Canadian Coins Not Nano-Tech Espionage Devices

Necrotica writes "An odd-looking Canadian coin with a bright red flower was the culprit behind the U.S. Defence Department's false espionage warning earlier this year. The odd-looking — but harmless — "poppy coin" was so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. Army contractors traveling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them. The worried contractors described the coins as "anomalous" and "filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology," according to once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails obtained by the AP."

Comments

State of Fear

[A beautiful mind]

Kind of expected in a state of overly paranoid affairs. Paranoia is where rationality gets thrown out of the window.

Re:wow

[neoform]

No kidding "wow"..

It was a Remembrance Day (ww2) coin.. why would this strike anyone as suspicious? As for the "man-made" bit.. well, it's a coin.. who'd they expect made it?

Remembrance Day coin?

[MrJynxx]

Aren't those the special Tim Hortons(Canadian version of crack in a cup) Remembrance Day coins they gave out a few years back? Funny they thought it had a microchip in them. Man some people can be so naive.

All this tells me...

[mwvdlee]

All this tells me is that the Americans think it's possible for coins to be used as spying devices. They wouldn't think it if they weren't somehow certain. I'd be carefull with American coins if I were you ;)

Canada vs. US

[Kimos]

I can't think of a more appropriate example to illustrate the differences between our two countries.

From the original FUD piece

[brian0918]

"The report did not indicate what kinds of coins were involved. A service spokeswoman said details of the incidents were classified."

So, basically, a weird looking coin led the government to believe there was an international threat, and the reason this belief remained intact for more than... say... 30 seconds, is that these idiots were too dumb to Google "remember souvenir" (the words on the coin), and yet they're given the ability to classify such nonsense, escalating a problem that could've been resolved by asking any Canadian to empty their pockets, into a threat to national security.

Are they really stupid enough to think that spies are going to make tracking devices in the form of big red X's, and then put those devices on coins that are unlikely to stay in their possession for more than a day?

The most hilarious part are the comments by one of the U.S. contractors, who sounds like he just got his Official Little Orphan Annie secret decoder pin in the mail:

"It did not appear to be electronic (analog) in nature or have a power source," wrote one U.S. contractor, who discovered the coin in the cup holder of a rental car. "Under high power microscope, it appeared to be complex consisting of several layers of clear, but different material, with a wire like mesh suspended on top."

Hardly surprising...

[who's got my nicknam]

given the current state of affairs in the US. When you live in a totalitarian state, you see enemies behind every bush (insert appropriate joke here). To the commenter who said it only takes being right once to make it all worth while I would say "You're deluded, my friend." One of your great statesmen once said that if you give up your freedom in exchange for security, you will end up with neither; this is being borne out as we speak. Americans are not "safe" from terror - they may be safe from terrorism, but as we can see from the daily news reports, Americans are a terrified people. Those contractors who freaked out about our memorial coins were obviously not feeling "safe", and felt it necessary to file a report about their suspicions. (Incidentally, what they assumed were "nanodevices" were likely the ink dots from the printing process; the Royal Canadian Mint isn't known for its quality when it comes to short-run commemorative coins.) This is just another incident that, along with the Boston Police department's War On Things That Blink, make me glad I have absolutely no reason to travel to the US. For your sakes, I hope you get a new administration with a brain in it next time round!

Re:Hardly surprising...

[ScentCone]

When you live in a totalitarian state

Well, at least we live in a country where we have dictionaries and whatnot that allow us to look up that word and understand what it actually means, and then look around the world and see where it's actually true.

You know, in countries next door to places where contractors actually do get bugged, kidnapped, and killed by people with a political agenda. If you're in that line of work, you've been to seminars where other guys in that line of work tell you what it's like to have your hotel room surveiled, your luggage tracked, or your co-workers decapitated. Canada isn't next door to Iran, but it is a place - just like the US - through which flows (and in which lives) folks with certain connections to operations like Hamas or countries like China and Iran that have a long track record of military and industrial espionage. Do you REALLY think that the US is a "totalitarian" state? What word do you use for places like Cuba, where (unlike the US or Canada) you can get shot for desparately trying to leave. Or North Korea? Are you THAT addled by your dislike for the US that you're that willing to close your eyes to places where such nonsense is the very nature of daily life and death, just so you're more comfortable using that label to score political points?

Projection

[Excelcia]

When you are a country who's law allows the kidnapping of foreign nationals, who's laws allow "rendition", who's laws allow Guantanamo to exist... a country who spies on everyone else, then you see yourself in others too. One tends to expect from others the sort of treatment you meet out. Conversely, the society for which the above is unthinkable tends not to see those threats everywhere else. This story isn't so much funny, as it is deeply... deeply sad.

Re:No big deal

[nasch]

We're not laughing at them for being suspicious and checking out something they weren't familiar with. We're laughing at them for being suspicious and not checking it out. They knew it was a Canadian coin. A quick Google search on "canadian quarter red flower" probably would have cleared it all up. Confirm that with a phone call to the Canadian embassy. The whole thing could have been over in ten minutes, and then if it becomes public, they say yep, we wondered about those coins but we quickly discovered they're harmless. Now, they've demonstrated that not only are they paranoid about anything looking slightly strange, but they also don't have any idea how to investigate it. So we'll have the aforementioned sea of false positives, and if there are any real positives we don't have any reason to think the government is capable of doing anything about it. I don't find this situation reassuring, because we're being asked to give up some liberties without any evidence that our security is improved anyway. And no, that doesn't mean I necessarily approve of giving up liberty for security.

P.S. whoever "they" are