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Embedding Chips Into Paper Money 233

Posted by timothy from the revenooers-hard-at-work dept.
Khelder writes: "RF tags have been getting smaller and smaller. Now Hitachi has made ones small enough to put into paper money, according to this article on CNET news. As the article says, 'Though the chip requires a reader unit to work, its size carries big implications for the future of identity technology.'" I can think of lots of other cool uses for a chip this size, especially once they're programmable with a little desktop box, but do you really want a record in place every time you pay with cash?
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Embedding Chips Into Paper Money More

Embedding Chips Into Paper Money

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  • Re:Texas (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Fine by me. Then we Virginians will just park a couple of Trident submarines off the coast of Texas and lob a couple of nukes your way. Oklahoma rejoice!

    Fat lot of good them Texas Rangers would do you then...though it's unclear if you meant the paramilitary or baseball team (though, when confronted by a nuke, I suppose the difference is irrelevant anyway).

    (And it's funny that a Bushie would make a middle finger out of dollar signs. They came from Bush's oil friends, hmm?)

    Signed,

    The People of the Commonwealth of Virginia
    Sic semper tyrannis and all that

  • Ah....but..... (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04, 2001 @06:03AM (#108895)
    I never use cash out of an ATM. I always make sure all the cash I use is laundered through at least five South American drug cartels.
  • Or how about SubWay give your $20 in change to the next guy on line. He then goes and spends it in a bar. The bar gives it in change to another patron, and he goes and buys kiddie-pr0n with it...

    Don't look now, but the FBI will be busting down your door any second now...

  • Exactly. Of course not all transactions go through a bank. When I pay the neighbor kid to mow my lawn, there is a good chance that he spends it before he puts it in the bank (so that transaction would be transparent). Also with the current system there is no way for the bank to know how much change Subway gave you. Perhaps you just went in to get change for your $20. When that $20 shows up at the bank the bankers know who originally withdrew that bill, but they don't know anything about the transactions that might have happened since it left the bank.

    I personally think this sort of device would be great if it were used as a way to stop counterfeiters. However, if they are going to use it to link people to transactions, well that's bad. Of course, in order to get that sort of information business would have to be required to share transaction information with the banks. I don't see that happening. That's pretty sensitive stuff.

  • Highly circumstantial indeed. That's why they want to have a talk with you and get to know more about your interests.

    Its not a conspiracy, but sometimes agents from certain three letter agencies have time to care enough and reach out and knock on your door...
  • Talking about tracking bills, check Where's George? [wheresgeorge.com], people tracking dolar bills by serial number on the web.
    __

  • Re:eh? (Score:2)

    by Zigurd ( 3528 )
    Show me a cop, in the U.S., who lost his job for breaking any privacy or confidentiality rule, ever, in any jurisdiction, at any level from Pond Patrol to FBI.

    Waiting...

    Waiting...

    Thought so.

  • I offer my services freely and expect no renumeration for my time, effort or bare cheek.

    That's just as well, because it doesn't exist:
    http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=r en umeration

    ITYM remuneration [dictionary.com] .

    (I know, I know, it was a joke, but it's one of those things like then/than and we're/were/where that annoys me and it's hot today with no aircon in this office.)
    --
    the telephone rings / problem between screen and chair / thoughts of homocide

  • Not going to work (Score:5)

    by Accipiter ( 8228 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2001 @05:44AM (#108905)
    A long time ago (when they were trying to design the look of the new bills), the treasury was looking for spiffy anti-counterfeit measures to implelemt in their bills. They came up with the idea of placing a Hologram on the bill. Since holograms would be damn near impossible to counterfeit, they thought they had the perfect solution.

    Then they remembered that money gets *abused*.

    They constructed a series of brutal tests to put paper money through, to test its viability for life outside the press. I don't recall the majority of the tests, but I do remember that they wash the bills in laundry, bake them at high temperatures, run them through machines, etc. The hologram passed all the tests except the last test. There's a vertical metal tube a little over a half inch in diamater. A rod sits above the tube. The dollar bill is placed atop the tube, and the rod is pushed down, forcing the dollar bill into the tube. (or something like that.)

    The hologram was crushed and wrinkled beyond recognition. Since holograms rely on light reflection to work properly, a crumpled hologram doesn't work well, if at all. They discarded the idea.

    I'd like to see how well these chips fare in these torture tests.

    By the way, what would be powering these chips? What happens when that power source dies?

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Now, if only the US Fed (or whomever is responsible for actually issuing US currency) can start printing different denominations in different colors we'll *really* be happy . . .

    Seriously, how in the heck do you Americans keep track of how much paper money they have in your wallet? It's damn near impossible when all you've got there is this undifferentiated wad of screwed-up flimsy bits of paper.

    Go you big red fire engine!

  • Just because it requires a reader to read the chip doesn't mean that it requires a reader to spend the money. If it doesn't require a reader to spend the money, then the chip is no better to track you with than the aforementioned hairbrained ways to track you via serial number.
  • Not to imply anything about the rest of the post...

    You don't need enough gold for the whole GDP, much of that money is spent multiple times. You need enough to back up all the money in circulation.

    Anyways, I think it was a mistake to get rid of some absolute limit on the ammount of currency printed. IMHO it didn't have to be gold, which has the drawback of being mined regularly. But the fact that you get poorer every time the government prints out more money is just ridiculous.

    Of course, the government would never say this, they're the ones who made the change. Admitting it wasn't the greatest move ever would be tantamount to admitting their guilt for the rampant inflation of the recent past.

    Now, I think the gold standard had some drawbacks too, but not as many as going to a nothing-standard.
  • Actually, the view that everyone needs to develop on their own timescale is the rational one.

    There are many people who are not emotionally ready for sex into their thirties.

    Is it hard to believe that there are people who would mature faster than average, and be on the other side of any arbitrary limit that you set?

    Should all people be forbidden to have sex until the age at which the lowest common denominator should?

    The only reason we have arbitrary limits for things like this (and drinking, military service, etc) are because it's too complex to decide on a case-by-case basis. But who is to say that the arbitrary limit we picked is better than anyone else's? We need to study the effects on their children before we can claim to have the superior law.

  • I would think this would make physical crime rise. If people could use scanners to determine how much money people were carrying (in a crowd, for instance), then they could easily home in on the money.

    This would make it more and more dangerous to carry cash.

    Of course, various governments have been trying to phase out cash anyway.
  • First off, I said, as an example, Subway.

    Besides, think about your spending habits and how much of the money you spend -could- potentially be tracked by serial numbers alone.

    (And I did say for the truly paranoid).

  • Very true. I completely agree. But, consider how possible it would be to do a marketing profile on that data.

    It would probably be -more- accurate than Credit Cards for some things.

    (Not everyone has credit cards and many smaller purchases are not done on a credit card. (ignoring debit/cheque cards for the moment)).

  • Actually, many currencies (Canadian for instance) have easily computer readable serial numbers. (including marker bars to make locating and scanning easier, a long with a OCR font).

    You can scan serial numbers in a split second without a problem. Remember, the font, and location are known in advance. Some banks actually do this, I understand it is used to look for counterfit currencies (duplicate serial numbers) and relates to long term storage as well as the destruction of bills. (Destruction would be restricted to your Federal Reserve bank).

    Also, the bills would only have to be scanned by the ATM machine itself as it dispenses them. This would have negligable impact on the time it takes to get your money.

    But I did say this was for the paranoid.

    (I'm not actually this paranoid to believe it myself. But the possibilities....)

  • Night deposit. You stuff the money in an evelope/bag and stuff it, a long with a deposit slip, and drop it down a chute into a vault. Done all the time.

  • Re:Whatever happened to our rights? (Score:4)

    by topham ( 32406 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2001 @06:10AM (#108923) Homepage
    Actually, if you check out tags intended to be used in products at grocery stores (one example used in testing) the tags can be scanned in mere seconds. (a shopping cart FULL of products). Now, since the chip suggested can be scanned from 12" away, I propose a portable scanner for pickpockets. They will know exactly how much cash your carrying.

  • Tracking (Score:5)

    by topham ( 32406 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2001 @05:29AM (#108924) Homepage
    For those of you paranoid enough to decide this is a method of tracking your purchases, let me suggest a truley paranoid alternative.


    They already can.

    You go to your local A.T.M. machine an get $60 out. The machine scans the serial numbers and spits out the bills.

    You walk away. Later that day you buy lunch at Subway, you pay with one of the $20. Subway deposits the $20 in their till/safe, etc till the end of day. At the end of the day they count their cash and deposit it in their bank.

    The bank scans the serial numbers of all the money it receives and reports where it came from...

    . Now, don't get paranoid about the damn chip... ok?

  • Your money has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.

    I can see where this could turn out to be an inconvenience.

    ---

  • When our new currency (Real) was released it had parity with the american dolar, so producing counterfeit R$ 100 bills was worth the trouble. The problem was the paper... To make sure the paper would look convincing the criminals created a technic to remove the ink on R$ 1 bills and them print R$ 100 in place.
    If we had the face value and serial number recorded on the bill's mag tape and cheap readers to scan it, this counterfeiting technic would be easily avoided.

    A magnetic strip is even more easily alterable than ink.
    There is a solution here in addition to making different denominations of paper money different sizes (unlike such places as the USA) you also use different papers, embed foil into the paper (in different places), etc. Then even if you can get the ink off you just have expensive paper...
  • 'Blanking' and reprinting currency is a recognized problem by many central banks, that's why most new currencies produce bills of different sizes.

    Combined with such things as placing foil strips in different places on different denominations.
    This also has the side effect of making different denominations easier to tell apart.
    It's somewhat surprising that US currency with everything all the same size in much the same colour scheme hasn't been the subject of discrimination actions by partially sighted people...
  • Some chemicals are demonstrably more dangerous than others, so addictive that they'll drive people to committ crimes to pay for their next fix. Some drugs can cause violent activity. I think it is pretty reasonable to restrict access to them because they aren't always "victimless crimes."

    These tend to be the effects of prohibition rather than the drugs themselves.
    The reason you get crimes is that the black market inflates costs and the people involved in the supply use guns instead of lawyers.
  • Assuming you are from the US, have you read your Constitution, or even the Bill of Rights? Have you read any of the history and principles behind it?

    The latter is probably more important. After all there is little point in someone being able to "parrot" a document if they have little idea what it actually means.

    But that doesn't mean I trust the government with one iota of power more than it is constitutionally entitled. That attitude of healthy distrust of government is one of the greatest gifts given to us by our Founders.

    That is the reason why the US constitution exists and the way it is written the way it is written. Having just got rid of an oppressive government the last thing they wanted was a home grown variety of the same.
  • Democracy, especially pure democracy, is overrated. What if 51% of the people vote that eating ice cream should be a crime, punishable by death?

    It also is difficult to scale and "representative democracy" has its own problems. (Plenty associated with political parties, especially with a small number of political parties.)

    Thankfully, the US is a constitutional republic, not a pure democracy.

    Problemis that most of the population don't appear to know what one is...

    We have placed limits on what a majority may do.

    Also limits on what the government as an entity may do.

    (We have sometimes ignored these limits, to our own harm.)

    Plenty of examples of lobby groups who want unconstitutional laws passing, especially in relation to the fourteenth ammendment. (At least one, fairly recent, US law where this is obvious from even the title.)
  • Paul wrote this during the time of the Roman Empire which had not so long before crucified his Savior, and which persecuted early Christians. So clearly he knew that governments could do harm to people who had not done evil.

    Including to thier own people, remember that Paul was a Roman citizen.
  • The fact that 1/3 of the UK population does it (as you claim) does not make it legal or acceptable as long as the democractic process has deemed it illegal.

    Depends how you define "democracy" considering that that 1/3 represents more people than actually elected "The government", IIRC every government within the last hundred odd years...
  • Canadian bills of higher dominations have holograms on them.
  • I agree that the US money is primativly easy to fake, but there are loads of steps which could be taken without microchips. Without being an expert in printing, I'd say that Australian plastic bills [ohio-state.edu] are probably the hardest to fake, as the transparent windows will defeat most methods of copying.
  • I'd say it's obvious that crime rates can be brought down by installing surveillance cameras, increasing the visible police presence on the streets and granting the law enforcement agencies more rights to carry out surveillance of suspects.

    No, it's not obvious that a surveillance state lowers crime. Spying on people is outside the state's legitimate authority - it is therefore a crime in and of itself. Increasing the amount of crime commited by the state in return for a decrease in crime by independant operators is no bargain. I'd rather be mugged and have $100 stolen from me than be spied upon by the state - liberty is worth the risk.

    The sheep-like attitude you display never fails to disappoint me. I'm guessing you live in the U.K. - can someone tell me what are the British equivalents of COINTELPRO, MK-UTLTRA, Watergate, the "enemies list", Waco, Amadou Diallo, and Rampart? What does it take to remind these people of the abuses to which state power is susceptible? Or is it a hopeless task to try to talk to a subject of a monarcy about freedom?

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • Most people cannot be trusted with such responsibility because in the process they'll fuck up other people's "bodies and lives".

    So then, why should we obey a government voted into power by an electorate who can't even be trusted to run their own lives?

    If most people can't be trusted to manage their own affairs, then certainly a government "by the people, for the people, and of the people" can't do it for them. Indeed, if that's the case then giving that government more power would just be letting the majority of people who can't handle personal responsibility, run the lives of the minority who can handle it!

    To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. [astro.uu.se]

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • /. needs a conspiracy tag for moderation. I don't know whether that would be a +1 or -1, though.

    GoldAge seemed to be a scam. They were selling "internet accounts" measured in gold, but without having any actual gold to back up the accounts. Only governments can get away with that :-)

    the AC
  • No, microwaves are not going to destroy a tiny, Si-on-plastic chip. The wavelengths are too long, even at 4GHz, to couple much power into the chip.

    There are better ways to induce extremely high electomotive fields into a very tiny area. Nothing readily available to the general public, thank $DIETY :-) Plasma ovens or supercooled HF driven electromagnets with rare earth hi-mu focusing rod.

    But since the chips would easily be detectable, some techno-anarchists would build a machine to punch a tiny hole in the bill, dead centre of the chip. Physical destruction would be best. A machine like a bill counter, that could de-chip 20,000 bills per hour. Take it to US gun shows, and let every paranoid gun owner run their cash through the machine. Offer it as a cash register attachment to head shops.

    Of course, you saw how popular the US$1 coins have been :-)

    the AC
  • Artificial inflation.

    Pretty [house.gov] stupid. [mises.org]

  • I've only taken two economics courses, so maybe you can explain to me how having a dollar in my hand (in the short or long run) is a loan to the government for $1?

    How can the government use the dollar that I have (assuming they don't print a replacement)?

    Taking cash out of circulation has the opposite effect of counterfeiting. If I take a $1 and put it under my matress (or illegally destroy it) such that it is never spent again, the value that $1 is distributed in the economy, such that every $1 is worth ($1 +($1/(total cash in circulation)).

    Maybe I'm just not understanding. I hope you can clear it up for me. You can understand my confusion; after all, I have the dollar, not the government.

    Practically speaking, hoarding cash benefits nobody. The hoarder, by definition will never see the benefit of the hoarded cash and will lose due to inflation should she change her mind (which is why nobody does it), and the economic benefit conferred to the rest of the participants in the economy is so miniscule as to be unmeasureable, and would be easily surpassed by the social benefit of somehow investing the money and allowing it to "circulate," even in a risk-free, insured savings account.
  • Total Counties won by Bush: 2,434
    Total Counties won by Gore: 677

    Square miles of country won by Bush: 2,427,000
    Square miles of country won by Gore: 580,000

    "But what does it matter? It isn't not the land, it's the people who make the country."

    -John Banner as Bavaro, Crash of the Moons

  • > Is it really worth our freedom and privacy to spend our own money in order to catch the minority of people who are laundering money?

    People who launder money are typically involved in illegal dealings.

    One illegal cash-based industry is the drug trade.

    And as we all, know, drugs (except alcohol and tobacco, those are OK!) kill chillllldrun.

    So if tracking everyone's cash purchases saves (all together now, let's hear you bleat it like you mean it!) juuuust onnnne chyyyyyyyuld, then of course it's worth it!

    > If you feel that this payoff is justified, then I'm glad that your opinion doesn't actually count in the larger scheme of things.

    Huh?

    Outside of Slashdot, most of the sheep do believe the payoff is justified. Worse yet, the sheep vote.

    The fact is, the politicians - whose opinions are the only opinions that matter - have been highly successful at using such rhetoric to sell such schemes to the sheeple. And the rest, unfortunately, has been, is, and will continue to be, history.

  • Big Bros, Big Woes (Score:3)

    by joq ( 63625 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2001 @06:03AM (#108949) Homepage Journal
    Personally I feel that the thought of living in a "free world" was killed off long ago at the inception of government. Call me a loon conspiracy theorist if you will, but again let's look at the reality of tracking: Facial Recognition in Tampa [cnet.com], ease of tunnel toll devices to track speeding [americaontheroad.com], Echelon [echelonwatch.org], Digital Angel [antioffline.com], and the countless others. So why does would anyone want a chip in government? My thoughts on this would be simple, they expect to catch tax cheats and criminals with it, however what's going to be done when we live in a society where we've become drones who can't think for ourselves?

    Take a look at what the Secret Service did to Gold Age [wired.com], a raid with no charges all because they cannot monitor what people do with their currency, which scares Big Brother since they don't have control of the situation at any given time.

    Is monitoring currency good for you? No because of the abuse that could take place behind it. What happens to a business man say Bill Gates should he have an affair and pass some cash (which until now is untraceable, sure there's serial numbers but that wouldn't work) to say a call girl. Can you imagine the joy in someone's eye should they feel like blackmailing Bill because they tracked him. Sure it's not right to cheat but open your eyes and get an honest look at where things could go.

    For those who want a lesson in politics and money I suggest reading "The End of Ordinary Money [orlingrabbe.com]
  • > I don't know about America, but in the UK the money is not ours, but lent to us while still being property of the Bank of England (and the Queen).

    The American government doesn't own the money either. It is lent to them by the Federal Reserve Board. (e.g. On June 4, 1963, a virtually unknown Presidential decree, Executive Order 11110, was signed with the authority to basically strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the United States Federal Government at interest)

    Canada is just as corrupt with the "Bank of Canada" (e.g . The Bank was founded in 1934 as a privately owned corporation.)
  • Here in Australia, we use plastic bills with clear windows in them. Kinda like your holograms, but they're just clear with some pattern in the middle. We've had this for over 10 years, you can fold them over the window and they're fine.


    ---

  • Neutralizing the chip would devalue the banknote (Score:3)

    by mrogers ( 85392 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2001 @09:12AM (#108961)
    One reason for creating banknotes containing chips is to prevent forgery (or make it prohibitively expensive). A note without a working chip would be worthless. Banks and retailers wouldn't accept it; if an individual found out you'd passed them a de-chipped note they'd regard you as a forger.

    --
  • What would 30 seconds in the microwave oven or the bulk eraser do to these? Would nuking it make the currecy worthless?
  • This [wheresgeorge.com] website already that tracks money flow via volunteers and they get some pretty interesting statistical results...
  • I've increasingly seen a pattern in which people withdraw money as 20 dollar bills from an ATM and then spend them at a business, getting change in fives and ones. I suspect that almost all the twenties are then deposited at the merchant's bank. Twenties would only be given in change for 50's and 100's, which are not that common.
    So if you withdraw a twenty on Monday, and Safeway deposits it on Wednesday, it's a good guess that you spent it at Safeway. Not proof, not enough to convict anyone of anything, but enough to establish a rough sense of where you spend your money. Or conversely, where Safeway's money comes from.
  • Wouldn't it be better to embed the chips in the drinks? That way you could ask your smart toilet the next morning, "What the hell was I drinking last night?"
  • ...but you make a good point about these chips in paper currency. I really don't know if they'd be able to handle the stress-tests.

    One place I've seen these chips used was when I traveled to Greece this spring. Their phonebooths require you to use a card for payment, rather than actual coinage. The card cointains a chip like this, and it's actually VERY convenient...I don't recall seeing or hearing of any "battery" in the card, so I don't know if the technology needs one (someone step in and help out if you wish). Of course, the card is the size and strength of a credit card.

    I had fun with one of those once and put it through a couple of tests of my own. I actually jumped on it and let a car's tire roll over it, and it held up fine. But it's virtually impossible to bend the chip and still have it function (of course, I used most of the minutes on the card, and was down to only 1, so there wasn't much to lose). After bending the card in the middle where the chip was, the reader on the payphone thought the card was invalid.

    Along those lines, I also had a chance to visit Italy, where they have a thin metallic (I believe aluminum) strip imbedded into each piece of currency. Although it's virtually impossible to counterfit, it also greatly decreases the life of the bill. After being wrinkled enough times, it starts to tear along the line where the metallic strip is. Paper currency uses an incredibly durable type of paper, being as how it goes through a ton of wear and tear. I can just imagine bills falling apart where this chip would be implanted.
  • So, it's noted that item X is purchased with bill Y.

    Big fucking deal. It's not like I have my name on the bill. There's still no way of tracing the sale to an individual.

    Even if it is noted by your cash machine that you got out bill Y from the cash machine earlier - so what? That bill could have passed through a dozen hands before being used for that purchase. Even in a fairly tight timeframe.

    Of course if you really want to be paranoid, any money you get out of a cash machine goes into a date-marked shoebox for a month or so, and you only spend money in shoeboxes marked with a date over a month ago.

  • Huh, that's funny, cos we've now got holograms on most of the paper money here in the UK - all £50 and £20 notes, currently phasing out old £10 notes for hologram ones, dunno if £5 is due to be replaced. Wonder if the Royal Mint (who produce our money) tried this test? Anyone know?
  • OK, so I've seen a bunch of people suggesting possible ways to break this, but if this money becomes standard then you'd effectively be making your cash worthless since it couldn't be proven that it wasn't a forgery (at least not without an examination that cost more than the face value of the bill).

    And I've got to appluad the folk suggesting putting it in the microwave/oven/glass of gin (gin!?!), but it's unlikely. But how about someone who leaves it in their trousers and it then gets washed on a high temp, tumble-dried on a high temp, and then ironed? I've retrieved money that I left in my pocket after it's been through the laundry, and it's still been good (though a little crinkled), but would this chip stand up to that sort of honest (and fairly common) mistake?

    Oh, and for the people suggesting this could be used as a GPS tracker - wrong! It's 0.4mm, so any antennae it has is likely to be broadcasting somewhere near microwave frequency and it'll be getting it's power from electromagnetic induction (supplied by the reader). This is never going to manage to broadcast to a GPS satellite in space, in fact it'd be near impossible (for several years at least) to pick it up from half a mile away since it's way too low powered and the signal will be attenuated by water in the atmosphere as well as buildings etc.

  • We're not talking wrongful conviction here, guy. We're talking wrongful death with no process whatsoever, much less a jury trial. Amadou Diallo, Timothy Thomas, etc. didn't get due process before being executed by the state...


    --Fesh

  • Sounds similar to Larry Niven's essay, "The Roentgen Standard (Yet another Modest Proposal)"... He was satirizing the idea that money has no value if it's not being constantly circulated. The solution? Make the money out of radioactive waste, so everybody tries to get rid of any cash they have on hand as quickly as possible...

    *chuckle* It's a hoot to read.


    --Fesh

  • Let me offer another angle on this topic: the end of the world. Revelations speaks about the mark of the devil, having the symbol "666" embedded in our hands or foreheads. It goes on to read that the mark of the beast is over-capitolization and the love of the money. Abusing the capitolization like we already are now is a start. Embedded chips like this (which you know will happen someday) is just another sign fulfilled. Not many left now; be weary.

  • How's this for fouling up *any* scheme for tracking cash purchases?

    Have a big party of say 100 of your best freedom-loving friends. Bring cash, and everyone trade with everyone else over a beer.

  • Sorry to disappoint you, but over here you can request from the owner of a camera that has filmed you, and they are legally required to hand you copies of the footage (for a small admin fee, approx. $30-$50).
    Kudos to the UK for this one!
  • If you're not spending money on anything you're ashamed about (or anything illegal), then the benefits outweigh the paranoia.
    How many times in the last few days has someone said some version of "You only have to worry about the government if you are doing something wrong." Are you all a bunch of sheep? Assuming you are from the US, have you read your Constitution, or even the Bill of Rights? Have you read any of the history and principles behind it?

    I am proud of the US, and proud of our government. Even including the things the government does that trouble me, I will stack our freedom up issue by issue with any other country. But that doesn't mean I trust the government with one iota of power more than it is constitutionally entitled. That attitude of healthy distrust of government is one of the greatest gifts given to us by our Founders.

    I am not currently doing anything illegal, but I may do so, if our government passes laws that I cannot morally follow. I mentioned being a Christian in China in a recent post. That is a very iffy business. If I were there, I would not want the government to be able to track my giving to the local church.

    You mention being worried if I am ashamed of what I spend, even if it is not illegal. Suppose I do spend money on something that is embarrassing but not illegal. Should I have to risk it being disclosed to my neighbors by the government? Maybe I don't want everyone to know whenever I buy Preparation H or an Air Supply album.

    Come on people, especially you in the US. The freedoms we enjoy were bought with a price, and can be lost if we do not work to preserve them. Learn some history, and stand up for freedom, if you think it is worth it.

  • Let me make it clear that I was praising only the rule allowing citizens to get access to video of themselves. My preference would be to not have the video at all.

    And don't even get me started on firearms restrictions in the UK. Sheesh.

  • So, in essence, you claim that you have the right to ignore any and all democratically passed laws that you find difficult to live by?
    Not exactly. How difficult I find it to live by is irrelevant. But I do have the moral right to disobey a law that is unjust. Note that I would understand I was risking punishment, as does anyone who resists tyranny.
    I used to think like that too, but then I realised that most people simply cannot be trusted to act that way. Face it. The majority of the public is either too stupid, lazy or immoral to be allowed to make their own moral judgements.
    With freedom comes responsibility. Individual human beings have an innate right to determine their own destiny. If they act wrongly through stupidity, laziness, or immorality, then let them face the consequences. Until then, it is wrong to infringe on their dignity and freedom.

    Hence, the least common denominator policy must be followed in this case as well and laws should be respected as long as they are democratically passed.
    Democracy, especially pure democracy, is overrated. What if 51% of the people vote that eating ice cream should be a crime, punishable by death? Thankfully, the US is a constitutional republic, not a pure democracy. We have placed limits on what a majority may do. (We have sometimes ignored these limits, to our own harm.)

    With all due respect, I suggest you sign up for remedial civics, just like the first poster. Your desire for government as "mommy and daddy" is shortsighted, and could lead to some very bad things down the road.

  • I am familiar with that passage, and as a Christian have pondered what it should mean in terms of my behavior. I have not worked this out fully for myself.

    Paul wrote this during the time of the Roman Empire which had not so long before crucified his Savior, and which persecuted early Christians. So clearly he knew that governments could do harm to people who had not done evil. Obviously we should respect law when it is in accordance with "higher authority." But what should the Christian do when government itself is evil?

    At the risk of incurring the wrath of Godwin, would it have been "unChristian" to hide Jews from the German government in WWII Europe? I think not. Would it have been "unChristian" to assassinate Hitler, given the chance? That one is a bit dicier, but in hindsight I would have pulled the trigger.

  • Morals should never enter into a legal nor political argument
    It is true to say that we should reason about our laws, but what you say is a version of the popular catchphrase "You can't legislate morality." Of course we can and do legislate morality...most if not all of our laws encode moral judgments. Applying the law is not necessarily a moral exercise, but making law certainly involves reasoning about morality.

    Murder is outlawed because our moral judgment is that killing an innocent victim wrongs him.

    Theft is outlawed because our moral judgment is that people may own property, and that it wrongs them to take it.

    I think what most people really mean when they say "You can't legislate morality" is that you shouldn't legislate those things on which we don't have a moral consensus. This applies to such current topics as gambling, prostitution, and drug use.

    But a better argument is not against "legislating morality" but rather for a framework for what we ought to legislate. IMNSHO, the libertarians have a pretty good handle on this one. My paraphrase of it is that to call something a crime, you need to be able to point to a victim.

    Moreover, there are always better arguments than those based on morality. Let's take a few examples:

    Child pornography. Moral argument goes something like 'it's moraly wrong, therefore should be (and rightfully is) illegal'. A more valid point of reasoning asserts that a minor child has every right to develop normal sexual relationships on their own timescale and deserves to be protected from physical harm and exploitation.

    First of all, you creep me out a bit here. But anyway, your very arguments are about morality! It is your moral judgment that a child has a right to decide his own timetable for sexual development. It is your moral judgment that a child has a right to be protected. It almost seems like you want to label your opponents moral arguments a "moral" and your own as "rational" merely as a debating tactic.
  • First of all, I was not in my reply trying to argue for or against a young person determining his own timetable for sexual development. Rather I was saying that claiming that view is right or wrong is a moral judgment. The original poster claimed to want to banish morals from politics and law. That is not possible or desirable.

    We need to study the effects on their children before we can claim to have the superior law.
    Of course we need to study and reason about the circumstances to make good law. But the very proposition that some effects on children are to be preferred to others is again a moral position. Reason and morality are not contradictory. We can reason about morals all we want, but reason requires a foundation of assumptions.
  • You're perfectly safe until you actually build a bomb, start your own little chemical war with chlorine or go nuts with your shotgun.

    Tell that to Randy Weaver's [boogieonline.com] wife and son. Or Donald Scott [fear.org].

    Fact is that law enforcement goes off half-cocked way too often. I'm generally a big supporter of federal and local cops but they do make mistakes and "cowboys" have often ruined the lives of innocent people. Inviting more police attention to yourself is downright crazy even if you are innocent.

    No, they would have to prosecute you and show concrete evidence that you are dealing/using drugs.

    Well, they can actually seize quite a lot of your stuff without any kind of trial. Read up on asset seizure laws [sightings.com]. It's amazing what they can get away with. (I know that some of these laws have recently been changed or stricken, thankfully, but I don't know the details.)

    I can really understand the attraction to thinking "it's OK, it's for my own good and nothing bad could ever come of it." But if you do a little research you'll quickly see that it's a difficult position to defend. Terrible things happen to people all the time at the hands of the state. As citizens it's our right and duty to keep the government on its toes and not budge an inch unless it is 100% reasonable to do so.

    The "slippery slope" is one hell of a cliche, but that doesn't make the slope any less slippery. Read my sig. Grok it. It's the truth.

  • That was pretty interesting. But even if heroin is safe, aren't there other drugs that aren't? Can't PCP incite violent behavior, for example?
  • The car example doesn't cut it. You don't ingest a car, and it can't affect your brain chemistry. On the other hand a drug like PCP can make you frip your wig [siena.edu].

    People need to wake up and realize that the worst aspects that are attributed to drugs are in fact a direct result of the drug war and criminalization.

    I think that is LARGELY but not COMPLETELY true.

    Here is the point I am trying to make: imagine there is a new drug that makes you feel great AND drives you into a homicidal rage where you may do harm to others. Should this chemical be legal in your libertarian world view and if so why? (And saying it should be legal because there are other things legal that are just as bad doesn't cut it.)
  • I've heard the 7-11 convenience stores here in the U.S. are now selling prepaid debit cards that can be used just like a credit card, except anonymously. So when you go on the lam, get one of those.

  • When I pay my neighbor, ...by federal law, he must accept US Currency as payment of my debt.

    Sorry, no. 31 USC, 5103 is the piece of law you (mis-)quoted. It reads (in relevant part):

    United States coins and currency... are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.

    According to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (part of Department of the Treasury):

    This statute means that you have made a valid and legal
    offer of payment of your debt when you tender United States currency... . However, there is no Federal statute which mandates that [anyone] must accept cash as a form of payment.

    (emaphasis added) Former quote is here [cornell.edu]; latter is here [treas.gov].

  • Banks and retailers wouldn't accept it

    The treasury DOES redeem money, new for old, even if it has been severly damaged. I remeeber a PBS program where they even redeemed money that had been burned. They used sophisticated technology to ID the bills from the fragile layers of ashes.

    Given this, the problem of processing money with a small hole seems mute.

    Also, The US Treasury is the most conservative in the world when it comes to adopting new fangled features. They seem to let the rest of the planet beta test it first.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • Nuetralizing the chips (Score:4)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2001 @05:53AM (#109034) Journal
    Somehow I think that a few seconds in a Microwave oven might do nasty things to the electronics. Or maybe ironing the bills. If they are small enough, you could get a grass roots movement to take out the chips with a paper punch.

    heck, the government will even go to lengths to replace money destroyed in a fire, so mildly damaged bills that are legit should not be an issue.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • Useful applications #671 (Score:3)

    by Jodrell ( 191685 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2001 @05:43AM (#109039) Homepage
    do you really want a record in place every time you pay with cash?

    Since I spend most of my cash in the pub, it would be neat to be able to go to my landlord's website and answer the question what the hell was I drinking last night?


  • Don't worry, It doesn't have enough memory to run Windows. Who would want to wait that long at a checkout for thir bills to reboot?
  • Maybe we need to take off the tin foil hats from our heads and put them on our wallets just to block the signal from prying scanners.
  • So just buy a Faraday cage wallet and you'll be OK, right?
  • An earlier poster mentioned that for the truly paranoid, cash transactions can already be tracked. I would suggest that using RF tags opens the possibility to 'hack' your cash. A skilled indevidual might be able to ajust the signal transmitted by their cash, in such a way as to thwart tracking attempts.

    Every introduction of new technology, or replacement of a low tech solution with a high tech solution has the logical result of creating a new opening for hackers. People who truly want to avoid being tracked can always do so. It's just a matter of the degree of effort they're willing to / forced to go to.

    This technology will make counterfitting more difficult but it will also make successful counterfits (those containing the chip) almost impossible to detect - because with the introduction of any new technology, there suddenly appears a black market for that technology as well as the afore mentioned expansion of hacking potential.

    --CTH

    --
  • In the event this is adopted for American curency:

    Do we really want a company in a foreign country to produce such a critical element for our currency?

    Alternatively, should we require that the RF tags be produced (licended to) by an American company, or multiple companies?

    In that event, it would be come impossible to prevent the creation of a black market for the RF tags. With that in mind, should anyone ever consider using such a technology im their currency (in America or elseware)?

    --CTH

    --
  • Revelations speaks about the mark of the devil, having the symbol "666" embedded in our hands or foreheads [...] Embedded chips like this (which you know will happen someday) is just another sign fulfilled. Not many left now; be weary.

    Oh, I've been weary of this for most of my life now, believe me...

  • Paper money in Brasil have microfilms and/or magnetic tapes for decades now. Since they're hard to embed on paper (they put it there while the paper is still wet) it's an excelent tool to prevent counterfeit money.

    The problem with magnetic tapes is that the information on them can be easily erased by magnets or other source of magnetic fields, this seems obvious to anyone who works with computers, but the average person may not be aware of the tape in the bill, or the efects of magnetic fields on them.

    This can prevent the monetary authorities to magnetically write information on the tape, such as the face value of the currency or its serial number.

    When our new currency (Real) was released it had parity with the american dolar, so producing counterfeit R$ 100 bills was worth the trouble. The problem was the paper... To make sure the paper would look convincing the criminals created a technic to remove the ink on R$ 1 bills and them print R$ 100 in place.

    If we had the face value and serial number recorded on the bill's mag tape and cheap readers to scan it, this counterfeiting technic would be easily avoided.

    Now comes the chip...

    Information stored in a flash ROM is more resistant to magnetic fields than when stored in mag tapes (please, correct me if I'm wrong) making this an excelent tool to prevent fake bills.


    --
  • So I can confirm that I really did spend it all in the bar last night.

    If you're not spending money on anything you're ashamed about (or anything illegal), then the benefits outweigh the paranoia.

    Imagine being able to track where your money went after you spent it on dot com stocks.

  • should we require that the RF tags be produced (licended to) by an American company

    I propose Micro$oft - they've already been granted a license to print money.

  • >>After all, you are nothing but a scummy drug dealer that deserves everything he gets?

    Aaaah, good.

    drugs = bad.

    you must have thought long and hard to come to that conclusion. Let me just ask you a few things to justify your viewpoint:

    1) why does a certain substance get placed into the 'illegal' category? because of actual harmfulness or just addictive potential? or is it something else altogether?

    2) why doesn't an adult have the right to control their own body? what if I *want* to be addicted to something? what if the 'drug' I want to take isn't addictive?

    3) when did many 'drugs' become illegal, and why exactly did they become illegal? did national governments suddenly open their eyes to substances that had existed for VERY long times and go 'hey, shit - these should be illegal' or were there other reasons for their reclassification.

    4) when the government reclassifies a 'drug', do you suddenly have a moral dilemma that your previous stance to a substance was either to harsh or to lax compared to what the government wanted you to think. (e.g. a sedative used to cure many epileptics (and therefore 'good') is suddenly found to have addictive potential and therefore jumps into class II (and is therefore 'bad') - do all the people dependant on that drug to lead normal lives suddenly become scummy drug users or unfortunate victims?)

    -Nano.
  • Apart from all the paranoia, conspiracy theories, etc. etc., I have a few questions about feasability:
    1. What do these units cost? A friend fresh out of an economics lecture once explained to me how critical the cost/benefit analysis is with currency. You want to make the cost of counterfeiting high enough to deter it, without making the currency more costly than it's face value --- especially not it's resale value. So, this thing will have to be cheap enough --- although not that cheap, since you'd probably introduce it on the larger denominations --- but it also can't be too cheap (so the counterfeiters don't roll their own).
    2. Second, what, pray tell, will they encode in 128 bits of memory? Just the worth of the bill? Or maybe just the same value over and over again on all bills (makes the chance of hitting in randomly minimal, although not at all that low)?

    Ron Obvious

  • I would argue that the vast majority of $100 bills that are used in legitimate transactions get withdrawn from a bank, spend some time in a wallet, and then are spent at a store and sent right back to a bank. Remember, you will NEVER get a $100 back as change at a store.

    Look at it another way: Will it get me convicted by a jury of my peers? Go back to your original example: I get the $100 from an ATM, and later they find it in the possession of an person who they convict of selling illegal things. So now they drag me before court, since my $100 obviously was used to buy other illegal things from this same person.

    Are we to assume that this is the only evidence? Then I'm only in trouble if I live in Texas (something I stopped doing over 10 years ago, thank goodness) and my public defender is sleeping through the trial. Even a rookie attorney on his first case should have heard of the "presumption of innocence". This will just be too weird for a jury.

    Are we to assume there's other evidence? Like, if they find the illegal stuff in my possesion... Ah well then, that's another matter, isn't it?

    Frankly, I would be worrying a lot more about the cameras in Tampa Bay (coming soon to a community near you!) or whatever form thermal imaging will take now to get over that small inconvenience with the constitution... or (as I suggested in the posting that started this) worry more about them tracking my credit cards and any other forms of electronic transfer I may have, than worry about what they store in a passive 128 bit memory.

    Finally, you ask Are you going to "argue away" a large database keeping track of all the large transactions you've ever made?. Well, frankly, yes --- in this case. For cost reasons. One thing to always remember is that, apart from the space aliens or the scientoligists' bugbears (thetans? whatever they call 'em), all the other conspiracies are bound by earthly limitations like finite funding, finite memories, finite amount of time and "human resources" available for storing and maintaining their evil work. One can always argue, of course, that they have much better technology than we could even imagine, but that way leads madness, or at least the lunatic fringe...

    Ron Obvious

  • They can't track you with it ... can they? (Score:5)

    by Mr. Obvious ( 243243 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2001 @05:37AM (#109073) Homepage
    Hold on, hold on...

    If there's a chip on my credit card it can track what I spend because it stays with me (until it gets stolen, lost or revoked). But a chip on my Ben Franklin leaves my possesion when I hand him to the lady at the cash register. Moral of the story: They can't track me or my purchases with it, they can just track what was bought by a lot of different people with one and the same bill.

    Reminds me a lot of this news item that floated around in the 80's about how 99% of all $100 bills (or was it $20 bills?) have cocaine traces on them. As if that meant 99% of the population were snorting coke, instead of that almost every bill goes through so many hands that it eventually goes up somebody's nose, if you see what I mean.

    No, this doesn't sound like Big Brother to me, and if it is, then it's the legal tender that needs to be worried, not the citizens.

    Or am I missing something here?

    Ron Obvious

  • I frequently go to that bank, give them 5 twenties and ask for a $100.00 bill, especially around Chinese New Years time for those red envelopes... Are they now going to have me fill out a form in triplicate every time I want to do that? If they don't, their whole system will be flushed down the toilet right there... And the bank cannot say, "We cannot process that transaction for you if you don't fill out that form", because I can just point to the phrase on the twenty dollar bill that says that this is legal tender for all debts public and private. It does NOT say this is only legal if you fill out form #XYZ-123.

    The bill does not say that it's legal tender for all exchange purposes. If exchanging money (whether from one currency to another, or from one denomination to another) wasn't a service (that you can be required to fill out forms, stand on your head, etc) then it would be illegal to charge for it, as it's illegal to sell money.

  • You're probably a smart and moral guy who could decide for himself. I would propose that this would be true in the case of most of the Slashdot readers. However, the problem is that the majority of the public really is stupid and incapable of making moral judgements themselves.

    Perhaps you missed this one, but one could argue (pretty succesfully IMO) that following the law is, in itself, a moral decision.

    if they were given executive power we'd have a eye-for-an-eye judicial system, for instance.

    Once again, one could argue that we already have a great many elements of that in the States already (capital punishment, etc.).

  • They detect a trace of on illegal drug in the fabric of your car And pray tell me what they're gonna do? Send you to maximum security prison right away? No, they would have to prosecute you and show concrete evidence that you are dealing/using drugs. Get real. No self-respecting law enforcement agency would make noise based on such flimsy piece of an evidence.

    Actually, that trace of drug can be used to confiscate your car, your cash, your house, etc. as suspected proceeds of illegal activities (RICO act) without ever charging or arresting you for a crime.

    Not to mention that that trace could be (depending on total weight) construed as posession in itself. A few hits of LSD diluted in water has been sucessfully prosecuted as posession of LSD in the amount of the total weight.

  • I think the idea here is to stop counterfitters who would have much more difficulty putting in the appropriate microchips. Right now American money is ridiculously easy to fake. Having a government signed encrypted serial number or something would make it that much harder.

    As for tracking, I suppose they could attach my name to it when it came out of the bank machine, but they lose it when I do any number of things. It could given to the neighbour's kid for cutting grass, or to any small store that doesn't have a scanner, or even just broken into smaller bills that aren't associated with me at the nearest Kwiki-Mart.

    • but do you really want a record in place every time you pay with cash

    Of course! For I am a tractable law abiding citizen. Surely the only people who would mind are thieves and child molesters and drug dealers and commies and satanists and terrorists and (shudder) copyright pirates, right?

    Seriously, you want to know how this will be pushed? War on Drugs. A recent test [erowid.org] on banknotes in London showed that 99% of them contained traces of cocaine. We must stop the evil! Won't someone please think of the children! And so on.

    • news item that floated around in the 80's about how 99% of all $100 bills (or was it $20 bills?) have cocaine traces on them

    London, 1999, 99%. [erowid.org]

    • 99% number was class A drugs. Most where coke. not 99%.. read the fscking story.
    "banknotes tainted with cocaine. [...] Scientists have found that more than 99% of banknotes tested from the capital were contaminated by the class A drug[singular]."

    But of course, I understand that actually reading the story carefully yourself before posting excitedly your pedantic - and incorrect - correction isn't in the spirit of /. ;)

  • Help me to help you (Score:5)

    by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2001 @06:01AM (#109089) Journal

    Once the "bill chip" becomes available, I propose to test how well it works.

    If you all send me one new bill of every denomination I will spend them wisely for you at various locations. If you can track the cash, then obviously I'll have to try harder to go undetected with the next batch you send me to test. If you can't, then I've done my job.

    I offer my services freely and expect no renumeration for my time, effort or bare cheek.

  • The onwards march of science now gives companies and governments another tool in the fight against consumer "rights", a concept spurned by laissez-faire captialists (it interferes with wealth creation after all). And despite the God-given gift of our Constitution by our noble Founders, the rights of every American to live how they please have been slowly stripped from them in court case after court case and paid-for piece of legislation introduced to our lawmakers. For unfortunately, the Founders were only men, and despite their far-seeing attempts to ensure freedom for all Americans, they could not have forseen the evils that modern society has made for itself.

    Like other schemes this will be introduced in the name of the greater good. The Government will undoubtedly start marking money as a means of tracking down criminals, especially drug users and dealers, who always a handy foil for attacking freedom, and counterfeiters (already aided by the Monopoly money we use here). If we're lucky we'll be told, if we're not it'll be buried in a press release about a new set of baknotes being released, with the majority of people kept in the dark my the major news houses, always willing to turn a blind eye in exchange for other news rights to more people-friendly news stories.

    And where do these tactics lead? Past experiance has shown that whenever new measures such as this are introduced, the criminals get smarter - witness the discovery of an almost-finished submarine in Columbia for smuggling drugs! When they find a way to get around this (and let's not forget how we're quite happy to skim the profits off of laundering drug money while decrying where it comes from), what will the Government do next?

    Will it be us that gets a chip next? As chips get smaller it will become a simple task to embed one under your skin, which could provide data on you wherever you go, whatever you do. Consider the development of air-powered "hyposprays" and how easily they could be adapted to chip you from the moment you were born. Think this is unlikely? Perhaps so, but we've been warned about it for a long time, and it is inevitable that governments like ours act only to increase their own power, while denying honest citizens their own.

  • Some chemicals are demonstrably more dangerous than others, so addictive that they'll drive people to committ crimes to pay for their next fix. Some drugs can cause violent activity. I think it is pretty reasonable to restrict access to them because they aren't always "victimless crimes."

    I suggest you read this [guardian.co.uk]

  • I will admit to not knowing enough about PCP to have an opinion on the matter... hmm, it's a dissasociative anaesthetic according to this [erowid.org], and the problems come from both of these properties.

    Whilst it does sound bad, I'd be tempted to wonder who would do it if cheap, clean alternatives existed? I mean, it hardly sounds like a worthwhile buzz does it? The trouble with illegalisation is that addicts are often tempted to take whatever they can get hold of without regards for consequences.

  • 1984! The end is near! (Score:5)

    by Dr. Prakash Kothari ( 314326 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2001 @05:42AM (#109095)
    For those of you who aren't aware, we already have this technology imbedded into TODAY's paper currency. Ever notice the little strip about 1 inch from the left edge of the bill? That's the secret CIA transponder chip that is being used to trap the flow of currency. The FBI mind control conspirists want you to believe that it's just an additional counterfeit protection, but there are those of us out there who know the truth. The secret microchips imbedded into every US bill allow the NSA, CIA, and the FIBI to track you're whereabouts almost everywhere you go. They have covert sensors imbedded in airport metal detectors, and those little doors that open automatically at the supermarket. Burn all of your money right now before the CIA hypno-robuts eat your soul!
  • Of course you can take the conspirational approach, if you want, but I think that is too far-fetched. What about person-to-person transactions? If you pay me some bills, am I going to register the transaction in some device or database? Ridiculous. And once the chain is broken, there is no chain at all.

    However, from the point of view of counterfeiting hindrance, the possibilities are really big. The basis for avoiding counterfeiting is to use some device in the money that's cheap to make in big quantities, but requires big expensive equipment as an initial investment. Chips absolutely check that list. A world full of chip-money, would be a world in which our money would be worth more, as counterfeiting is reduced and money laundering too.

    Don't hope too much on that, however. Fat suitcases filled with untraceable money get traded every day, and many of them end in the hands of people that take decisions. They are not going to shoot themselves in the foot, so to say.

    --

  • I won't get paranoid about this, but here are some questions (regarding use as money identifier):
    1. How is this better than a device that can read the serial number on currency? After all, if you need to use a reader, why not just scan those serial numbers. They would provide exactly the same information.
    2. What's to stop the counterfeiters from including these chips in their money, too?
    3. How much extra is it going to cost to print money using this technology? Who is going to pay the cost?
    4. What would happen if, say, I stood in line at the cash register and bought something. The cashier gives me change, but forgets to scan one of the bills that just happens to have come from the previous customer. I then go to another store, and spend that money -- where they scan it appropriately. Now they have a record of this money changing hands in a suspicious manner, so they send the police to arrest me and charge me with counterfeiting because two disconnected cash transactions have taken place using bills with the same serial number.

    Don't get me wrong. I think this is a cool device that could have many great uses. It could be added to packages (instead of just UPC codes) and act as a combination content identifier and anti-theft system (provided that they can increase the range a little). Thieves would be incredibly surprised when something that they thought wasn't tagged turned out to be. Hospitals could even use this device (temporarily implanted on or under the skin on a patient) to help make sure they don't amputate the leg of the wrong patient. But, I just don't see any reason to put these things into monetary currency.

    GreyPoopon
    --

  • We'd be safe in the UK. Because the data from those chips is held on computers and anyone who's not the bank that collected the data has no right to even see it without our permission.

    Just because a bank has a marketing department doesn't make it a marketing company. I've seen hospitals with cafeterias - I don't class hospitals as restaurants. Can you elaborate on these 'partnerships'?

  • Some chemicals are demonstrably more dangerous than others, so addictive that they'll drive people to committ crimes to pay for their next fix

    If tobacco was illegal, about 30% of American adults would instantly become thieves in order to support their $200/day cigarette habits. The crime associated with illegal drugs is strictly a result of their illegality. Same with the abuse: no drug became popular with children until several years after it became illegal.

    Alcohol--the Date Rape Drug©--was demonized during Prohibition just as today's illegal drugs are. If you seek the truth, you will see that there is no difference between that Dark Age and this one.

  • Re:Whatever happened to our rights? (Score:3)

    by Zen Mastuh ( 456254 ) on Wednesday July 04, 2001 @07:08AM (#109116)
    whenever new measures such as this are introduced, the criminals get smarter - witness the discovery of an almost-finished submarine in Columbia for smuggling drugs!

    You have forgotten something: a drug smuggler isn't a criminal. The only difference between marijuana, coffee, alcohol, MDMA, LSD, crack, Tylenol©, heroin, Prozac, and Mountain Dew is political. The U.S. Government has made arbitrary distinctions between all drugs and convinced millions of people, yourself included, that some drugs are "bad" and that anyone involved with the bad "drugs" is a "criminal".

    We have lost the 2nd, 4th, and 5th Amendments, as well as the States' Rights Amendment(10th?) in the nearly 20 years since Reagan stepped up Nixon's War on (Some) Drugs. Chipping money will erode our right to Assembly. I don't feel any safer now.

    To get back to the topic, our current currency is counterfeit-proof. I worked in various financial institutions for several years and firmly believe that even our old currency is distinguishable from counterfeit currency 100% of the time. We had a training session with some SS agents ~1991. They passed around some of their best examples of counterfeit bills. I was surrounded by people who couldn't detect them. I instructed them to close their eyes and feel the bills. All noticed the difference and could detect genuine bills slipped to them in their closed-eye state. Anyone else can too.

    The new currency extends this by allowing even a machine to distinguish between genuine and counterfeit bills. Surely any human could, if properly trained to focus his/her attention on the bill: its weight, its feel, its colors, etc... Do people really have so many other things going on in their mind that they can't even focus their attention on the dollar bill in their hand?

  • This will never work. Since cash must be exepted for all debt public and private.... What if I owe the guy next door some money. Lets say we split the costs of a bbq... (reasonable right?) Is my neighbor going to have to lug out a cash scanner, and connect a modem to the bank, to accept my cash? The bank already charges for their credit card scanners, and take a cut of the transaction, usually 1.5 to 3%. So you know they will do the same with cash scanners. Some businesses already don't want to pay for credit card scanners, and some even pass on the fees to consumers. Some even do it illegally, as its illegal to have a surcharge to use credit. The correct loophole is to say there is a cash-discount, but I guess some business don't care. What do you think is going to happen with cash scanners? Everyone will say "fsck you" to the bank. What about businesses overseas that accept US currency? What about businesses in Mexico that accept US currency?
    When I pay my neighbor, he is not obligated to take my Visa Card, but by federal law, he must accept US Currency as payment of my debt. Does this mean every person on this planet will be getting a US Cash-Scanning machine, and modem, in order to accept cash payment for debt owed by US-Residents? Shyeeeeeeeeeeeah right..... Since not everyone will be getting one of these new fangled machines, there is no hope of this working.

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