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RFID Tags in Euro Banknotes
psychictv writes "CNET News.com is reporting that Euro notes could be embedded with RFID tags in the future. 'RFID (radio frequency identification) tags also have the ability of recording information such as details of the transactions the paper note has been involved in...'" The EU has been considering this for a while. You'll never even know they're there.
science is a religion
Now all I have to do is put an RFID reader next to someone's wallet/purse and see if it's worth it for me to mug them.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
"RFID (radio frequency identification) tags also have the ability of recording information such as details of the transactions the paper note has been involved in."
I think you'd be hard pressed to find an RFID tag that could record transaction information inside a bill. You'd need an external device to do the recording.
Put together a small body-mount RFID transponder and walk through a crowd. Go after the person who has the most RFID responses. Much better yield for one's mugging efforts.
Now people in the EU will know who to sue when they get testicular cancer from all the Euros in their front pockets.
Trolling is a art,
That would make robberies pretty pointless. If your cash register knows what money is in it, you can press the button to say "it was all stolen" and then no other connected cash register will accept that money anymore unless you get it authenticated by the police or whatever... I can see many massive misuses, but there's also a lot of potential good uses...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
According to this doo-hickey here, you've got money in your shoe too...
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
They'll never notice that you've taken them out.
Micrrowave your cash today!
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
Must... make... RFID... writer...
"RFID tags also have the ability of recording information such as details of the transactions the paper note has been involved in.
Wonderful. Now how am I supposed to buy porn? Can't use credit card, it gets tracked. Can't use cash, it gets tracked. And with the price of porn these days, who's strong enough to haul around that much change?
Since we all know portable RFID readers will become available commerically, what's to stop a thief from carrying around his reader and then summing up how much people in the street have in their wallets? Just wait around late at night, wait for some woman to walk by with $300, and then just rob her? I'd bet there would be more muggings if the average pay went from $40 to a few hundred...
Damn, I didn't realize they could be that small.. I don't know how durable it would be though? If there was a way to make certain that they were in the notes, I could see it being a nice way to check to see if the notes added up to the value punched in by the cashier: a kind of redundancy. It would take a while til the new notes with these things were in decent enough circulation to make this viable, but would still be interesting. Too many people would start to rely on it though, which might not be a good idea.
:)
I'm just wondering how easy it would be for something that tiny to get scratched/cut off? I'm not so worried about privacy implications (maybe I'm not paranoid enough), but I'm sure there'll be some posts of that line soon enough.
No, I haven't read the article.
Why bother? Why not push for full digital convergence and have everyone use EFT for ALL transactions? We're headed that way anyway, I haven't used paper cash in nearly a month now for anything.
I have no tag line
"Well, I see you picked up this 5 Euro note as change for your purchase of Zovirax on May 12th at the BogoPharm pharmacy on the South Side. You know, you really should be more careful about who you sleep with, Mrs. Zambezi."
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
You can just go to http://www.wheresgeorge.com/. ;)
And if you take them of, they could use you as illegaly removing the copyright protection ;)
The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication - Homer Simpson
I'm kidnapping all your unmarked bills! You'll never see them again! Unless you pay a ransom of more than it is worth.
Traditionally I've called them bank robbers and such. Otherwise robbing a bank suddenly got more profitable if you can kidnap money.
Imagine asking a ransom of $50 on a $1 bill? Recursive theft!
Wouldn't this be a fairly decent way to track people? Most people carry money on them, and while the money wouldn't have a unique identifier, I'd imagine someone who's clever could sidestep such. But hey, it would probably be a great way to detect counterfeiting, you know, for about a month :-p
Tinfoil hats encouraged while reading this post (Too late!)
What about the Current Euro Notes? Will they recall all the notes that and then redistribute them so that they all have the RFID?
The EU has been considering this for a while. You'll never even know they're there.
Yeah until the police come to your house late at night asking questions. I guess this is the end of cold cash being the last refuge of private transaction.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Now I can launder my money in the microwave oven.
European Drug Distributor: Hello, Mister Colombian Drug Lord. Here is the money, I promised you.
Drug Lord: Hola, my French friend. I assume you've prepared the money as I specified?
Distributor: Indeed! Not only are these new notes, freshly received through my cover business, but they have been washed in muddy water, microwaved, and then dried in my daughter's basement.
Drug Lord: Ecellent! Here is the ten kilos of my finest cocaine. Good day to you!
Yeah, a real drug transaction isn't going to go nearly like this, but having the money check what kind of transactions its going through isn't going to work if there is *any* kind of money laundering going on and if *any* kind of competant disabling of RFID tags takes place.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
by microwaving all your money before hand?
Um, excuse me. What about the privacy factor in all this?
If the government / police are able to track illegal transactions then what is stopping them looking at my normal transactions? I don't want just anybody having access to the information about where I buy everything from my lunch to my porn.
This is cash we are talking about and they wanna watch it. Pfft.
Cheap web hosting
At the bank/machine you are id'd as you get the cash. Your id is tagged to the cash. It becomes possible to trace that cash back to you.
This could destroy thieves and black markets.
Example 1:
Bob has cash. This is known by the system.
Bob has cash stolen. This is reported. Cash is spent in store with electronic cash tracing. This is Bob's stolen cash, a camera catches a picture of the transaction. Theif is id'd.
Example 2:
Cops bust a drug lab and find cash. They know who took the cash out of the bank. They now have a whole list of suspects to check out for posession of drugs.
Just curious. THeoretically, of course.
This wont fly. If they dont have an anonomous way of spening the countries cash, they will use something else. Expect a huge groundswell of foregin cash and gold to get started. It is noones busisness what i spend my money on.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I knew there were some shady characters here on the dot, but still. A tad extreme.
The real point of this whole thing is that a store would probably be required (or coherced) to have a "money reader".
These stores would most likely not have access to information as the RFID would only be an ID, not any more information than that.
A centrally managed database would serve (does anyone else here type "server" whenever typing serve?) to keep all the locations / purchase IDs.
This is very much similiar to credit cards. A store takes your number, but doesn't know all the rest of the stores you've shopped with.
At least in the near to mid term.
RFID aware cash registers won't be very useful for a while. If you leave bills in your pocket and you do a wash with the bills in your pants, your money would then become useless. RFID tags are simply not rugged enough yet to be used in that way.
science is a religion
Strippers, hookers, drug dealers, public utilities, congress persons, ...
See the connection?
does this mean it would be possible to turn your 1 euro bills into 100 euro bills by re-writing or replacing the RFID?
Am I the only one who thinks this is a good idea? As long as it's done correctly, it should really cut down on counterfeiting without too many privacy concerns. Also, it will take the concept of tracking money to the extreme. Instead of having to write on the notes and hoping people enter the serial number on the website, you can just query the bill itself and it'll tell you where it's been! That seems pretty cool. It would also help cut down on money laundering, money theft, etc.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
This is part of the Mark of the Beast.
Revelation 13:16-17 "...All people were forced to put a mark on their right hand or forehaed. Wether they were powerful or weak, rich or poor, free people or slaves, they all had to have this mark, or else they could not BUY OR SELL anything..."
Makes sense since Germany is the political power behind the EU and the Pope is the religious power behind Germany (i.e the EU) (the next Pope will be the anti-christ).
You can get rfid tags with storage capability. Think you can get tags with about 4kb of storage right now.
Check the faq at rfid.org
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
So I'm guessing that these little tags cost money. Perhaps they'll only be able to afford to put them in larger bills. (If it costs more than a dollar to make the dollar, wouldn't the dollar then be worth more?) Furthermore, this brings a whole new aspect to laundering money. The dollar I left in my jeans pocket now registers as counterfeit, meanwhile I invision a basement full of workers adding tiny little radio receivers to monopoly money and having it become legit.
*
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.
Its called a 'Credit Card' or even a debit card for those who dont like / cant handle a credit card. Its all tracked, big brother can find your spendding habits, and it ccan be deactivated if its stolen! Just get credit everywhere (McDonalds, I'm talkin to you) and everyone will be all set.
No I didnt spell check this post...
they set us up the bomb!!!
It would be cool if these things could play a little Master of Puppets whenever I rolled a bill into a straw.
Chop your breakfast on a mirror.
There is no valid reason for tagging the money, since anyone who wants a transaction trail could use an e-cash card.
The Powers are going to eliminate the cash economy. Period. Nothing and no one escapes the net.
We are entering a prison like no other in history, for it will be the entire world.
Germany and France have double-digit unemployment right now. Fewer and fewer people have the ability to spend money there every day. So, it may not be the management headache that you think.
Those countries sure have some screwed up priorities, even compared to us in the US.
"Our economy sucks, what should we do?"
"Let's track every piece of cash. That'll do it!"
"Sounds good! Werner! Quick, build a multi-billion dollar system to track every cash transaction in 30 countries!"
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
For one, anyone know what the usable range of these chips are? Must they be activated at point-blank distance, or can the stack of bills be IDd at once from a scanner a few feet away? The article says "With such tags, a stack of notes can be passed through a reader and the sum added in a split second, similar to how inventory is tracked in an RFID-based system." If said tags can then be activated at a distance, would they qualify as more of a surveillance device than a security feature?
Also, is there (or isn't there) the possibility of malfunction, intentional or not? Couldn't someone shoot some sort of HERF gun-type thing at a bag of loot and fry all the chips at once? Does a malfunctioning chip warrant the investigation of individual cases? Many questions down what looks to be the proverbial "slippery slope"...
Losers choose to abuse the use of "loose".
Just to check
1) how long would you have to stick these in a microwave for to burn out the chips.
2) If you built a transmitter that broadcast at the RFID response-request frequency, at what distance could you burn the chips out ?
How much trouble could you cause walking down Oxford Street dsetroying everyone's money.....
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
Officially, the main reason for including these tags is to prevent counterfeiting. Now let's be generous and say that a whole 1% of all Euros are fake (the real number would be much closer to 0.0001%). I doubt that these tags would increase the cost of producing a banknote by less than 1%; more likely, the marginal cost increase will be significant. As such, I don't think that including the RFID tags will be a viable option for the EU.
Seems like this is good for reducing counterfits, but also could put a lot of burden on the person using the bills...
They did say it would be possible to track where a bill has been. So I could know if the person who gave me this bill had gone to that adult video store eh?... Privacy could be an issue as well.
So, my question is, if RFIDs are to be embedded in money, will it still be accepted if the RFID is off or not working. Will you have to take it to a bank (hassle) and get the whole note replaced or REactivated?
I would think people that work in highly magnetic work conditions or that are subject to mild radiation (cell phone users, utility workers, possily computer users) might face this problem.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
No seriously. My parents grew up being taught that the coming apocalypse (not necessarily anytime soon, but you never know) would be heralded by the mark of the Beast and all that...well, my Mom won't even use an ATM card because it's practically an extension of that tatooed number on your forehead.
Now it's looking like even paper money is going to be 100% traceable (for a fee, your neighborhood 7-11 could link up to the US Mint's database and download the history of the cash you just paid with -- what transactions it was involved in, who you got it from, who they got it from...if the last recorded owner was, say, a drug dealer, and suddenly you're the next person to use it...they could start looking into what you've been doing in your spare time...).
I don't know. Devil or not, this could have enormous privacy implications...
In order for a papered money system with electronic tracking to be effective you are going to have to upgrade every cash register and connect them all to sum kind of super secure network. which would be fine except for the fact that I am sure that crackers/n00bsstick script kiddies would be all over that.
at first I am sure the guberment will just track the money with their own methods, and airports scanners that tell exactly how much money you are carrying will be common.
At the same time you have to think about privacy, do I want anyone else to know where I spend my money? absolutely not. where I spend my money is my business. not the guberments.
C:\earth\humans\del *.m0ronz
Kinda frightening that there are so many posts with this same logic.
Remember back in 1999 when people were talking about how the Y2K bug would result in society reverting to bartering & precious metals currency?
I wonder if eliminating cash as a nontraceable currency will prompt the emergence of additional non-fiat currency preferred by the privacy-conscious.
I can hear it now: "That non-DRM PC will cost you $3000 credit, $2900 cash, $600 in gold, or 10 cartons of banned cigarettes."
won't that make them a bit more... err... expensive?
What would Brian Boitano do?
I'd love to know just how sturdy these little RFID chips are. I mean, suppose you didn't want your euro's tracked? How hard would it be to disable these things?
For example, what if you put your cash in a microwave for thirty seconds? Or built a HERF gun to "sterilize" your cash? These things are microchips, so they should be vulnerable to the same types of electromagnetic damage that most semiconductors are.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Microwave all your cash. That should fry the little buggers.
that the anti counterfeiting strip in US money is a chip that lets govt. vans cruse your neighborhood and scan your house for 'illicit' funds.
Looks like it's not so whacko anymore....
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Kinda like War-Driving but with a "Step 3: Profit!" Another good reason for me to stick to using my Debit Card for most transactions, but there's DARPA's Total Info Awareness project. I guess if we are made to be too paranoid to carry/use cash then all our non-cash transactions are more easily tied-in to us and trackable.
This is a good thing... for the US!
Before the Euro, the international black market dealt mostly in American currency. Part of the reason for that is the fact that it behooves the US economy's controllers to have large amounts of it's currency base outside of the country. (Think about it. Print more money, buy 'things' with it, make sure monies paid leave country. Monies are not local to the economy, so inflation does not increase. Oversimplified, yes, but I'm making a general point here.)
The Euro was a threat to that black market monopoly. A strong Euro would be serious competition, and would likely drive at least some of the US's expatriated currency back within its own borders, wreaking havoc with the economy.
With the advent of tracking capabilities in the currency itself, the Euro is keeping itself out of the black market, which is good for the United States.
Europe had a chance to take a bite out of US hegemony. So much for that ^_^
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
...the fun you could have if you were the guy w/ the HERF gun :)
It sounds like it would make a damn good anti counterfeiting measure, at the very least.
Hooker via credit card! I guess I'll have a hard time explaining that charge to my wife for "Busty Bertha's Whoring Service". Lol, hookers that take credit cards. What's next? Drug dealers!
I thought this was kind of interesting, maybe someone here will, too. one-third (approx) of the Euro along with many other foreign currencies are made by the same US company that produces the entirety of US paper money - Crane's. They have a little bit of info about the company history and some about currency. Worth checking out if only for the links.
:)
Oh.. they have a few penguin notecards I use for correspondence! No BSD devil yet, tho
So suppose my banknotes have defect RFIDs. How will the authorities react to this? Will the notes be declared worthless? (Stay clear of strong radio signals!) Or would be simply be taken out of the system after they reach a bank? In the latter case, the whole idea is pretty pointless - as someone pointed out before - since thugs would simply nuke them or take the RFIDs out. This concept might have a chance to succeed when the notes will be registered at every counter and ATM in the world!
Break into a computer system,
Transfer money to a Swiss bank account (Billions)...
Do the time (15years max)
Come out and retire.
Or if you white collar.
Get a job at XYZ bank.
Embezzle money in a Swiss bank account(trillions)
Do the time (10years max?)
Come out and retire.
If you a dirty scumbag
Buy a gun
Hold up a bank for a few hundred thousand.
Get shot, do the time (25years max)
Come out, and kill yourself.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Come on, where are all the European users talking about America being facist now? I want to hear about how the EU values privacy and the US is run by a nazi-like regime...
Come on guys, let's be consistent.
Alex
Breakups and divorces would sky rocket. Divorce lawyers would be salivating. Dog and cats would be living together. It's the end of the world as we know it.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Who wants Euros that track them? Nobody. Some transactions are better kept off the books. Porn, drugs, etc. People will turn away from euros for those kind of transactions and proboblly for everything to avoid carrying around 2 types of currency. This should help the value of the dollar a lot.
Why don't they just start up the Euro equivalent of wheresgeorge.com, the American currency tracker (and www.whereswilly.com, the tracker of inferior Canadian money run by the same folks)?
I couldn't honestly believe there wasn't already one, though, so I did a little googling and found this: http://www.eurobilltracker.com/ site which does exactly that.
Who nees RFID tags when you have this?
I guess I will have to start microwaving my cash.
If you buy that much pr0n, I bet you have at least one arm strong enough to carry the change.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Well, not a problem. Just wrap your vallet (or just the high notes) in aluminium foil. It should be also easy to manufacture wallets with such protection build-in. One could even imagine two "partitions" - protected private and "public money" where you would keek just 10 EUR to show you do not have much.
Why bother? Why not push for full digital convergence and have everyone use EFT for ALL transactions? We're headed that way anyway, I haven't used paper cash in nearly a month now for anything.
And you're not one bit concerned about the electronic trail.
With them THIS small, why not just embed one in each child's *required* immunization cycle.
In one generation, tracking of all your citizens..
Not to mention EVERY product you buy.. even food..
Ack.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Which has proven they value the people privacy. Here in the States we'd be screwed.
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
That would make US dollars a lot more popular in some important quarters, which the EU doesn't want. Therefore, I predict that the Euro will get these embedded tags only after the U.S. starts seeding them into its own currency. The desire to create a "cashless society" here, and eliminate untraceable commerce, has a long and sordid history.
The problem with embedding these things is that they're easily fused, so banks would also need to start refusing fused notes, and people would have to start carrying detectors because they might otherwise end up with undepositable paper. The alternative is that fused notes are still negotiable, but then they would all get fused in short order.
Expect a push to eliminate the use of cash because it spreads disease..
"Besides acting as a digital watermark, the use of radio chips could speed up routine bank processes such as counting. With such tags, a stack of notes can be passed through a reader and the sum added in a split second, similar to how inventory is tracked in an RFID-based system."
Step one: locate RFID's in lot of 100's
Step two: cut them out
Step three: Paste them on counterfits
Step four: circulate RFID-less bills at McDonalds and other storefronts too busy to check for RFID's
Step five: Deposit cash! Your bills are the "real" bills now
So start making men's and women's wallets that shield the RFID signature of the contained money and instead emit the signature of a small amount of cash.
"What's the point of going abroad, if you're just another tourist..."
Encrypt the bill's serial number with the treasury dept's private key?
Seems like that'd be pretty effective...
Of course, they can't possibly make this a *required* feature of all bills. You have to be able to microwave the money and still use it, otherwise y'all Europeans will start screaming bloody murder.
The privacy invasion happens when you aren't paying attention: When you don't realize that your subway card placed you at the scene of the crime, or whatever. As they gain more and more surveillance techniques, eventually it'll be impossible to pay attention to all of them.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
ya know, I was looking at this image that was posted with the story, the picture of the rfid chips... and boy does that guy have huge fingers!!
This space for rent, inquire within.
This could destroy thieves and black markets.
You misspelled "personal privacy of any kind".
You can always use gold and silver coins for untraceable currency. Or barter. Or electronics. Or any number of things. The "underground" economy is, was, and always will be here. It's not so big of a deal in the USA I don't think - but where I am in Canada, there is a LOT of this. Taxes are very high here - small shops, repair guis, etc, if you ask discreetly, will give you a discount if you don't need a reciept.
..same thing for me fixing a friends car for a case of beer. Mmm, beer.
Hell, if you're talking about the illegal economy, drugs themselves can be used for currency
Money does have serial numbers on it now, ya know.. it's just not feasible to track them, but there is no real reason it couldn't be automated.
..don't panic
"...the net could report that you've been mugged immediately and 'deactivate' all those notes..."
and no doubt make an appropriate entry into your Total Information Awareness database file.
Or, to look at it from the other angle, if you are engaged in any "suspicious" behavior, what's to stop the TIA/Dept of Homeland Security system from deactivating your money?
I don't like this one bit. Nosir.
What was not mentioned in the article, but has been mentioned inprevious articles about RFID tags in Euro notes, is that it's only likely to be used in the very high denomination bills.
There are plans to issue a 500 euro bill. That's about $560. This would become the bill of choice for counterfeiters if some strong protection mechanisms weren't used.
It's unlikely that the 20euro that you use for your everyday purchases will ever contain an RFID tag.
MONEY TRACKS YOU
I can just see if the tracking program was written by Microsoft:
Exchange Assistant...It looks your paying a whore!
You...SHHHHHHHH.......
Exchange Assistant...You should be in Amsterdam if you are PAYING A WHORE!!!!!!
You...Put it out you bloody piece of....
Exchange Assistant...All your sex are belong to us. You have no chance to survive make your time...HAHAHAH...
(I know it's lame, but it's a vacation and it's raining damnit!)
how long would you have to stick these in a microwave for to burn out the chips.
You do that... you're soon going to be a poor bastard, since no one wants your money.
Well, i guess i'll have to consider buying a stronger purse to store all thoses coins i'll need to buy my new video card ...
LTFA; Learn The Fucking Acronyms =)
Welcome to the real world.
So ? They want to up the security of bank-notes by adding an RFID-tag ? Funny. There are metallic stripes on those notes that won't stick, and now we will get more add-on's on it ? What happens if you don't fold your notes, but put them into a roll ? Will they stay on, or will that drop off the note, probably invalidating them ...
And what happens if such a note get's bent the wrong way (folded over the RFID-tag) ? I've allready had people look at me when I was in the vincinity of a gate (that responds to certain tags put on clothing so you can't take them unnoticed) that went off. Will I now get grabbed by security-people because the RFID of some note I tried to pay with got disabled ? Do I need to carry a device with me so I can check every note I going to pay something with is still o.k. ? Do I have to check every note that's handed to me the same way ?
Most likely the deployment will be dropped as soon as it get's evident that those "improved" banknotes are much to touchy.
Just an observation...
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Cash only has value because people think it does. It used to be based on real value (gold) but all that is left is an illusion. However, there are plenty of alternatives, such as the Liberty Dollar.
Sticking Euros in the microwave oven would
totally zap the little ID tag. Witness the
fun of CDs or anything else metallic in less
than two seconds. The practice of money laundering would have to be replaced with
cooking the books.
I hate tomorrow.
Does each tag have its own serial number? For example, if EU adds RFID tag to their notes, will the tag report "I am a 10 Euro bill" or "I am 10 Euro bill no. DB234643K5784"?.
J.
How difficult would it be for a business/government/individual to spray a mist of these as you enter a building, pass through an intersection, etc., and then use sensors to track your movements.
I mean, I could see a company tagging people as they enter corporate offices in order to track them through the day.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
fyi Casino Chips are getting RFID tags also
RFID will be in *everything*. Clothes (Walmart), money, cats. Whats next? Food?
Eek imagine marketing RFID food, with biodegradable RFID granules so you can have a head mounted scanner to *really* count the calories of everything you eat.
Shoot, they've got duct tape wallets at Thinkgeek, why not tinfoil??? Opens up a whole new market.
Never give any object more potential energy than you want it to have.
put in bank robbers' cashbags would become obsolete!
Do you think these bills be deemed counterfeit or damaged if you ran these through the microwave for a second or two to destroy the tags? I really don't like the idea of my money being tracked so easily. I'd feel the same if all my money was scanned at the till for the serial numbers and then tracked that way. This is not cool.
I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.
Why not just go with something like smart cards and be done with it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why not just get rid of paper money intierly, and use credit cards for everything instead of investing on a tecnology like this. Please tell me if i'm missing something.
Your new home on the net.
Damaged bills are still legal tender in almost all countries. In the US the only criterion is that it be identifiable and more than half the bill (to keep you from ripping them in half and doubling your money). Some percentage of RFID chips will likely die naturally anyway, so there's no way they could invalidate your money if their chip happens to die. The next bank that touches it may wish to take it out of circulation, but that's something else entirely (akin to taking heavily-worn bills out of circulation).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If that's true, why not just put an EM emitter in a car and go drive around the business district? Pretty easy to screw up such a system when you don't need to have the bills in your posession to deactivate them...
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
This isn't a privacy problem: just keep your money under your tin-foil beanie!
See what I've been reading.
In the future, thanks to advances in technology such as this RFID tag, authorities will be able to solve 100% of crimes committed.
Authorities will discover that everyone violates one law or another. The crime-solving system will then be scrapped since you cannot put everyone in prison.
Where did I read this prediction?
Now I'm going to need a tinfoil wallet to go with my hat!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Anyone roughly know what an RFID "detector" costs? I'm curious.
Random is the New Order.
Pictures of TI's
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
There's a lot of heat in this thread... let's see if we can inject a little light:
In short, it's just an advanced anti-counterfeiting device; it'll make the notes harder to counterfeit, although still not impossible. Now, if the tags performed some form of cryptographic manipulation on the incoming signal, and replied accordingly, that would make things interesting...
n/t
What happens if you put these bills in the microwave for 5 or 10 seconds? If that's enough to disable the RFID, I would probably just do that to every piece of currency I got.
This is a major problem with schemes like these: if the RFID tags are authoritative, they make legal tender impossible to distinguish from counterfeit without a special device, which I can't see everyone carrying around with them every time they have to collect money from their dorm buddies for pizza.
The problem here is that counterfeit money won't be detected until the recipient tries to use it in a store or a bank, and then he gets the double-anal: one, from losing the value of the currency he thought he had; two, from the police who arrest him for using counterfeit currency.
Cheers,
Kyle
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I agree! And religion is also adult abuse :P
I wonder whether the chips are more sensitive to either heat or microwaves than the paper they are embedded in.
lobbiests ... sheesh... lobbyists
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Depending on what information they encode and how it is used, I can see hackers/crackers having a lot of fun with this.
My rights don't need management.
I can see this as being a powerful tool used either for good or for evil. Imagine blind people being able to know how much they are carrying without having to read each bill individually (currently they have little portable scanners they can feed the bills through to identify the denomination). Or knowing when a cashier has been slipping cash into their pockets.
Now, imagine tracking every purchase you make and arresting you because you bought a bottle of superglue on one day, and on the next day bought a bottle of something else that can be mixed with superglue to make toxic gas. If there is no oversight, this could quickly be abused to create a police state. Other posts include muggers knowing whether or not you're a good target, and the like. Deactivating them wouldn't be such a good plan since the transaction trail would point straight to you as the last recipient before the rfid died.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
There is no ether!
History . Learn it or repeat it.
@HbFyo0$k8 tH!$
That's a good point I failed to see. You're the man.
We do indeed benefit greatly in being able to control the value of the currency used to purchase things such as oil. Especially considering that currency is an abstract thing with no intrinsic value, while oil makes a military/economy/social order continue to function.
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when i moo u moo - just like that
That security strip you see in US currency such as $20 bills is actually a small RF transmitter. When you walk through a metal detector at an airport, a computer automatically analyzes the return magnetic resonance pattern to determine how much currency you are carrying.
Just last year, police speed checking radar guns were modified to return similar information. It helps them to track those transporting large amounts of cash on the US highway system.
Oh no...the rays!!! Forget everything I just said. You never heard it from me.
-buf
Sorry people, but paper money should be completey drop as currency in all countries!!
Everything should be paid for, with some type of credit card.
Many people do this now, including myself. It's called a "Check Card". Just give them you card, sign it, and go!!
People need to lose that fixation that you get when you have all those bills in your hands...
CS
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
Money can already be tracked via their serial numbers and OCR technology already exists. It's just a technological race against the counterfeitters. When they can produce fake rfids then they'll have to come up with some other scheme. There are schemes that are based on the random arrangment of the fibers in the bill that are impossible to forge.
Anybody got three measures of barley for a denarius? And what's a denarius?
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Of course, it depends on the technology used for the RFID.
They really should use passive microwave resonance tags.
They're not affected by magnetic fields, are smaller, cheaper, more durable than silicon based RFID, flexible, can be 'printed' into currency, and are not reproducible, among other advantages.
...and a key advantage of the Euro for blackmarket transactions is that the highest denomination is 500, instead of 100 for US bills. Which means approximately five times fewer bills for large transactions. I've heard the US is considering introducing the 1000 dollar bill into general circulation to compete.
I still think we should've stuck with chunks of gold.
dont think rf tags can take that kinda abuse
How long til they do this to all our change as well? I imagine you could store more info on a nickel than a dollar.
Damaged currency is legal tender in almost all countries. A dead RFID, a corner ripped off, a hole in the middle, etc. Given that a certain percentage will die anyway, there's really no other choice -- they can remove currency with a dead RFID from circulation, but they can't reasonably declare it counterfeit.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'm not an expert on the current system, but I wouldn't think that currently your bill being damaged so that the serial # is unreadable is grounds for not accepting it as legal tender.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
To create a machine that "cleans" the RFID tags thru mini EMP or some such (I'm no expert) make it small cheap and people can fry that crap right out of their clothes, shoes, money and what not.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Simply put an EMP blast would toss ecomonies into havoc if all these crazy ideas that /.ers are talking about ever took place. So combine these crazy ideas about invalidating money if the chip is disabled with the do it yourself HERF gun.
I suppose it would be worthwhile to disable these tags...
How do you do that?
There - Problem solved.
He was joking. Even the mods got it.
"Set up us", you insensitive clod! *g*
-uso.
Dosius version reads "We've been bombed!"
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
Wrong, I'm afraid - the US economy does benefit from holdings of dollars outside its borders, in theory, but no-one is sure exactly if it does, or by how much, in reality. In any case, the benefit to the US economy is on foregone interest payments, and has nothing at all do with inflation - the amount of narrow money supply (notes and coins) in an advanced economy such as the US is so small as to be insignificant to the money supply and therefore have virtually no effect on inflation. The vast majority of the US money supply is in the form of financial deposits -- and the vast majority of US dollar holdings outside the US borders is also in deposit form - electronic rather than cash.
So your conclusion is false, and based on a false premise. The currency holdings of the black economy, while large, are insignificant compared to legitimate investment and trading flows.
"Yo, I gives you 150 chickens fo a fat ass bag a da chronic."
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I wonder how many pounds per square inch these little rfid tags can take? I bet a lot. I think I can generate a lot with a hammer and an anvil though. As a matter of principle, if I can disable rfid tags in any object that passes through my possession, I will.
Indeed.
This silly RFID thing undermines the one good reason I've heard why euros will beat dollars:
The largest euro bill is 500. The largest dollar bill is $100 (?). Therefore, you can fit five times as much unmarked, used cash in an anonymous breifcase if you use euros. Say about $5 million instead of $1 million.
This means that the nether world will convert to euros en masse for their shady, high value transactions. And, according to some sources, black transactions make up a full 50% by value of the world economy...
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
There's a partition that never will be full..
Also, the thin-foiled wallet should really match the thin-foiled hat that keeps brain-waves from leaking out in the universe.
He'd take a stroll
Smoke a pole
Jam a big rod up his floppy ass-hole
He'd suck a cock and drink the spew,
THAT'S what Brian Boitano'd do.
Please cite the U.S. Code where this is a crime.
If they put these things in, merchants are only going to accept currency that reports itself as authentic. Breaking these things would probably make the currency useless.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Sorry, but there's no truth to this whatsoever. The denomination of oil exports is irrelevant, since all of those transactions are essentially bank transfers, in which case it doesn't matter what currency oil is priced in.
It's also nonsense to say the US has "a license to print money for the world", in fact that's so illogical as to be meaningless.
There's a very good article on the subject which covers all these points, it's well worth reading.
Last year, Greek authorities were confronted with 2,411 counterfeiting cases and seized 4,776 counterfeit banknotes that's about 2 banknotes per "counterfeiting case". sounds like this "problem" is really just some kids with a colour scanner...
2 1337 4 u!
Now lift up your scrotum and take the shampoo bottle out of your ass.
Pretend I'm the pizza delivery guy and watch me whack off.
I agree
And a pistol in my waistband. Nothing has changed.
I can wear a Euro-foil hat?
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I've been trying since early 2002.
I did the math, and figured that I would make quite a bit more money living and working in canada, even with your higher tax rates. it's not about the tax, it's about what I get for my taxes- universal health care, low cost provincial auto insurance, etc.
Fellow Americans- do the math on what you pay for auto insurance, health care, co-pays, deductibles... and you'll see Canada has more to offer. plus better TV/Radio. and no "American Idol".
EOM
I'm guessing you've never been the target of identity theft. You'd change your mind pretty damn quick about that.
n itored hell of a world. It's enough to make a sane man move to bangladesh.
Anonymous payments are a fundamental part of our society, as well as a constitutional expectation of personal privacy. soon both will be gone, and you'll be in a direct-marketing-credit-controlled-transaction-mo
ugh.
EOM
Mind you, when they embed the RFID in your hand or forehead, then the fun really begins :)
Anyone else ever wonder if the Christian Right will wake up from their Bush induced trance when they pull some "book of revelations" inspired nonsense?
In some ways, I'm really curious to see what all those southern Baptists do when something like that happens. Hopefully they'll come to, and start fearing the things they've been promoting on the wagon-train of destruction.
EOM
It will be difficult to counterfeit the RFID tags. They are supposed to carry a strong crypto signature, pretty much like the PGP stuff.
OTOH, it's trivial to simply fry them, with a high-energy EM pulse, or perhaps by just sticking them into the microwave.
... with all those RFID tags in bank notes, i hate to see all the interference from OTHER peoples's cash. Not to mention all the new crackers: "Hey, my RFID 20 note now reads 200! Kewl!" And finally, i hope no one want's to bring in their RFID euro into one of the factories we are installing RFID asset tracking into, where they could interfere with both read/write operations. otherwise, we might send A euro to dallas, and spend fifty pounds of cheese.
"As a writer / novelist you might want to spellcheck your sig.
...would be a good way of disabling microelectronics. I used to return Nintendo cartridges and CDs this way long ago before they got wise to it. I would think that 'nuking' your cash or lining your wallet in aluminum foil; sort of a Faraday Cage for your cash; would damage or negate these tags.
Of course I won't, if I run all of my money through the microwave for a few seconds, first. : )
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
or Hot Cash
Try to avoid spending your microwaved cash until after it has stopped smoking!
is going to be thicker than the overall note hence detectable, one SOLID wack with a hammer and no rfid tag....The abuse money takes is gonna make this happen alot anyways. Heck here is a great use for the rfid white noise generator :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
When I have "all those bills" in my hands, it doesn't cost me any extra to buy something. How much does that check card really cost you?? I know they told you it was free when you signed up, but how much interest or hidden fees do you have to pay when you use it?? And why do you intentionally place that much control over your money into the hands of someone else? Those cards do expire you know. There are retailers out there who automatically add surcharges on purchases done with those cards, and there are many more places that are of the "sorry, no credit cards or check cards" than there are "sorry no cash."
No thanks, I do NOT want my money controlled by the likes ov VISA or MasterCard. (check out your "check card", and see how much money goes to one of the other of those companies. Probably not directly, but it does get there.)
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
Perhaps I have missed something, but how could these bills be tracked back to me? When I spend it, I don't exactly tell the guy at the convenience store who I am..
Conspiracy is religion for the paranoid. This post is your prayer.
Man, your car must be really really old to not be affected by an EM pulse. Although that might be to the advantage.... guy in a Model A drives through a business district and people come out in droves to look at it....
Put your cash in the microwave for about 1min and watch the RFID tags spark. After that there will be a small scorch where the RFID was but the rest of the note should be untouched.
Karma: Abstruse (Mostly as a result of using words nobody understands)
When money becomes trackable, perhaps even beyond the ability of a microwaving to fix, I will make it a regular habit to ask friends and acquaintences if they'd like to enter into an ongoing money swap arrangement. People engaged in this practice will make it a habit to carry, say, $200 in cash, and will make it a point to swap bills every so often. As long as this is an ongoing practice, it's not even necessary to efficiently randomize who has what bills; all you need to do when questioned by Homeland Security about hookers/dope/etc is profess to be a money swapper, and offer to call numerous witnesses to that fact; ergo, anyone could have been the person who plunked down bills that the atm originally dispensed to you. And the social practice of swapping bills will serve to draw like-minded people together.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
The real interesting part comes not necessarily from the RFID tags, but from the ones who control the status associated with the ID from the tags on certain enterprise systems. The police comprised of individuals just like the consumers using the notes might have access to alter status associated with certain tags. This could lead to some interesting possibilities and opportunities.
Browse the Information Directory
At least around my home. Not that I would buy any :).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
his silly RFID thing undermines the one good reason I've heard why euros will beat dollars
Good. Maybe this will help curb the dollar's recent drop in value against the Euro.
This drop is due, I might at, by the present administration's abysmal fiscal policy. Bush took us from a $5.6 trillion surplus to a deficit of more than $2 trillion and growing. This fiscal reversal amounts to $7,800,000,000.00.
Money can already be tracked, but it's rather cumbersome - you record the serial numbers. Each note that we use is already uniquely identifiable. So kidnappers can demand unmarked bills all they want - you record the serial numbers instead. Not quite as efficient as marking the bills though. In theory each bill can already be tracked by having optical readers installed in ATMs and at each cash reception point. The RFID tag simplifies this process, but in principle adds nothing in terms of surveillance possibilities - each bill is already uniquely marked and traceable. For those of you that are worried about tracking, there are alternatives. You can buy US gold bullion coins, silver coins, or Euro coins. Cumbersome, but it works, and they are untraceable. Gold is pretty universally accepted - refugees that were fortunate to possess valuable jewelry during WWII used this to bribe themselves across borders.
--I am Sun Tzu of the Borg. Resistance is feudal.
Just stick them in the microwave for a couple of seconds... zap! No more tracking.
"If the robber knows that the cash will be deactivated before he can spend it and/or traced to him or whoever he uses it to, it makes it not very worthwhile for him to kill you to take your wallet."
The above scenario is precisely the reason why there's an incentive for the robber to turn murderous -- so that you can't report the crime and thus, deactivate the money! If he lets you walk away, the money will be worthless before it can be spent. If you're dead however...
Unfortunately, many thieves value your wallet more than they value your life. Don't ask them to choose.
Microwaves. Won't work. The "chips" are far too small for the wavelength to touch them.
EMP. EMP *IS* microwaves. At least EMP that you can generate at home. NO go.
Bulk erasers. Very strong magnetic field *MAY* affect these but I doubt it, I would think they took this in account for people that work near strong magnetic fields.
HV. High voltage, like 200,000 volts and up, such as from a $20 stun gun should do the trick. Not many electronic devices can take that sort of jolt.
So, to zap your money, just lay it on a board and ZAP the crap out of it with a ~$20 stun gun...
For the money (pun intended) go with HV ZAPz!!
Money of substance can be used as an alternative medium of exchange.
Liberty is not a concept... Liberty is a way of life!!!
Will this mean that instead of having yout money laundered, you pop it into the microwave and nuke it until the RFID chip glows?
how Durability are these things? Money can go thru anlot so i can't picture these tags lasting forever, nor able to resist deactivation/destruction.
Smash that part of the bill?
Get it wet?
big magnet??
Heat?
And if its not leagal to use it without a working RFID tag then, i imagine there will be alot of angry poeple because they RFID tags faid/broke.
Overall i see this as a waste of goverment money and just a plain stupid idea thaught up by some politician who just wants more control over the populus at ANY cost and inconvieance to innocent people.
I mean HOW would this prvent crime, or do anything usefull at all? There will be plenty of places that don't have RFID readers, and if they start to wear out/fail?
i can just see it "robbers steal 80 million currency RFID tags, they just walked off with the breifcase!"
This remind me of the frequent (in the past?) practice of putting 1 dollar bills in every cocaine packet (kilo packets?). I think they were a "trade mark".
Do current drug traffickers use RFID to control inventory?
And for an implementation of bill tracking using bored people, EuroBillTracker
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I dunno how you guys do it in the EU, but in the States, money has to cost less than what it was printed on/minted from...to do otherwise defeats the purpose, see? I was under the impression RFID chips still weren't commodity cheap. How do you get around spending $x Euros on an RFID chip to go in a $y Euro note/coin, assuming for the majority of denominations $y $x
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
I asssume this was modded +5 "insiteful" because there is not +5 "tinfoil hat".
A few years ago I postulated that one way to make a lot of money is to create and sell technologies that a fascist country would have loved to have 40 years ago. I unfortunately believe I was correct.
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
They're very easy to destroy yes
Do you bribe your Senator,if the cash is traceable?
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
Yet another blow to anonymity. Yet another government move to track what you do, when and where, and what you buy.
Just dandy.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
You can vote NO to this on September 14.
The difference is for someone to examine serial numbers, you have to actually take the bills out of your wallet and let them look at them. RFID can be read from a distance of a few feet. So for example, walking through the archway of an airport or retail store would tell the reader the exact amount of cash you were carrying and the serial number of each bill. The privacy invasion is enormously larger.
troll? I was responding to MY OWN COMMENT, YOU MORON! Hahahahahaha
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello