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New US $20 bills Released, Colors & Layout Change
JayBonci writes "CNN is running a story with the newest advances in the original copy-protection arms race, a new US $20 dollar bill. From the article, specifically color and different number arrangements as an improvement over 1996's "Big Face" dollar bills." Little off the norm for Slashdot, but it's interesting since computers have vastly simplified forgery.
is the next story for today, "How to use your Linux machine for forgery?"
:(
This is off the norm, with the decline in jobs I don't see too many 20s!
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Free your mind.
Send them to me and I'll dispose of them in an environmentally safe way.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Holy crap, redesigning bills every 7-10 years? What the hell are they thinking?
When the current $20 bills came out, I heard of people having trouble using them, because apparently a few people somehow didn't hear that new bills were being released so obviously thought they were counterfeit. The current bills are pretty obvious, though, now that everybody knows about them. Now they're saying there will be subtle changes every few years, so in another decade there will be like 4 different versions of the $20 bill, ALL LEGAL. If you saw a fifth version, which was counterfeit, would it be obvious to you?
Yeah, they're including new security features. That's cool and all, but how often do people really check them? Sure, on a $100, people check. On $20 they usually don't. They still go by appearance and texture, just like they always have.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
You can find some better pics here.
If they change them any faster, You'll be able to make your own and pass them off as the latest, newest , most non counterfitiest $20.
Eschew Obfuscation
I can finally use all the colors in my ink-jet cartridge.
Best Windows Freeware
It's about time the U.S. has updated their bills, but I don't think that this is enough. Take a look at British Money to see how difficult you can make it for a counterfitter. Big watermarks, multiple color dyes that penetrate the fibres of the paper. The old U.S. bills you could bleach a $1 bill clean and print a $20 dollar bill on it, and nobody would be the wiser.
Ironic that the most precious thing a nation could have would also be the cheapest.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
I've worked in the financial world for a bit, and I'm always surprised by how bad most counterfit bills look.
95% of the time, counterfeit bills are accepted by people who don't seem to notice that while the bill corners say $20, George Washington is in the center. Or that they're printed on normal grade paper.
I'm sure the government is making the change to the $20 for "big time" counterfeiters, but it seems like most of the time it can be prevented on the retail level by people just using their heads.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
they haven't changed the size?! Why is it that no blind people have sued over this?
Isn't it about time that different dollar bills start coming in different sizes? Isn't it pretty standard for counterfeiters to bleach a small denomination bill and print the image of larger ones? Different sizes would at least make this practise a bit more difficult. That doesn't stop forgery in euro-land, but it does make it just a bit more difficult. I thought that holographs would be pretty effective, but in day to day commerce nobody looks to closely. The best way to make sure that your bills are genuine is using ones that are really unpopular. Last weekend was the first time that I saw a 200 Euro bill. And that was one and a half years after the introduction of the currency.
Hank! White!
http://www.moneyfactory.com/newmoney/flash/interac tivebill/index.cfm
Not only are they all different colors, with holograms and different sizes, but they also have a raised pattern on each bill, a tiragle, square or circle. I understand why tehy cant change the size of our bills easily, but a raised pattern on the bill would be easy.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
In Japan for years now, not only are the coins and dollar bills used in different colors (for easy glances to see how much money someone has), but they are of different sizes and shapes that make the coins recognizable by the blind. The 10,000 Yen bill is the longest, while the 1,000 is the shortest. Even the 5 Yen coin has a hole in it to separate it from the other coins (yes, this also goes back thousands of years to the Chinese "cash" coins).
Seeing as how all American bills are of the same size, I imagine that it must be slightly frustrating for a blind person to trust someone they don't know to be completely honest about money and take $5 instead of $50. Unfortunately, I can't see the Treasury Department putting some sort of Braille marker or other deliniating factor into future money production.
--Chag
This will be a boon for counter fitters.
"Don't be an ass, it's not counterfeit, it's the new twenty that just came out this fall."
All a counter fitter needs to do is come up with a bill chock full of security features and start spending it like there's no tomorrow. As people get used to the new bill every few years, it will become commonplace.
Remember the story of the person who passed a $3.00 bill with Bill Clinton's face on it? All they could charge him with was failure to pay, since he hadn't really counter fitted any money.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I told him he was all horrible and evil for doing so - but I'm not sure I wouldn't have done the same.
Schnapple
This is part of a cunning plan in collusion with HP to make forging the new colour bills prohibitively expensive due to the new massive overhead of time limited, half full HP ink cartridges.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
At the behest of the FBI (or maybe it is the secret service since counterfeiting is their purview) all color photocopiers in the USA embedded a watermark with a unique serial number identifying the copier used.
For some reason this fact is not well documented, but here is at least one reference(pdf) in an IBM report from 1998. See the section on tracking.
This can be a problem for cheap counterfeiters (well-equipped ones won't have a problem either acquiring a copier on the blackmarket or using a modified one) but it also can suck for whistleblowers making copies of documents. If the copier used can be identified it makes it that much easier for a vengeful company/government to identify the whistleblower and take "corrective action."
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
in europe, many stores, kisoks, etc. have purchased small uv light detectors, especially after a flood of fake 50 bills. the interesting thing is that washed bills of any denomination usually fail this test. at one point i had carried a 50 that i had been told was fake by my bank for six months. i went to another bank and asked them about it, they told me that it was real, and then took me downstairs to while they checked it with the 100,000 machine they have. they also explained that there are very simple tests for checking a bill; they have little ridges stamped into the bill that can't be washed off and are very difficult to fake.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
Date: May 12, 2003
Re: New version of $20 bill
Dear Treasury Department (cc to Bureau of Printing and Engraving):
The new release of the product looks ok. I think it still needs some work, though. There are some additional features that I would like to see in the upcoming $20 bill v. 2.3 beta release:
1. P2P sharing
2. Centerfolds (!) (note: not Andrew Jackson - think modern, maybe Denise Richards)
3. Self-generation (try making paper from those Wizard's Apprentice broomsticks)
4. Encryption, so that only I can use my bills
BTW, please, please do implement a "software activation" thingy. That would be really lame.
Respectfully,
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
No.. but they are edging more towards looking like canadian bills (or even euros). Seriously though, I've always found that one the problems with American money is that it is too hard to tell the denominations of the bills apart at a glance. If they are going to start using different colors on different bills, good on them. Or they could go even one step further like the Euro and have different denomiations be slightly different sizes. I know this sounds wacky, but imagine trying to use American cash if you are blind.
Also... the article mentions 2-dollar bills. Since when have the States had Twos? We (Canada) got rid of ours almost a decade ago and the states is just starting to make them now? talk about behind the times. Or is that a joke?
lysergically yours
(soapbox)
What I wanna know is, when are they going to phase out the dollar bill? The Sacagawea dollar coin went the way of the Susan B because they kept printing singles. Coins have a pocket life of 30 years, compared to 3 for bills. If we're gonna spend the time and money in a coin let's actually make it work.
(/soapbox)
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
One of the things that surprised me with the latest version of our Canadian bills was that braille is used! (Bank of Canada - currency - accessibility features)
...
I do wonder how well the braille stands up to the wear-and-tear such bills would go through during the normal lifetime of paper currency
YS.
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
This was actually considered, attempted, and dismissed. The problem with the hologram was that it didn't survive all of the torture tests required, since paper money gets the shit kicked out of it in circulation.
If memory serves, I think the hologram they designed had passed all but one of the torture tests. These included baking them in extremely hot ovens, rolling them, washing them, etc.
The test on which it failed was the crumple test. They set the bill on top of a metal tube, and a shaft came down and pressed the bill into the tube, crushing it incredibly. When it came out and was flattened, the hologram was severely wrinkled and crushed, and the holographic image was (obviously) no longer able to be seen.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
If they'd just take Jackson off the twenty, I'd be happy.
If you're not aware, this is the guy that was responsible for deporting many of the native americans to Oklahoma. You might recall that the Cherokee were pretty well "integrated" into society at the time, and they did what any other wronged group would do: they sued in court.
And won. The Supreme Court ruled that "the laws of the state of Georgia 'can have no force' within Cherokee boundaries."
This fine president, who we honor by putting his name on our money, said "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!"
What a fine example of our American politics.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
Australia has been using plastic notes for years. These notes are much harder to forge they have a transparent section and a translucent dual sided motiff incorporated into the design to aid forgery identifcation. And that is just for starters, other benefits include that the notes last many times longer (and hence despite the higher cost to produce they save the treasury loads), they go through the wash just fine (and you can even have them in your board shorts whilst surfing without fear of being unable to buy a pie for lunch). They don't really tear (they do but its much harder to get started on the rip) and are generally much more durable. They look kinda weird even for Australian currency, and the one drawback is that IIRC they are a bit more difficult to handle if you are manipulating lots of cash manually.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
What problem is solved by adding another new design?
The two previous designs are still legally in circulation. Since they were / are apparently counterfeitable (is there such a word?), adding a new design does nothing to make the older designs un-counterfeitable.
Unless the older designs of currency are de-monetized, new designs do not solve a problem. (Older readers with military service may remember the MPC[1] script coversion days[2].) Yes, eventually almost all paper money will wind up being captured by banks and turned in for destruction. But it takes years to remove most of a type of bill and the remaining copies are still legal money. So the older patterns are still vulnerable.
[1] MPC - Military Payment Certificates. See google or eBay.
[2] Script conversion days - A twenty-four hour period during which all personnel were required to exchange their MPCs for the same value in a new series (new colors, new pictures). At the end of the conversion period, old series script was worthless and had value only as a colorful curiosity. Failure to exchange meant that you lost. No excuses, no make-ups, see the chaplain.
My thought is this, and I'm surprised it hasn't floated its way to the top of the modded posts already:
Of what use is a new anti-counterfit bill if they don't recall the old, easily counterfitted ones? Counterfitters won't even try to adjust to the new bills if the old ones are still in circulation and legal tender - there's just no reason to.
That green slime had it coming.
Pictures
The President on the $2 bill is Thomas Jefferson.
We run the web infrastructure for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing on our DataHost platform. Starting about 2 hours ago (when the unveiling press conference ended) we've been sustaining over 20Mbits per second of traffic. As I look at the monitor now, we're doing 33Mbits/sec. Most of the traffic has been US-based, though we expect an overnight surge as Asia wakes up. Gotta go back and look at histograms now - Bolivia just took a keen interest in the new $20 note. Don't forget to stop by the BEP store (http://www.moneyfactory.com/store) and pick-up some neat collectibles (though, nothing with the new twenty until later this year). All the info on the new twenty is at http://www.moneyfactory.com/newmoney.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
On this page, the mint encourages you to "View, download or print glossy images of the new notes" from this pdf!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Anonymity. The people with the tinfoil hats already tend to think the plastic strip with the #'s printed on it (20 20 20 for a $20 for example) includes a magnetic id that tracks who spends what, where. If your suggestion came to pass, the anonymity of purchases made with cash would be just as transparent to law enforcement as credit cards.
While I may never have purchased anything illegal, it still remains that I don't want the government tracking my every purchase. Allowing money tracking (which I do think the currency changes over the next 50 years will work towards) is a slippery slope. Sure, you can claim its ok because its being used to thwart counterfitters, but with all that nice juicy data in the computer they can find all the people who bought pot from some dealer they caught. And then someone decides to extend the 2050 Patriot Act to allow the feds to track down the people who bought certain books without having to ask the bookseller or librarian (like the current Patriot Act allows them to do).
I like my anonymity, thin as that veil is. Please don't give the government an excuse to take it away.
Why paper? Polymer notes last longer, are much harder to damage, and are much more difficult to counterfeit. Also, adding extra anti-counterfeiting measures such as transparent windows, micro-print, and watermarks is simple.
Why so much green? All the US notes are green, which makes distinguishing between denominations take longer than it should. If the notes were coloured, only a quick glance would be required to check denomination, especially for people with vision impairment.
To speak from my own experience in Australia, it's been all polymer notes since 1990. Each note is a different colour and length, doesn't rip, and is terribly difficult to counterfeit.
I'm just surprised this new $US20 isn't polymer. The technology works - why not use it?
I was in a coffee shop about 3 am one Saturday when this kid tried to pay for his coffee with a fake ten (This is in Canada, the land where Moose rule).
The fake was easy to spot, printed on smooth paper on a colour ink jet printer - what made me laugh was some of it had got wet and the ink had run...
We called the cops and the kid disappeared.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
1. The new design is different from the old one.
Doesn't matter, the old design is still (il)legal tender.
2. A new design takes time to counterfeit.
Exactly, so they'll keep using the old ones (see #1). However, their are the "king of the mountain" counterfeiters that are just in it for the accomplishment of gettting away with a phony bill, but they also do not typically do large runs of their bills.
3. New designs incorporate tougher security measures.
See #2 and #1.
4. New note designs promote consumer vigilance.
I guess, but if I have only explicitly checked my money for fun to see the different things added to the new bills. I don't really care if I have a phony bill, if it was good enough to be given to me, its good enough to spend.
5. New bank notes are successfully introduced and old ones replaced every day.
No, the old ones are not replaced, they are still valid money, and every 20years is hardly every day. Plus the note in question has been replaced in 1996 so the new one would be 7 years.
What a dull design. I don't understand why America never tries something a little more radical with their money. Australian money has a much better design overall. Their bills appear to be made of a plastic or paper/plastic hybrid. They also have a clear portion which would be much harder to counterfeit. But I think the best feature of Australian bills is that the actual physical width of the bill increases with the value of the denomination by about 5 mm per bill. That makes it so much easier to tell ata glance what value your bill has without needing to actually read the numbers. I, for one, would love to see the old fashioned greenback go the way of the T-rex.
Un-news
I, for one, am very sick of all this changing currency. I run a laundromat and depend on a bill changer. If the currency changes then I must pay almost $1000 for a new bill reader to accept the new 20s. The bill reader does not make me money, it is just the cost of doing business. Every time our stupid government decides to change the currency, that's more out of my pocket and into the pockets of the damnable changer manufacturers.
First they try to stop us making 'back ups' of our music and videos (for personal use of course), then they make it even harder for us to make 'back ups' of our money.
Thats just stupid
-- http://www.spran.co.uk (America doesnt exist)
http://dave1010uk.blogspot.com/ - the st
I recently travelled to the US from New Zealand and found the money a real pain. Kiwi money is plastic and all different colours and sizes. Over here you simply look at the edge of the notes in your wallet to see the correct colour and fish out that one. While in the US I had to remove the notes from my wallet first so I could read the numbers. As a tourist this made me feel uncomfortable about doing public transactions, not being one who likes to 'flash the cash'.
I worked on note vending machines at the time of our change from paper to plastic money so I was one of the people invited to the Reserve Bank to see the features of the new money. We where given real and counterfeit US money and asked to tell which was which, it was impossible to tell to the untrained eye. Then we where shown some of the methods used to try and counterfeit the Australian currency, which uses the same technology as ours. At was funny to see bits of paper with holes cut in them for the clear window etc. They also showed off some ideas they haven't used yet. One was a clear window at each end with printed lines that create an interference pattern when the note is folded in half. I also saw what happens if you over heat the plastic notes, they shrink ! But don't worry you have to get them real hot to do that. On a practical note (no pun intended) you need to look at static handling for new plastic notes in note handling machines or else the stick together.