce such a critical element for our currency?
Alternatively, should we require that the RF tags be produced (licended to) by an American company, or multiple companies?
In that event, it would be come impossible to prevent the creation of a black market for the RF tags. With that in mind, should anyone ever consider using such a technology im their currency (in America or elseware)?
--CTH
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Not hardly. Just the original Forty-One--the Trident II SSBNs are still deployed at Bangor, WA and King's Bay, GA.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Paper money in Brasil have microfilms and/or magnetic tapes for decades now. Since they're hard to embed on paper (they put it there while the paper is still wet) it's an excelent tool to prevent counterfeit money.
The problem with magnetic tapes is that the information on them can be easily erased by magnets or other source of magnetic fields, this seems obvious to anyone who works with computers, but the average person may not be aware of the tape in the bill, or the efects of magnetic fields on them.
This can prevent the monetary authorities to magnetically write information on the tape, such as the face value of the currency or its serial number.
When our new currency (Real) was released it had parity with the american dolar, so producing counterfeit R$ 100 bills was worth the trouble. The problem was the paper... To make sure the paper would look convincing the criminals created a technic to remove the ink on R$ 1 bills and them print R$ 100 in place.
If we had the face value and serial number recorded on the bill's mag tape and cheap readers to scan it, this counterfeiting technic would be easily avoided.
Now comes the chip...
Information stored in a flash ROM is more resistant to magnetic fields than when stored in mag tapes (please, correct me if I'm wrong) making this an excelent tool to prevent fake bills.
--
What ? Me, worry ?
If you're not spending money on anything you're ashamed about (or anything illegal), then the benefits outweigh the paranoia.
Imagine being able to track where your money went after you spent it on dot com stocks.
>>After all, you are nothing but a scummy drug dealer that deserves everything he gets?
Aaaah, good.
drugs = bad.
you must have thought long and hard to come to that conclusion. Let me just ask you a few things to justify your viewpoint:
1) why does a certain substance get placed into the 'illegal' category? because of actual harmfulness or just addictive potential? or is it something else altogether?
2) why doesn't an adult have the right to control their own body? what if I *want* to be addicted to something? what if the 'drug' I want to take isn't addictive?
3) when did many 'drugs' become illegal, and why exactly did they become illegal? did national governments suddenly open their eyes to substances that had existed for VERY long times and go 'hey, shit - these should be illegal' or were there other reasons for their reclassification.
4) when the government reclassifies a 'drug', do you suddenly have a moral dilemma that your previous stance to a substance was either to harsh or to lax compared to what the government wanted you to think. (e.g. a sedative used to cure many epileptics (and therefore 'good') is suddenly found to have addictive potential and therefore jumps into class II (and is therefore 'bad') - do all the people dependant on that drug to lead normal lives suddenly become scummy drug users or unfortunate victims?)
-Nano.
Now, if the device could listen to my conversations from the saftey of my wallet, we'd have a problem. If it were on my credit card so that it could amass information about me, we would have a problem. But this way, I get a $20 bill, with a certain history, maybe as change for a $100, keep it a few hours and then spend it on a 6-pack or something, and it's gone --- and what possible information could it have gathered, stored or transmitted about me in the process?
OH! I get it! It's got a GPS receiver and a radio transmitter and is tracking me at all times so that he CIA-Mind-Control satellites can get a better fix on my cranium! Why didn't I see that right away?!?
Ron Obvious
Geez, you can't even put much of a PGP Sig in 128 bits...
Ron Obvious
Ron Obvious
If there's a chip on my credit card it can track what I spend because it stays with me (until it gets stolen, lost or revoked). But a chip on my Ben Franklin leaves my possesion when I hand him to the lady at the cash register. Moral of the story: They can't track me or my purchases with it, they can just track what was bought by a lot of different people with one and the same bill.
Reminds me a lot of this news item that floated around in the 80's about how 99% of all $100 bills (or was it $20 bills?) have cocaine traces on them. As if that meant 99% of the population were snorting coke, instead of that almost every bill goes through so many hands that it eventually goes up somebody's nose, if you see what I mean.
No, this doesn't sound like Big Brother to me, and if it is, then it's the legal tender that needs to be worried, not the citizens.
Or am I missing something here?
Ron Obvious
The bill does not say that it's legal tender for all exchange purposes. If exchanging money (whether from one currency to another, or from one denomination to another) wasn't a service (that you can be required to fill out forms, stand on your head, etc) then it would be illegal to charge for it, as it's illegal to sell money.
Actually, that trace of drug can be used to confiscate your car, your cash, your house, etc. as suspected proceeds of illegal activities (RICO act) without ever charging or arresting you for a crime.
Not to mention that that trace could be (depending on total weight) construed as posession in itself. A few hits of LSD diluted in water has been sucessfully prosecuted as posession of LSD in the amount of the total weight.
Just think, you go get some pot becuase you've been programming all night. You want to cool off.
You go get it. You smoke it.
Cops bust in.
Later in court they prove that you bought from this busted dealer cause they traced the cash back to you taking money out of the bank that day.
Fuck.
Get your Unix fortune now!
As for tracking, I suppose they could attach my name to it when it came out of the bank machine, but they lose it when I do any number of things. It could given to the neighbour's kid for cutting grass, or to any small store that doesn't have a scanner, or even just broken into smaller bills that aren't associated with me at the nearest Kwiki-Mart.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
How can anyone prove that you removed them? Simple posession of a bill without a chip won't get anyone a search warrant for your home- we have some legal rights, even under the DMCA.
"You know, the golf course is the only place he isn't handicapped."
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
Of course! For I am a tractable law abiding citizen. Surely the only people who would mind are thieves and child molesters and drug dealers and commies and satanists and terrorists and (shudder) copyright pirates, right?
Seriously, you want to know how this will be pushed? War on Drugs. A recent test on banknotes in London showed that 99% of them contained traces of cocaine. We must stop the evil! Won't someone please think of the children! And so on.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
- 99% number was class A drugs. Most where coke. not 99%.. read the fscking story.
"banknotes tainted with cocaine. [...] Scientists have found that more than 99% of banknotes tested from the capital were contaminated by the class A drug[singular]."But of course, I understand that actually reading the story carefully yourself before posting excitedly your pedantic - and incorrect - correction isn't in the spirit of /. ;)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If you have 20 million of the damn things all sending a signal from a seafront warehouse in Miami, then our heroes will be saved the donkey work and can spend their time doing what matters - getting the girl.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Once the "bill chip" becomes available, I propose to test how well it works.
If you all send me one new bill of every denomination I will spend them wisely for you at various locations. If you can track the cash, then obviously I'll have to try harder to go undetected with the next batch you send me to test. If you can't, then I've done my job.
I offer my services freely and expect no renumeration for my time, effort or bare cheek.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The onwards march of science now gives companies and governments another tool in the fight against consumer "rights", a concept spurned by laissez-faire captialists (it interferes with wealth creation after all). And despite the God-given gift of our Constitution by our noble Founders, the rights of every American to live how they please have been slowly stripped from them in court case after court case and paid-for piece of legislation introduced to our lawmakers. For unfortunately, the Founders were only men, and despite their far-seeing attempts to ensure freedom for all Americans, they could not have forseen the evils that modern society has made for itself.
Like other schemes this will be introduced in the name of the greater good. The Government will undoubtedly start marking money as a means of tracking down criminals, especially drug users and dealers, who always a handy foil for attacking freedom, and counterfeiters (already aided by the Monopoly money we use here). If we're lucky we'll be told, if we're not it'll be buried in a press release about a new set of baknotes being released, with the majority of people kept in the dark my the major news houses, always willing to turn a blind eye in exchange for other news rights to more people-friendly news stories.
And where do these tactics lead? Past experiance has shown that whenever new measures such as this are introduced, the criminals get smarter - witness the discovery of an almost-finished submarine in Columbia for smuggling drugs! When they find a way to get around this (and let's not forget how we're quite happy to skim the profits off of laundering drug money while decrying where it comes from), what will the Government do next?
Will it be us that gets a chip next? As chips get smaller it will become a simple task to embed one under your skin, which could provide data on you wherever you go, whatever you do. Consider the development of air-powered "hyposprays" and how easily they could be adapted to chip you from the moment you were born. Think this is unlikely? Perhaps so, but we've been warned about it for a long time, and it is inevitable that governments like ours act only to increase their own power, while denying honest citizens their own.
Does this mean that i can finally just traceroute my money to see where the hell they went?
For those of you who aren't aware, we already have this technology imbedded into TODAY's paper currency. Ever notice the little strip about 1 inch from the left edge of the bill? That's the secret CIA transponder chip that is being used to trap the flow of currency. The FBI mind control conspirists want you to believe that it's just an additional counterfeit protection, but there are those of us out there who know the truth. The secret microchips imbedded into every US bill allow the NSA, CIA, and the FIBI to track you're whereabouts almost everywhere you go. They have covert sensors imbedded in airport metal detectors, and those little doors that open automatically at the supermarket. Burn all of your money right now before the CIA hypno-robuts eat your soul!
"Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or dead." -Kurt Cobain
Might we actually get to the point where the only way to make a purchase w/o any sort of record, is to purchase w/ precious metals? With this sort of technology, I could easily see the use of raw gold being used as currency.
I'll add a sig just as soon as I clean up this room...
However, from the point of view of counterfeiting hindrance, the possibilities are really big. The basis for avoiding counterfeiting is to use some device in the money that's cheap to make in big quantities, but requires big expensive equipment as an initial investment. Chips absolutely check that list. A world full of chip-money, would be a world in which our money would be worth more, as counterfeiting is reduced and money laundering too.
Don't hope too much on that, however. Fat suitcases filled with untraceable money get traded every day, and many of them end in the hands of people that take decisions. They are not going to shoot themselves in the foot, so to say.
--
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Do you think those things will be open source?
Linux *is* user friendly. It's not idiot-friendly or fool-friendly!
How long 'till they combine this with some sort of tracking technology to see where I spend my money? Although this might be usefull in crimes like bank robberies and massive fraud cases, I really dont see many other uses for this.
Don't get me wrong. I think this is a cool device that could have many great uses. It could be added to packages (instead of just UPC codes) and act as a combination content identifier and anti-theft system (provided that they can increase the range a little). Thieves would be incredibly surprised when something that they thought wasn't tagged turned out to be. Hospitals could even use this device (temporarily implanted on or under the skin on a patient) to help make sure they don't amputate the leg of the wrong patient. But, I just don't see any reason to put these things into monetary currency.
GreyPoopon
--
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Having the chip means you would be able to trace money, which is no bad thing. (I doubt drug dealers would have machines to log the transactions anyway :) ).
I don't know about America, but in the UK the money is not ours, but lent to us while still being property of the Bank of England (and the Queen). This means that they can put these in the money no questions asked.
It's a good idea, and if it means that money that was stolen from you could be located then I'll be very happy to have some.
Chips in your money. Heh now they can know exactly how much money is on you at any time. Sophisticated crooks could use this to detect how much money is in a store or on a person. The government could use satellites to track certain bills anywhere they go. IE Stolen money. Dont let them start! It's like high gas prices, once you get used to it you dont B*tch so much. But it keeps going up more. They'll take a little of your freedom. You B*tch some but learn to live without it. Then they take more!
Chips can't be bent, washed, crushed, heated, etc. Embedded electronics in currency, clothes, media, or durable goods will fail. No matter how small they can make the chip, it will never compare to the capabilities of the ID materials created by Inkode .
most subways are independently owned and yes I'm sure they deposit most of thier cash
http://Lenny.com
4 great justice!
"... Some anti-terrorist snoop looks at your purchases and raises a red flag since you now have a lot of ammo (and thus they know what kind of gun you have)..."
Don't you have to go through some sort of registration process to buy guns anyway, to make sure you're not a lunatic (or similar)?
--
This message brought to you from Incompetence Central
If you wrap your wallet in aluminum foil they can't possibly read it at a distance. Uh ohhh there goes the library. run the noney past a magnet and burn the suckahs off. whack them with a hammer, they're probably big enough to appreciate a little force or put a hot cup of coffee down on it.
Hey the face value is the face value so you don't loose anything. I always like changing a digit on a bill so a machine will read the coffee stain instead of the bill. Heck I got this pen full of coffee. trace that you moderating swines... prove intent ... 'its jes' a blueberry stain yo' 'onah.'
If a hospital has a cafeteria, than it is classified as a restuarant as well. What, you think just because it's a hospital that it's exempt from laws dealing with restaurants? I bet next you're going to say that Safeway is a grocery store, despite the fact it has a little pharmacy inside it, so they can give you whatever drugs they want, prescription or no prescription, because they are a grocery store, not a pharmacy... As for partnerships.... Starting July 1st, in the good ol' US of A, banks can share our information with any subsidiaries or "partnership" businesses with or without our permission. So you know the first thing those guys will do is share our information with everybody and their brother, and when the feds come knocking on their door, they will say they are in a partnership with company _x_ for the purpose of selling our information...
I frequently go to that bank, give them 5 twenties and ask for a $100.00 bill, especially around Chinese New Years time for those red envelopes... Are they now going to have me fill out a form in triplicate every time I want to do that? If they don't, their whole system will be flushed down the toilet right there... And the bank cannot say, "We cannot process that transaction for you if you don't fill out that form", because I can just point to the phrase on the twenty dollar bill that says that this is legal tender for all debts public and private. It does NOT say this is only legal if you fill out form #XYZ-123.
Look up the definition of "Legal Tender"... In both the Webster and Oxford, and probably all the others, I only checked these two..... (From Webster) Main Entry: legal tender Function: noun Date: 1739 : money that is legally valid for the payment of debts and that must be accepted for that purpose when offered
This will never work. Since cash must be exepted for all debt public and private.... What if I owe the guy next door some money. Lets say we split the costs of a bbq... (reasonable right?) Is my neighbor going to have to lug out a cash scanner, and connect a modem to the bank, to accept my cash? The bank already charges for their credit card scanners, and take a cut of the transaction, usually 1.5 to 3%. So you know they will do the same with cash scanners. Some businesses already don't want to pay for credit card scanners, and some even pass on the fees to consumers. Some even do it illegally, as its illegal to have a surcharge to use credit. The correct loophole is to say there is a cash-discount, but I guess some business don't care. What do you think is going to happen with cash scanners? Everyone will say "fsck you" to the bank. What about businesses overseas that accept US currency? What about businesses in Mexico that accept US currency?
When I pay my neighbor, he is not obligated to take my Visa Card, but by federal law, he must accept US Currency as payment of my debt. Does this mean every person on this planet will be getting a US Cash-Scanning machine, and modem, in order to accept cash payment for debt owed by US-Residents? Shyeeeeeeeeeeeah right..... Since not everyone will be getting one of these new fangled machines, there is no hope of this working.
Let's try a hypothetical situation. Say you have some old stuff to get rid of, and you have a garage sale. Someone comes up and buys a lava lamp for $20. Problem: In a previous transaction, they got a fake bill, and are using that bill to pay for your lava lamp. You have no way of knowing until you decide to buy a CD and are confronted with "Sorry, sir, but your twenty is fake."
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
Right now these things require reader units. If in the future they don't, then comes trouble. I can just imagine if they manage to get a GPS transponder running in a chip that size - you could be tracked everywhere...
http://www.themeparks.ie
Amadou Diallo wasn't killed by the State as in Big Brother. The Federal gov't had nothing to do with what NY cops do. He wasn't killed by the State of New York either. There wasn't a memo circulating around from the Governer to kill this guy. He wasn't killed by the City Government of New York either. Whether you like the Mayor or not, he didn't order an execution. He was killed by men who did wrong. To put another spin on it, McVeigh was executed by the Federal gov't, according to the laws passed by the duly elected representatives. If you don't like such laws, vote for people who will change them. If people who would change them don't get elected, it is because the majority of people who voted chose against your beliefs. That's the problem with living in a democracy: if more people disagree with you then agree with you too bad. But then, if you want, you can always move to the Global South and see if the alternatives are any better.