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Hollow Spy Coins
Bruce Schneier's blog links to a few sources for hollow spy coins, one being BoingBoing's Bazaar — where a nickel that can hold a microSD card costs $27. Another is Slashdot's sister company ThinkGeek, where you can get hollow quarters and half-dollars in the low 20s. As if corporate and government security geeks didn't have enough to worry about.
This is just a slashvertisement for hollowed-out coins. I would really consider them "spy coins" as the title is selling them to us. A "spy coin" should actively do some spying, really. I could just as well call my wallet a "spy wallet", as it can hold mico-SD cards too.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
hey kdawson, if you're going to try to slip in an ad for your sister company in a "news story", at least mark it up as an advertisement.
This is just wrong. kdawson should be fired for such a breach of ethics.
... with the federal deficit exploding, the fed is doing a fine job of hollowing out ALL you money, not just the change in your pocket.
Give me 20 quid and I will install a SPY FOLDER on your computer, whether it's Windows, Mac or Linux.
You too can store things INSIDE your very own SPY FOLDER. Features include
Store things inside.
Keep things separate from other things that are not inside your SPY FOLDER.
All this and more!
Again, all yours for just 20 quid. Call 555-HAPPYDUDE now.
the Defense Department might think these coins are for espionage, just like the foreign Canadian quarters from 2007:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003697628_spycoins08.html
I was a amateur magician when I was ten or twelve, and I'll be 58 next month. You could get those coins at any magic shop way back then, or through the mail from catalogs; I owned a couple of them. Also, any machinist can and could make them easily.
Free Martian Whores!
Considering how laptops have become fair game for involuntary search and seizure at US borders, I think putting your 'important stuff' on a microSD card inside a hollow coin is probably a good idea.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Since these are machined out of gen-u-ine legal tender, the charge you would be worried about is defacement of currency, rather than counterfeiting.
That said, I've never heard of anybody going after currency defacement operations(even the overt ones. Those "souveneir penny" machines that crush a graphic associated with whatever attraction the machine is located in have been around for decades, and the Secret Service has shown no signs of caring) unless they involve wholesale export of coins for their melt value(I think there was some issue involving the old pure copper pennies during one of the spikes in copper prices fairly recently).
If you somehow got caught, and your hollow nickel contained a microSD card with a copy of secret_leaked_CIA_documents_that_the_illuminati_don't_want_you_to_have.doc, they'd probably throw a defacement of currency charge at you, just for completeness' sake; but, while almost definitely illegal, they aren't exactly a huge legal risk.
Micro-SD? I can fit a whole usb flash drive in my spy-rectum!
You can walk right through security (airport, border, corporate) with a microSD card in your pocket and nobody blinks an eye. Trying to "smuggle" a MicroSD card through is more likely to result in you getting caught and treated badly (even if it isn't even illegal). If the data on the MicroSD card is what you're trying to hide, a better spy device would be a trick card... say, which was internally partitioned into two cards with some very obscure way (SW or HW) of switching between them. Put innocuous data on one side, stick it in your camera, phone, music player, whatever. Even if the goons search the card, that's all they find. Short the right contacts or send the right command, and get access to the "evil" data.
Hollow Nickel, Hidden Agent
What’s a nickel worth?
No, it’s not a riddle. It’s a case straight from the pages of FBI history.
It all started in June 1953, when a Brooklyn newspaper boy picked up a nickel he’d just dropped. Almost like magic, the coin split in half. And inside was a tiny photograph, showing a series of numbers too small to read.
Even if the boy kept up with the front page news on the papers he delivered, he probably never would have guessed that this extraordinary coin was the product of one of the most vital national security issues of the day: the growing Cold War between the world’s two nuclear powers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
The coin ultimately made its way to the FBI, which opened a counterintelligence case, knowing the coin suggested there was an active spy in New York City. But who?
New York agents quickly began working to trace the hollow nickel. They talked to the ladies who passed the nickel on to the delivery boy, with no success. They talked to local novelty store owners, but none had seen anything like it. A lot of shoe leather was ruined, but no hot leads emerged.
Meanwhile, the coin itself underwent expert examination. FBI Lab scientists in Washington pored over it. They immediately realized the photograph contained a coded message, but they couldn’t crack it. The coin did yield clues, however. The type-print, Lab experts concluded, must have come from a foreign typewriter. Metallurgy showed that the back half was from a coin minted during World War II. Ultimately, the coin was filed away, but not forgotten.
The key break came four years later, when a Russian spy named Reino Hayhanen defected to the United States. Hayhanen—really the American born Eugene Maki—shared all kinds of secrets on Soviet spies. He led FBI agents to one out-of-the-way hiding place, called a “dead drop,” where FBI agents found a hollowed-out bolt with a typewritten message inside. When asked about it, Hayhanen said the Soviets had given him all kinds of hollowed-out objects: pens, screws, batteries, even coins. He turned over one such coin, which instantly reminded agents of the Brooklyn nickel. The link was made.
From there, Hayhanen put investigators on the trail of his case officer, a Soviet spy named “Mark” who was operating without diplomatic cover and under several false identities.
After painstaking detective work, agents figured out that “Mark” was really William Fisher, aka Rudolf Abel, who was arrested on June 21, 1957. Though Abel refused to talk, his hotel room and office revealed an important prize: a treasure trove of modern espionage equipment.
Abel was eventually convicted of espionage and sentenced to a long jail term. In 1962, he was exchanged for American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the U.S.S.R. and held prisoner there.
In the end, a nickel was worth a great deal: the capture of a Soviet spy and the protection of a nation.
Link: http://www.fbi.gov/fbihistorybook.htm
Ken
Considering how laptops have become fair game for involuntary search and seizure at US borders, I think putting your 'important stuff' on a microSD card inside a hollow coin is probably a good idea.
My blackberry has a microSD card in it. I have passed through many different customs / airport security examinations and nobody has ever examined the contents of the card. I don't see the point of paying for an even smaller microSD card carrier, when I already have a small microSD reader that I carry with me everywhere that nobody ever raises an eye towards.
And even if my phone is off, or the battery is dead, it still does just fine at carrying the card and looking extremely ordinary. You could also substitute most Motorola phones in the same role, and any number of other phones that I haven't paid attention to that also use microSD.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I think you'd be better off with a TrueCrypt file named DSC13423.jpg stored on an SDHC card loaded inside a point and shoot camera. Better if it is surrounded by other images with sequential numbers that make sense too.
you can successfully hide a MicroSD card behind a Stamp on a letter (big stamp, big letter) and have it arrive intact. I did this as a bet to a friend. I sent it to him in florida from michigan.
I did modify the SD card. I sanded off the extended lip to make it all the same thickness, and I embossed the envelope where the st card was to go to give it a bit more room. it was undetectable by casual inspection, but if you flexed it in the stamp location you could feel it.
Spy's used to send microfilm cutouts under stamps all the time. I still have a MINOX camera that I paid a dear amount for back in the 90's when I was into collecting real spy trinkets.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Get your genres straight; we're talking about spies, not private dicks.