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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
"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.
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!
"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!
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!)
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!
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.
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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.
Strippers, hookers, drug dealers, public utilities, congress persons, ...
See the connection?
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
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.
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".
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
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."
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 ^_^
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Screw that, there's a better way:
Get hired as CEO of company X
Destroy its long-term viability to make shareholders happy about the short-term growth
Get a huge bonus
Get hired as CEO of company Y...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
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.
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.
"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
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.
This could destroy thieves and black markets.
You misspelled "personal privacy of any kind".
"...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.
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.
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
This isn't a privacy problem: just keep your money under your tin-foil beanie!
See what I've been reading.
Selling softdrugs (eg. cannabis products like marihuana and hash) is not legal in the Netherlands, its 'legally tolerated' if you follow lots of rules. You must apply for a permit to run a 'coffeeshop' and you can only sell softdrugs in such an official coffeshop. In there, you can't sell to minors, you can only sell up to 5 grams to dutch citizens of legal age, you can't sell alcoholic beverages, and you may only hold a surplus of 50 grams of drugs on site.
On the other hand, prostitution is legal in the Netherlands...
The reasoning behind this is that a state should take control over what it can't root out.
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...
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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What part of "Euro Banknotes" didn't you understand? This has nothing to do with the land of the (supposedly) free, but with the union where we have mandatory ID cards, strict weapon laws and people who see black boxes in cars as a /good/ thing and don't distrust the government like the mostly paranoid americans.
All my Euros already have a serial on them, so if somebody wants to trace them from the ATM to the grocery, they could already do so. This paranoid mentality, which seems to be really popular around Slashdot is really bewildering to me.
-- The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
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$k8 tH!$
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!!