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Bugged Canadian Coins?
tundra_man writes "CBC has an article about RFID type devices in Canadian coins found on US Contractors. From the article: 'Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense.' The report did not indicate what kinds of coins were involved."
For the life of me, I can't figure a reason that somebody would do this. Coins change hands quickly and RFID has a pretty limited range.
Aside from:
"Passing the coin to an unwitting contractor, particularly in strife-torn countries, could mark the person for kidnapping or assassination"
But that doesn't seem practical in this case.
Anybody make sense of this?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
coins track YOU!
At least this Globe and Mail report thinks so:M .20070110.wspycoin0110/BNStory/National/home
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGA
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada
With RFID chips costing a fraction of a cent apiece, the addition of such a chip must at least triple the value of whatever canadian currency you add it to.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
screaming about how the birds are spying on him makes a bit more sense now.....
Monstar L
Wow, and I thought I was on the cutting edge by stamping bills and entering them into Where's George?
In fact, a April Fool's joke I recall was that WG had developed a way to track US dollar coins, with a machine that would emboss a unique serial number into the coin's smooth edge. The new project would be "Where's Sackie?"
Looks like the Canadian government is way ahead of the curve on that one. Better alert the folks at Where's Willy?, the northern branch of Where's George?.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Two reasons they might not change hands quickly:
... unless some Canadian is trying to find American stashes of loose change.
1) Canadian coins don't get unloaded as quickly in the US since not everyone is happy to accept them, so often those coins are the last you attempt to spend. (a minor factor, I admit).
2) Everyone seems to end up with a pocketful of change at the end of the day that gets dumped in a pile. The pile just grows.
Still doesn't answer the why
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Just pop your loose change in the microwave for 15sec problem solved ...
These RFID coins are clearly the work of Canadian Terrorists trying to harm the American people.
well, for sure, it would make creating coin vending machines much easier to implement, mechanically. once i was in canada and received a coin that looked like this which i initially thought was fake, but believed later after reading online.
From the article:
"The report, which first came to light in a U.S. newspaper, has since been posted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists, an organization that tracks the intelligence world and promotes government openness."
Well, I don't see it on fas.org (search), and if its in a "american newspaper", its one that google news doesn't search.
Something just doesn't sound right about this whole story.... It makes no sense, and there's no other cites for it.
The coins may have been given in some immoral/illegal situation by Canada's equivalent of the CIA. Perhaps by one posing as a prostitute? Perhaps perhaps at the scene of a bribe (no, I'm not saying the coin itself is the bribe; but perhaps the bartender gave the bugged coins at the scene)? If the coins showed up on the person in a meeting with the contractor the next day you'd guess which members of the contractors team were present during the immoral activity.
As the world knows it is cold up here in the Great White North eh! There is usually lots of snow too, eh! Well I can tell you from experience that with all our socialist programs we pay lots of taxes and as a result we don't often end up with folding money, eh! So when your coins go missing it really hurts, eh! Like when you lose a handful of coins in the deep snow, eh! So with RFID coins you just get the portable reader out and scan for the coins to find them, eh! Or, you scan your couch to see if you can afford to order in a pizza with back bacon, eh! You walk in to Harvey's (like McDonald's but much better) and they scan you on the way in and let you know what you can afford, eh!
Assuming that it was adhered, I could conceive how it could be accidental.
The metal based aliens simply made a mistake and implanted their tracking devices in what they thought was the dominant life form on the planet. OTOH, maybe money is the dominant life form....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Can anyone here imagine a better way to make an RFID useless than putting it in the middle of a coin? And then after making these magical coins, apparently the same super-spies went all over the US and installed readers at every sensitive plant. Without anyone noticing. Wow, with spies like that, who needs bugged money?
The sad part about this is that someone believed it.
Maury
i see a trend here, eh.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Little known fact: Ever since Dudley Do-Right made his first appearance on television, Americans have been terrified of Mounties. So long as Canadia keeps its Mounties along the border, you will be safe.
They probably got one of those poppy quarters from a few years ago and figured the painted on poppy was a listening device. I say produce the coins so the public and Canadian officials can see them or shut up. This has to be one of the most retarded stories I've read in awhile....transmitters in our coins....sheesh!!
RFID does not require a processor or battery. Consumer RFID devices for
implantation in animals (Pet-ID, HomeAgain) are about the size of a grain
of rice.
Tire is definitely spelled with an i here in Canada.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The coins may have been given in some immoral/illegal situation by Canada's equivalent of the CIA. Perhaps by one posing as a prostitute?
I believe you're implying that a Canadian prostitute is worth less than a dollar. "Here's yer fifty cents change, honey."
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The article didnt specify what the bug actually did
Im speculating, but I imagine it would not be impossible to minuturise an RFID reader to fit inside a coin with the intention to copy the RFID identity card which a defence contractor may carry on his person (In his pocket?). An attacker would then need to obtain the coin with the recorded ID information, I suppose.
It would be a simple matter to recreate the ID card giving an attacker access to a secured installation.
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
For the life of me, I can't figure a reason that somebody would do this. Coins change hands quickly and RFID has a pretty limited range.
If you RTFA article closely you'll see that the souce told the press that transmitters were found in coins.
Then (in paragraph 11) reporter notes that the type of transmitter was not disclosed. In paragraph 12 he starts speculating about RFID. The rest of the article (and possibly part of the preceeding section - along with the Slashdot headline) is based on the unfounded assumption that the transmitter IS an RFID-type device.
Which strikes me as totally bogus.
IMHO it's more likely that the "transmitter" found is a remotely-powered area audio bug, like "The Great Seal Bug", the martini fake olive bug, or the "diodes in the wall" bugs. Planted on a person it would bug his conversations and those around him until he spent it - hours or days later. (As you can imagine from the martini-olive bug, which is only useful while the spy is toting the martini, in some situations long-term bugging is an unnecessary bonus.)
Such bugs can be simple: A shaped cavity with a flexible membrane over it is one way to do it - the cavity resonates, giving a strong reflection, while the sound modulates the cavity's effectiveness, AMing the reflection. Another is just to fasten a diode to something that can be vibrated by sound. The diode frequency-doubles the reflected signal or mixes two of them to produce the sum and difference frequencies (sorting the diode's reflection from most ordinary reflections) and the vibration of it along the line between the bug and the monitor phase-modulates the return with the local audio. No fancy circuitry or local power supplies necessary.
I presume this one did involve at least a diode, or some semiconductor circuitry, since it was found in a radio scan - which is often done by looking for the frequency-multiplying and/or frequency mixing effect of diodes / semiconductor junctions. Finding a pure cavity resonator bug - or even identifying what it is when you have it - is a bitch.
Bugging the audio at a conference, or the conversations of a contractor at work on classified projects, would be worth planting a bug on him and having it there for only a few hours. After that, if he "spends" it, so what? (At least until they are noticed and a way found to identify them BEFORE the conversations to be monitored.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Maybe its just something simple like they added chips to a small sample of coins in order to track them round the mint.
Adding them to any processes after other coins are struck might allow them to see any bottlenecks in the factory line and therefore improve the flow of coins.
Just an idea, seems more sensible than being used to track a person, because the chips probably had a low detection range, and coins change hands so quickly as other people have pointed out.
That's of course true, the whole idea of RFID chips is they are inductively powered and don't have to carry their own power source.
(I happen to be a Canadian RFID researcher, of all things)
But the article sounds like BS to me. Let's say the coins did have an RFID chip on their surface, perhaps in one of the quarters with a poppy cut-out in the center (or the two dollar coin which also has a center that can come out). What would you DO with the "spy chip"? You're going to record audio or video? Fine... then do what with it? You don't have enough space to store it, and you can only transmit it a few feet away.
It might be a practical way to track where coins go, but I can't see how it could be used to "spy". It's really no different than say a serial number stamped on currency, which we do have on paper bills. I just don't see the point.
Im gonna guess that these coins were pennies, since nobody takes the time to ever give exact change, and vending machines dont accept them (usually).
How are you going to covertly track someone with RFID?
If you want to track someone, you've got to either broadcast the info or walk up to them with the RFID scanner.
If you're walking up to them with the RFID scanner, you already know where they are.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
You mean like in "Canadian Tire"?
And the reason they're keeping the denominations secret is that the bugs were actually found in Canadian Tire money.
Let's be clear about a very important point in this article: It does not say that there were RFID tags in the coins. I quote: "...details of the incidents were classified. As a result, the type of transmitter in play -- and its ultimate purpose -- remain a mystery. However, tiny tracking tags, known as RFIDs, are commonly placed in everything..."
Thus, it's only an unimaginative guess that the coins contained RFID. So the second half of the article, where security experts speculate on the purpose and effectiveness of RFID embedded in coins falls just short of making stuff up. It may or may not have anything to do with the actual events.
Maybe. I've noticed that most people aren't able to use credit cards properly. Getting denied when they run out of money seems to work much better than getting denied a few thousand dollars after they run out of money. Of course, that's how credit card companies make a profit.