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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?
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.
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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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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?
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.
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.
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.)
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"
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?
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!
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
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.
Ron Obvious
Look at it another way: Will it get me convicted by a jury of my peers? Go back to your original example: I get the $100 from an ATM, and later they find it in the possession of an person who they convict of selling illegal things. So now they drag me before court, since my $100 obviously was used to buy other illegal things from this same person.
Are we to assume that this is the only evidence? Then I'm only in trouble if I live in Texas (something I stopped doing over 10 years ago, thank goodness) and my public defender is sleeping through the trial. Even a rookie attorney on his first case should have heard of the "presumption of innocence". This will just be too weird for a jury.
Are we to assume there's other evidence? Like, if they find the illegal stuff in my possesion... Ah well then, that's another matter, isn't it?
Frankly, I would be worrying a lot more about the cameras in Tampa Bay (coming soon to a community near you!) or whatever form thermal imaging will take now to get over that small inconvenience with the constitution... or (as I suggested in the posting that started this) worry more about them tracking my credit cards and any other forms of electronic transfer I may have, than worry about what they store in a passive 128 bit memory.
Finally, you ask Are you going to "argue away" a large database keeping track of all the large transactions you've ever made?. Well, frankly, yes --- in this case. For cost reasons. One thing to always remember is that, apart from the space aliens or the scientoligists' bugbears (thetans? whatever they call 'em), all the other conspiracies are bound by earthly limitations like finite funding, finite memories, finite amount of time and "human resources" available for storing and maintaining their evil work. One can always argue, of course, that they have much better technology than we could even imagine, but that way leads madness, or at least the lunatic fringe...
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
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
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
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.