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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
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.
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!
i see a trend here, eh.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
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!
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