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Do Your $20 Bills Explode In the Microwave?
msaulters writes "After repeatedly setting off RFID scanners in a truck stop, the author discovered the culprit was a wad of $20's in his back pocket. In a paranoid attempt to keep the government from tracking him, he attempted to fry the embedded chips in his microwave, with interesting results." Alex Jones has interesting theories about a number of things, but evidently a lot of readers were interested in this one.
From the article:
So we chose to 'microwave' our cash, over $1000 in twenties in a stack, not spread out on a carasoul.
Now, looking at the second picture, and knowing a bit about how microwaves heat stuff... looks to me like the approximate center of the stack charred up nicely in the microwave. Notice the bills near the top and bottom of the stack are nearly untouched. The reason the center of the bills charred in the same place in all the bill is because it was the center of the stack.
I sincerely hope this article is intended as a joke, or at the very least "we did something really dumb and we're going to at least make it funny" situation.
And for the record, I just zapped a $20 bill for 20 seconds and it's barely even warm, on Jackson's right eye or anywhere else.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
$20 bills burn in a microwave.
Ergo, $20 bills have embedded RFID tracking chips.
More likely, the metallic anti-counterfeting strips just formed a dipole resonant near the frequency used by the truck stop's anti-theft tag scanners.
Move along, nothing to see here, just some idiot with more money than brains.
I'd just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that there have always been serial numbers printed on bills, for the purpose of tracking them. An RFID tag would make it easier to do so electronically, but being able to uniquely identify a particular bill is nothing new - in fact, see Where's George?
Having said that, the possibility that someone could scan the contents of my wallet while my wallet is in my pocket is rather disturbing for a number of reasons. If I were carrying $1,000 in twenties, I wouldn't want to advertise that fact to those around me.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Looking around the website, one can find this choice quote by Alex Jones:
AJ: And that also happened- where you aware the New York Times and Chicago Tribune reported this in '93, the FBI cooked the bomb and trained the driver[s] and had an Egyptian security agent doing it for them, had two retarded Muslims, literally retarded, drive the truck and park it, let the bombing go forward. At Oklahoma City, the same company that destroyed the remnants of the World Trade Center, blew up the remnants of Oklahoma City [and] had that buried under machine gun guard at a private landfill to this day. And they hauled the rubble away from the W T C to China! They wouldn't let you take photographs. Yes, exactly.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I think we're overlooking one very important question here...
Why the hell was someone carrying around $1000, mostly in 20s, in their wallet?
Maybe I'm the only one that doesn't get that part...
There could be a simple explanation for that. If you microwave a single bill heat is still produced but it's easy for it to get out. If you stick a bunch togeather and microwave that more or less the same amount of heat is produced per bill meaning a lot more heat, and paper is a good insulator, so the middle gets really hot and starts burning. Note how the amount of burning seems to have a progression from large to small.
Seriously, why on earth did he include those shots of burned money? Why did he stick the bills in the microwave in the first place? The whole thing is just so damned silly that it hardly even matters what his main point is.
This chip doesn't have collision avoidance, though. So a stack of bills wouldn't be individually readable.
So the technology isn't quite here yet to do it right, but it's getting close. Currently, you can get collision avoidance or tiny size, but not both. Good collision avoidance combined with fast data transfers is hard, and it's wanted by retailers, who want to be able to read out each box in a carton individually. That could be thousands of items. That's do-able, but not with the low-cost tags yet. Retailers want to get tag costs down to around $0.02. Realistically, today RFID tags cost upwards of $0.25.
True public key challenge/response hasn't made it into the smallest tags, either. Challenge/response is available in keyring size and in credit card size, and is used for access control applications. But the low end tags can't do that yet.
Two more years, and this will really be happening. But not yet.
From the article:
We could have left it at that, but we have also paid attention to the European Union and the 'rfid' tracking devices placed in their money,...
Maybe in X-files country, but here in real life, euros do not have 'rfid tracking devices'. What they do have is a metal strip which makes it more difficult to counterfeit.
Of course I fully expect now to be told that my government only wants me to think that that's just a metal strip... :-)
The only thing that would be against the law is defacing currency and attempting to use it in commerce. So we learned in Business Law.
Actually, what's illegal is attempting to use it in commerce after defacing it in a way that would let it be passed as currency of higher value.
You're entirely welcome to deface it in a way that doesn't promote fraud. In particular, some defacements are legitimate political speech and protected by the first amendment as interpreted by the courts.
My favorite defacement is to give the portrat of Hamilton on the (old) $10 a Hitler moustache and hair. Hamilton is the founding father who was the ideological head of the Federalists - the group that promoted the changes to the US central government that eventually led it to become the powerful and often oppressive machine it is today.
Not so much deliberately, of course. For instance, his opposition to the Bill of Rights was predicated on the idea that explicitly acklowledging certain rights would create the expectation that the government could stamp out any others. The proponents of the Bill claimed that, absent an explicit list of those that are particluarly important, the government would have no guideline and would stop 'em all. (Of course they were both right.)
But you know what they say about good intensions and paving.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
the issue that this guy has run into has to do with metalic particals suspended in the ink. the particals are used to give the bills a magnetic signature. to my knowledge this is used in many bills around the world. This has nothing to do with rfid, or the goverment tracking you, this isin't even a valid arguement if it were, the bill has a serial number that can be read by machine.
The store tracking sensors that this guy is talking about aren't even rfid, and only have a fleeting resemblence, all they can tell is the presence of a tag moving through them. The system is called electonic artical survalance and most are made by sensormatic to my knowledge the only thing that these machines keep track of is the number of times they're triggerd daily.
the only way to get the effect that this guy got would be to do just what he did, microwave a big tightley packed stack of brand new bills. once they're not stuck together they won't burn nearley as well, as for the exploading thing, they look more like they caught on fire from getting too hot, not like they blew up.
I'm not terrorably concerned with the goverment tracking the movement of money, they do allready. The real concern that we need to have with rfid is that we can be essentially fingerprinted based on the unique blend of objects that we carry around with us every day.
anyone correcting my spelling should find something better to do.
Well art is art isn't it, but then again water is water; and east is east; and west is west; and if you take cranberries
This article at CNN's website was the closest article to the topic introduced here that I could find on CNN, Google News, or Yahoo News. Given the popularity of the RFID issue in the United States technology realm, I would expect it to be in a larger news source such as these. I don't know much about this www.prisonplanet.com place, but I don't have any reason to believe it's highly professional. I get the impressino that it's somewhat of a conspiracy theory website.
/.ers have tried the same microwave experiment, with no ill effect to their bills. Personally, I'm more inclined to believe my fellow /.ers than this story.
The most apparent points of conjecture about this story, in my mind, are:
1. Why, if these tags are in $20's all across the nation, are not people setting off alarms for "no reason" all across the nation?
2. It appears that other
Perhaps these bills were part of a scheme, or an elaborate set of counterfeits with a specific devious purpose in mind. Or perhaps they were never microwaved at all.
The power of Christ compiles you.
A Random Blog
I was, to say the least, intrigued, by this story, so, I wanted to experiment. I grabbed a new $20 and stuck it in the microwave. I started with 1 second intervels and slowly increased and increased. And, in the end... nothing happened. I longest interval I tried was 4 seconds on high, but nothing happened in the end. The total amount of 'on' time for the microwave was about 30 seconds.
I don't know if my bill was defective, or if I didn't put it in long enough, but I seriously doubt this story. The bill never even got toasty, and the right eye was just as warm as all the other parts of the bill. As other people have said, there are tiny amounts of metal in bills normally, so I find it very unlikely that there is any relatively large strip of metal in as well.
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
What happens when you stack a bunch of metal strips on top of each other with a fine gap in between? How about rolling them up? ... Congratulations, you just made a capacitor!
Now place in a magnetic field to have it possibly resonate at the frequency that it resonates at.
Or like others suggested, a leftover security strip in the wallet.
People really should learn how to troubleshoot properly. Which reminds me of a story... in short, grad student doing research on fleas, trains his flea to jump when he yells out "Hop!". After much testing and mutilation, one by one, all of the legs get pulled off the flea. He yells out "Hop!", and nothing happens. Hence he begins to write his conclusion:
"When all of the legs are pulled off the flea, the flea becomes deaf".
-- Robi
I don't usally respond to trolls but the artical you link to has nothing to do with rfid, and it's not the gvmt tracking it was the guy's bank, I don't know about you but if my bank didin't keep track of my transactoions I'd be concerned.
The patriot act is a different matter, but has nothing to do with rfid chips in money, as far as I know there are not any. When you handle money you leave dead skin cells on it, in your paranoid world, this is much more damming than simply knowing how much cash you carry past a recever.
Here's my system for goverment tracking of money, all serial numbers are logged to each bank (as they are), but from there the bank logs wich costomers the bills are givevn to (my bank has these weird cash machines, you don't get money from the cashier, but from the machine). The next step would be to log the deposits coming from various buisness, This way the gvmt, can trace not only how much money just went by a location (like you'd get with rfid) but who it was, and where they spent it.
This method would be undectectable, by anyone other than the upper management of the banks, and the gvmt employees who monitor the data. it would be easy to track patterns and connections, not just count money, wich seems pretty pointless.
Not to mention the fact that rfid can be blocked, read by any concernd party, is easy to detect, costs money to embed in the bills. Why not track the bills by embeding chemicals in them, this would be more usefull, you could tell how much money a person recentley handled, how much they have, track cash using dogs.
Rfid in money is pretty pointless, and I'd be supprised to see it implimented in the next fifty years, I'd be less suprised to see the end of cash all together.
So in conclusion, be worried about the goverment spying on our personal financial data, library records, making illegal searches, locking people up in prison with no trial, reading your e-mail, tracking your internet use, knowing that you like to dress up like a woman, but don't be concerned with them wanting to know how much money you have on you.
Well art is art isn't it, but then again water is water; and east is east; and west is west; and if you take cranberries
I'm not sure but I think that's called the Emergency Alert System ;)
I don't know about my fellow tinfoil hat readers out there but I'll take the slight chance of the Government using it for propaganda (like they'd actually get away with it) if it means I'm going to know when that tornado is about to wipe out my house or those nuclear weapons are inbound. In either case I'll have enough time to put my head between my knees and kiss my ass goodbye ;) (my house wouldn't stand up to a dust devil let alone a tornado and we are 2mi from a major target)
Sarcastic point aside I do realize the AC was quoting from it just to make fun of it. I still couldn't resist tossing my own two cents onto the fire.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
the absolutely hilarious part is that the clod knows nothing about the EAC boxes. they are capable of displaying white text on a grey background only with an audio track. they are not capable of "hijacking" for any longer than 60 seconds at a time ( although the CATV versions are cool.. able to transmit on 400 different frequencies PLUS generate digital tv signals)
I.E. the statement was made by someone that knows absolutely nothing about what they are talking about..
the only thing the EAC boxes can be used for is alerts... so yes the Govt. could subvert the populace by having them display " John Kerry is a donkey lover"
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And this differs from Clear Channel's version how?
An upside-down colander? Man, that's just cruel. Not only does he have to clean out the inside of his microwave like he normally would, but he has to clean out the colander too.
A new breed of muggers has started hitting the
city. They carry rfid scanning wands and casually
scan your wallet without ever touching you. If
you have more than $50 cash, you're the next target!
Mightn't the fact that we judge him to sound crazy have quite a bit to do with the total lack of evidence and fact?
As a trivial example, this article presents no evidence or fact that RFID is at all involved, but is instead portrayed that way to mislead others. For those not quite so easily mislead, the author sounds like a nut job.
I've had this sig for three days.
an RFID tag would require a conductor. go see for yourself, scrape layer by layer through the whole area by those eyes and you'll find nothing but paper.
Cheap, Paper RF ID Tags To Replace Barcodes?
I do however feel that this story needs to be taken with a grain of salt... atleast for now. The authors do seem a bit paranoid, and even bring up the classic wrap it aluminum foil. However I wouldn't put it past our big business controled government to put RFID tags in our money so that whenever Joe Sixpacks walks into his local WalMark they know exactly how much cash he has on him.
An interesting thought occurred to me- what if the bills don't just *contain* a tag, but *are* the tag. The engraving was redesigned- how difficult would it be to arrange it so that the printing on the bill becomes a viable circuit (antenna, capacitors, whatever else is needed)?
Not that I mean to fan the flames (puns not intended) of conspiracy theory...it is my opinion that "The Government" already has too much information flowing in and not enough ability for analysis. As mentioned elsewhere, every bill has had a unique identifier (serial number) for quite some time. The printed versions can't be read remotely, but could be tracked whenever the bills changed hands. Whether this data could be rationalized into information is another question.
A friend of mine had a similar run-in with an airport metal detector and his stack of traveler's checks- each had a foil seal on the face, and collectively these created enough of a signal to set it off. Maybe a simple precaution would be to ensure the bills are oriented randomly (i.e. some with A.J. facing right, others turned 180 degrees and facing left, still others face down in the stack...)
All true paranoids and patriots unite- pay for everything using old quarters...or better yet- pennies!
That is incorrect. From Bureau of Engraving
"Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. Under this provision, currency defacement is generally defined as follows: Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined not more than $100 or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
Defacement of currency in such a way that it is made unfit for circulation comes under the jurisdiction of the United States Secret Service."
Destroying it completely may be ok, since you have no evidence it happened.
--ngoy
If the money's in the bank, then the Feds already know how much you have. The IRS gets a 1099 for every interest bearing account. Divide by the likely interest rate and they'll have a ballpark figure for the average balance. For a non-interest bearing account, your records are just a subpoena away, which is a pretty minor obstacle these days, but at least they can't data mine your finances they way they can with 1099's.