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Europe Adding RFID Tags to Euro Currency
An EETimes article a few days ago reports that the European Central Bank is planning to add RFID tags to euro bank notes. This would allow each bill to be tracked whenever it is used, and if the chip includes writable memory, to even record its own history.
What's in my wallet is my business. If a storeowner, or anyone with the right equipment can read how much money I have in my pocket, that bugs me. Heck, for all I know a well-equipped hacker/mugger will be able to spot targets using them.
Sure... I can think of a use. Knowing which 'ducks' are carrying lots of cash. Useful for..
a.) Street criminals
b.) Their brethren in Southern State Highway Patrols who rake in more money from non-trial seziure than from state budget allowances. Now we go from Driving While Black to Driving While Black with > $200.
All security measures will be defeated. Besides, crime is becoming more "virtual" - that is, people would rather break an unpatched IIS server and nab 10,000 credit card numbers than try to counterfeit $10,000,000.
How many times do they need to find bills from your ATM withdrawl in the pot dealer's deposit bag before they knock on your door?
This idea was written up at DEC SRC years ago if I am not mistaken.
What happens when the cash register can't "read" your money because its crumpled up, or has been used too often. I often find myself at the grocery store and my debit and credit cards won't read properly without using tape or some other cloodge.
I do like the convenience of card-based money, but not enough to forfeit the anonymous nature of cold hard cash.
Further testing by AMD showed that overclocking a 50 euro note to 100 euros and then removing the 1 euro coin (acting as the heat sink) would simply cause the 50 euro note to fail to respond, but it was not permanently damaged.
Meanwhile, a group from Norway has announced a Linux port to the 500 euro note. Slashdot trolls have announced they can not afford to make beowulf clusters of these notes.
John
John
say about 30 years? that way I can live the rest of my life out without having to worry about having a chip imprinted in my skin that can be tracked by anyone who wants to throw money at a receiver? or having my wallet surveyed by a potentiel mugger? Or have my cars speedometer turn me in for doing 80 down the turnpike???? Please folks, someone invent a time machine so I can live in 1971 and drive a friggin barracuda?
#include sig.h
Say they bust a drug dealer on the street. They take his money, find the bills that didn't come from his ATM, and find out who had the remaining bills last. I'm betting they'll try for a court order to raid the homes of the people who last had those bills. If you happened to give one of those bills to a street vendor who then gave it to the drug dealer, then, well, thanks for helping out your government - hope that door isn't too expensive to replace.
The moral of this story is that the system can't work until every point of currency exchange is surveilled electronically, which will effectively be never, which means the information will always be meaningless at best. The risk is making assumptions about the validity of the data (which I'm sure They will).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I don't see what the big deal is. As other people have already said, this is likely to be used only on the big bills (500 Euro). Cash machines don't issue these bills, and most banks will not give them out to customers unless requested, or when withdrawing very large amounts of money. For many people, even holding a 500 Euro bill will be a rare event. Spending it is not easy too, as most stores are unlikely to accept it for payment of small items, such as donuts.
And even if you're handling these kinds of bills, it's not easy to tie the bill's serial number to a particular person, and it's fairly easy to circumvent by trading it for somebody else's 500 Euro note.
Compare this with credit cards where every single transaction, no matter how small, is already logged in a database, with full details about the owner, product, place, date and time. How come those aren't "unacceptable" ?
I get tired of all those claims that the "government" is going to see what I buy in the store. Honestly, the government has better things to do that watch me buy a loaf of bread, a can of coke, and a magazine, when they don't even have enough detectives to solve a significant part of real crimes.
Come on. I've read five notable comments in this thread and they all say in effect "How can I disable this protection to prevent the government from spying on me?"
Yes, I am concerned about my privacy. I find it really painful that so many people have my phone number, my email address, and my home address. People send me offensive ads every day which I wish I could refuse without inviting more.
This said, why are people instantly opposed to money with copy protection? I have no objection to this money unless something goes severely wrong, for example:
The money requires me to input my name and address after acquiring it.
The money breaks if I don't take good care of it.
Retailers refuse to accept it because the copy protection is so burdensome.
The wierd thing is that existing money often has these problems. When I go to the bank and withdraw cash from my account, they ask me for my name and address on the withdrawal form. If I leave a twenty in the wash a few too many times, it might fall apart - sometimes you can get people to still take it, but often not. And most inexplicably, the new US $100 bill that has so many copy protection features on it - I can't use it anywhere! People simply refuse it and say "there's too many forgeries around." Isn't that odd?
If the ECB puts a 1k data chip on their money, and the money still works like normal money, I will encourage it.
Maybe I just don't have enough vices requiring anonymity...and those that do are free...
GTRacer
- C'mon McD's! Put in the debit terminals!
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
barter (we'll ignore registered property like vehicles) you don't have to use government issued currency you choose to.
I suspect that you would be on the receiving end of some "interest" from the local taxation authorities if your bartering became too..*ahem* visible.
Sad but true.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
I'm sure some of you already know about wheresgeorge.com... but if not, its a really fun thing to do. Get an account, and voluntarily track your own bills by entering the serial numbers. Each bill gets marked, and hopefully somebody else will see it and enter the serial numbers again. I've had a bit of fun with it, seeing my bills travel around the country.
But seriously though, one of the benefits of using paper currency is its anonymity. I buy my copy of 2600 every quarter with plain cash, just because I"m ultra paranoid. Hard currency is used in ways that will boggle the mind, so its somewhat hard to believe the problems that would arrise from money tracking here in the US.
Its probably unconstitutional anyway.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
First of all: the Euro was not pushed by the banks. It was done by the governments.
Second: the European currencies have had fixed rates for a few years now and I still have to see any negative effect of that. The countries that are allowed to join in, have to have a very stable currency. Only fluctuation within a very small band was allowed. If a currency would fluctuate too much, the EMU would act upon by buying or selling the currency. It has been like this for many years now and so far this cooperation has only had benefits. In fact the system has even proven to work already waaay before we came up with the Euro. So why is a fixed currency not fair? If we decide we want to cooperate more, why not fix those rates? Or would you rather have a different currency in every state of the US? That would be more fair by your rules, wouldn't it.
Third: I don't see how the Euro allows any more control than the money we had before does. The cash is just the same, it only looks different and has a different value per unit. There is no additional tracking-system AT ALL. The banks don't get any additional control either, they only change Currency X into EURO and that's it. So what exactly are you talking about?
Next: in what way is the dollar any better than the Euro? Please give me some arguments before saying so. They're both just currencies. Money. Something to prevent us from having to trade cows for computers. It's nothing more than that. The ONLY reason why a currency would be any better, would be that it's value is more stable compared to the value of other currencies. Maybe the dollar is more stable (I don't believe it is, but I may be wrong). One thing I can tell you: the Euro is most certainly a lot more stable than 16 different independant currencies. So that would make the Euro better than all currencies we're using now here in the EU.
Last: What does the amount of civil rights organizations have to do with this? Are there really more of such organizations in the US (as compared to the EU)? Please give me some facts. And then think about why this could be....maybe they're simply needed more in the US?
0x or or snor perron?!
Almost right. An etched copper coil (or more likely aluminum, it's cheaper) can form the antenna, and also a small capacitor/inductor circuit to restrict the response to a narrow band of frequencies, but it can't store serial numbers. The cheapest way by far to do electronic serial numbers is to use a small IC containing the PROM plus interface circuitry. That does have to be connected to either several inches of wire (for the simplest antenna) or to an etched coil (for a more versatile antenna circuit). If you want to read it from several feet away, you probably must have the etched circuit, but the simple wire is enough to read it from a bill inserted into the machine, in a known orientation.
I think antitheft tags use the etched circuit alone. This will echo a signal from a scanner several feet away to tell that a not-paid-for item is walking out the door. The tags aren't unique, but it's not necessary to know _which_ item. If anti-counterfeiting was the sole concern, etched circuits would be nearly as good as a chip-based circuit, and a whole lot cheaper. Each denomination would be tuned differently (so if you bleached a 1 Euro bill and re-printed it as a 100, the scanner would still see it as a 1). Scanners would start at about $50. The biggest counterfeiting threat lately has not been the few "professionals" (they get caught), but thousands of amateurs who get past that bad time before payday by a little work with a color scanner and printer -- it's not real good, but it will get past anyone who doesn't look too close or take time to really feel the paper, or hold it up to the light to check for watermarks and special threads woven in -- so there's about 1% chance a minimum wage clerk or a busy bartender will catch a funny 20 in the US. Any sort of RFID would stop these amateurs.
Professional counterfeiters are rare and usually spend most of their lives in prison because anyone who can etch printing plates, print the money, and sell it, and doesn't take those skills to a legitimate job is either nuts or extraordinarily greedy. So they'll build the business up until the distribution end gets too big, someone gets caught, and turns in others. It might take the T-men a few years, but they persist until the printer is doing 10 to 20, if he's lucky and whatever mobsters are involved don't make sure he won't be around to testify against them.
With or without chips, RFID wouldn't entirely put the pros out of business, but it would make things harder for most of them. Some already have "connections" wherever the paper for currency is made, and since the antenna, and chip if any, have to be added to the papermaking process, they'll get the RFID's too, but probably at double the cost. Those who somehow treat commercially available paper to make it pass for currency paper would be out of business until they figured out how to make the RFID, take two pieces of very thin paper, bond it together with the antenna inside, and still somehow make it look and feel right -- sounds like years of work to me... And if there are any that make their own currency paper, now they have to learn _another_ skill.
How long will it be before laws are passed requiring every transaction to be logged against personal ID? Like, transactions becoming illegal unless they're logged? For example,
"Daddy, can I have 45 euro for a new skirt?"
"Sure sweetheart, here you go"
"But daddy, you've gotta scan the money over to me, or the shops won't accept it"
"Oh sorry, can we do it on your computer, mine's in the middle of something?"
"Sure"
"What do I do?"
"I gotta scan your passport first. Then, I gotta scan my student card, then we scan the 45 euro on the government website, only takes 20 secs"
"Man this feels complicated. I remember the good old days"
"But daddy, we gotts stop the terrorists!"
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Perhaps this could be used in tracking down counterfiters
Well, only if the counterfiters are stupid enough to put real chips in their fake money...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Argh! And I had better text to go with it, too. I should have saved a copy for just this moment. Alas, I'll just recap my concerns from my submission:
1. Because of cost, this will be probably implemented first only in the larger denomination bills. (stated in the article)
2. The security model is flawed. The authentication process encrypts the serial number, so without the algorithm you can't tell the bill's denomination. (You can track the bills by the unique encrypted number, irregardless if you know the algorithm).
3. You put these two facts together, and the mere presence of an RFID bill in your pocket means you have at least ~USD$200. If you have 10 RFID bills, you've got at least $2000. Without bypassing the encryption, you can pick off the most worthwhile people to rob.
4. Fortuantly, these are readable only at a short distance (~12 inches), but two antennas by the bathroom door will scan a whole lot of people.
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Your recent submissons
Here are your recent submissions to Slashdot, and their status within the system:
2001-12-19 16:14:26 RFID in Euro Bank notes by 2005 (articles,money) (rejected)
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I hate to see how the stupid shop clerks will handle this.
/. Privacy Brigade :) ) coming back fake through such tests. Eventually, people will believe the detectors 'cry wolf' so often as to be useless. And you're back at square one.
Give people a simple way to 'verify' if a note is 'good' or not, and they'll use it to the exclusion of all others.
If you're in the US, how often do you see someone holding up a new $10/20/50/100 to check the watermark or security thread or colour-shift ink? Compare it with how often they use those stupid colour-change pens. Exactly the principle this will bring into play. Except that I would suspect that the RFID doohickey is a little more sensitive of mishandling than the chemical structure of the paper.
If they can't make it unbelievably reliable, they'll start to see lots of notes (particularly those with a few years of circulation and mishandling under their belts, or those which recieve modifications by the
Also, I wonder how useful the serial number alone would be as a tracking device. In the US, at least, the same numbers are reused for every series and denomination (for which sufficent quantities are printed). I might have No. A12345678B of the Series 1995 $2, but someone else might be buying drugs with A12345678B from the Series 1977 $100. At the least, you've got to save more information if you want to avoid spurious hits.
It's the mindset to start with. Have you ever put a piece of currency through a shredder and then expected a merchant to accept it? Didn't think so. The same will hold true for nuking electronic tags.
The EU is scary - Europe is often held up as an example (by the liberal media and academia) for the U.S. to follow. What short-sighted fellows our liberal friends are. Europe brought us facism and the Nazis. Why should we be so eager to follow in these kinds of footsteps? Already we are hearing of people being lashed out at by the EU for merely speaking out against the EU.
Sounds like 1984 to me - "obedience is freedom" or somesuch. It's giant lumbering soon-to-be-dictatorships like this that America needs to stay as far away as possible from - this includes the U.N. - the EU is the testing ground for many of the U.N.'s plans, IMHO. If the U.N. succeeds in its grand design, any sovereign qualities a country might have will be null and void (ie, no freedom of speech, no right to keep and bear arms, etc.). We are already seeing freedom of speech being stamped out in the EU and I'm sure it will only snowball.
Who benefits from this tracking of money? Besides those in government positions? Oh, sure, the usual spectres will be held up as the reasons: terrorists, drug smugglers, and child porn rings. But, what are the REAL reasons to track money to this degree of accuracy? Hmmm? Yes, EU is marching towards a full-on regime. Hopefully, weasely little bureaucrats in America don't try this here. That "Know Your Customer" crap they tried to pass here a while ago looks like small potatoes compared to this. You see, it's not about those spectres that are always raised - it's about making sure they can collect all the taxes they can, or having the ability to know where all your assets are, and possibly seize them - in other words, to control your life as much as possible.
> Not very likely.
Very likely. I am German and I know people that pay such huge amounts, e.g. for cars and apartments, via cash. I do *not* know anyone who does *not* do that.