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

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