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Counterfeiting With High Resolution Inkjets
Makarand writes "Thanks to the availability of low cost high quality inkjet printers, crooks
are now able to
produce currency indistinguishable from the real
banknotes, at least under dim lighting conditions like that in a bar or a nightclub.
The term "digifeiters" is being coined for counterfeiters that use
cheap high-resolution printers to produce fake currency. Unlike costly color xerographic copiers that come inbuilt with features
to detect security details on banknotes and stop currency copying, no cheap printers
come with such feature. An anti-digifeiting system for cheaper printers may consist of printer driver software capable of recognizing data patterns indicating currencies of several countries." I wonder what GimpPrint would think of being forced to print or not print certain documents based on their contents.
The big thing about currency isn't the image so much as the ink and the feel of the cloth. That's not paper, it's linen, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a supply of convincing stock. The ink, while less of a factor, still contributes to the gestalt of cash - it affects the smell, and doesn't wash off when exposed to moisture.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Not after you set the bills down on a bar that's wet due to drink spillage, etc. The other thing is that bartending is VERY fast paced, it would be easy to not notice.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Currencies that have hologram components to them. They're [the holograms] are incredibly difficult to counterfeit(you won't be manufacturing a good facsimile on your home printer), plus they look really cool. On that note, Singapore easily has the coolest banknotes that I have ever seen.
At least with U.S. currency, there are more issues than just he appearence of the bill. A big one, for example, is the material. If you printed out a set of nice new bills on standard copier paper, nobody would believe for a second that it was a real bill, low lights or no. There have been counterfiters who have bleached out low value bills, such as ones, and printed higher values onto them, like twenties, but I'm not sure how well your average inkjet printer would feed the cottony paper used for bills.
I'm no currency expert, but I would imagine there are a lot of issues like this that aren't effected by the gross appearence of the bill for both U.S. and other bills.
Narrative
A more positive idea would be an electronic exchange/barter 'currency' widely used that would replace the centralized fiat paper money system we have now. This would have a lot of benefits, not the least of which would be to create more wealth for the common man and move power away from the centralized banking system.
Not a lot of work seems to be being done on this,
although it is clearly within reach now. You could even barter your open source programing skills to businesses who needed special features.
I remember discussing this idea online on usenet 7-8 years ago, and having someone from the federal reserve saying it would never work, so the idea itself seems to have reached the ears of the banking system. Its a shame no one seems to be putting much work in it though. There were a lot of mastercard online debit and electronic cash systems going up before the dot.com bust, but none really set up with a barter system backing in mind.
pope is the antichrist. catholic pedophile priest scandal: http://home.fuse.net/gospel
But the plastic money we have allows you to instantly see the difference between notes (Different colours and sizes), instantly tell that it's the real deal or a really expensive counterfeit (the clear plastic window), and it is just like having paper money in the way it handles, except that it's more durable (you can put it through the wash etc)
The problem with US money (and I've lived there for a while), is that all the notes look about the same, all are the same colour, they wear out very quickly, and they're very easy to counterfeit. (At least to the point of using in everyday money transactions... how many checkout chicks carefully look over every note?)
As for the technical aspects. Take a look at the "big head" notes. Their is microprinting on the lower left side of the portrait. This microprinting is so fine, that light reflecting off of them scatters making it impossible to make a clear copy. In addition, there is multi-colored ink on one of the 5/10/20/50/100 numbers in the corners. And there is that pesky watermark. Oh, and ink from inkjets runs like there is no tommorow. A sweatty person couldn't pass those notes.
All in all, the penalties for counterfitting and the risk of getting caught are too high.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
Ask a paper wholesaler, and of course they'll say they can't get it and don't know what it is. Instead, just ask for Crane's Crest Flourescent Opaque White. Obviously it won't have the red and blue fibers, but it'll have the feel you're looking for. Myself, I use it for resumes. Anything printed on that stuff *will* be taken more seriously than similar stuff on similar papers, but nobody will realize why, or even that they do like the feel of it better.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Not the printing forged money is ok, but I don't want my printer "deciding" what to and not to print. What's next, printers "deciding" not to print documents they deem as anti-government? Or not printing images they deem as pornography?
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Bills which, by the way, are imported from Australia. If I'm not confusing things, the Brazilian central bank buys the bills with all the security features already in place, and only prints the "face value" on them.
Marcelo Vanzin
Nobody's forcing you to buy a new printer. Just use the one you have now to print illegal material. It's good enough.
Same with these future can-only-run-signed-code computers. Don't buy them; your current computer is probably pretty good and can run ANY code you tell it to.
My other car is first.
I've recently started working in a restaurant, and as such handle a fair deal of cash. I have to say, I've never bothered to check currency to see if it's real. I know in some department stores it's required for the clerks to use a counterfeit-detecting pen on anything over $20, but this is certainly not the norm.
The problem is that you can do a fairly lousy job, especially if you're giving me a wad of various bills to pay for your dinner. (ie, if you give me a bunch of $5's and $1's, I'd just throw them all in the register, most likely not even looking at them one-by-one.)
Machines exist for 'counting' money (at extremely high rates) that automatically check various security features. Suppose cash registers started having an interface to this -- you'd stick the money in, and it would automatically undergo security checks.
By the way, am I the only one who isn't too convinced that the new bill styles will be effective? The old ones will still be accepted, and if they're easier to forge, why wouldn't I just forge one of those? Frequently changing their design won't really counter counterfeiting (heh, no pun intended there).
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suwain_2
Also useful (particularly for the clubs mentioned in the lead-in) the strips also fluoresce under UV in different colors.
"Particularly for the clubs"??
How so? The waitress comes by with a tray of drinks for a bunch of half-drunk guys sitting at a table in the dark, most of whom throw a bill or two at her and get on with their conversation. What is the waitress to do at that point? Pull her handy black light out and start scanning each bill? The guys at the next table are yelling for service, one of the guys at this table is trying to grab her skirt, and the bartender is loading another round of drinks on a tray for her to carry off.
In real life, I run a movie theatre. When I'm selling tickets and it gets close to showtime, I have people walking in, literally throwing a wadded-up bill at me, and continuing right on into the theatre without ever stopping. And the next twenty or thirty or fifty guys behind them do exactly the same thing. Stop and check each bill for anything?? Heck, I'm lucky if I can just smooth them fast enough to get them into the drawer (and sometimes I can't; they end up in a little pile until things slow down a bit.) I don't think this is really unusual in many businesses. There simply isn't time or opportunity to do a thorough "investigation" when someone hands you money. All of the security features in the world are really of no value in these situations; that's just the way that it is.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Just curious if the anti-currency measures could be defeated by printing elements of the currency at different times. Just print a little bit of it, rewind the paper, print a different part of it, etc. Break it up into small enough chunks, and how would the printer know the difference?
"Derp de derp."
Don't get so smug. Considering the exchange rate for the AU$ and the US$, we in the U.S. have a coin roughly comparable to the AU$ coin, we just call it a half dollar (1 AUD = 0.658961 USD). I have a few in my pocket right now. We have no half dollar notes, so we're about the same there. We also have dollar coins, have for centuries, and although they are not as popular as paper currency, they are reasonably common. Again, have a few in my pocket and a bunch in my car. (And, of course, there are higher denomination coins that are still legal tender, but they are not in general circulation and not as commonly available unless you get them from a collector).
The reason we still have paper $1 currency is that we have resisted people telling us that a heavy pocket full of coins is " much better to use " than paper money. The government has tried to tell us that, but we know they always lie, and experience with several dollar coins over recent years has born that out.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
So instead you have a heavy pocket full of pennies! :)
Man, that was the single thing that pissed me off the most about using money in the states, those damn pennies... get rid of them! Each week I'd accumulate a ridiculous weight in 1c coins... So I'm very happy to be back in Australia where the lowest denomanation we have is the 5c, much less in the way of change.
Also, I found it really hard to come by dollar coins while I was there... I knew you guys had them, but all I seemed to end up with was a wallet fat with dollar notes and pennies... urgh!
The solution to that "problem" is simple, if you don't want the pennies just don't take them. Many places even have a small dish on the counter for just that reason, if you need a penny (to avoid getting 4 back) and you see one in the dish, just use it. And if you don't want a few pennies you get in change leave them in the dish for some other guy. Or just quit collecting them in your pocket, spend them on your next cash purchase that isn't an even multiple of 5 cents (that's what I do). Getting rid of them would just effectively raise prices on everything by several cents (by as much as 7 or 8 cents AU). We don't need that. If you're too lazy to get out a few cents when you have a pocket full of them and you make another purchase, you deserve to carry them around or leave them for someone who appreciates them.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
No doubt it would be trivial. In my 2 months in the US not one bloody shopkeeper bothered to even look at my signature against my credit card.
Get's at least looked at about 30% of times in Australia.
ah. good thing I stopped buying printers. I get them all out of the trash. usually it's a lot of deskjets that get that horizontal smearing - 8 q-tips and a spoon of water fixes that. ah, those crazy emory kids, they throw away their expensive electronics at the end of the semester, I spend 5 minutes fixing it, and then sell it back to them! most of my apartment is furnished from the trash.
I remember I once tried to scan in some money (no, not to counterfeit it -- didn't have a magnifying glass, and I wanted to check out the owl on the dollar bill, up close), and some of it came out really "wavey" to describe it best. The blank space that has the pattern printed, looked like a bunch of sin/cos curves next to each other. Is this because of the scanner driver or could it be because of built in counterfeit protection, into the dollar bill?
SuPz.orG
where i work if the tranparent window part is missing we can not accept the note
The Crain's Crest watermark in the paper might be a bit of a problem.
Errrr.... The value of a currency is what you pay for a unit of it in another currency. So what could possibly be the difference between the AUD or the Euro going up and the $ going down? It's the same thing....