Don’t even know where to begin with this story. But begin we must. Don’t even know what category to put it in. From AP…
The government said the mysterious coins were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.
Intelligence and technology experts said such transmitters, if they exist, could be used to surreptitiously track the movements of people carrying the spy coins.
The U.S. report doesn’t suggest who might be tracking American defense contractors or why. It also doesn’t describe how the
Pentagon discovered the ruse, how the transmitters might function or even which Canadian currency contained them.
Further details were secret, according to the U.S. Defense Security Service, which issued the warning to the Pentagon’s classified contractors. The government insists the incidents happened, and the risk was genuine.
…
Top suspects, according to outside experts: China, Russia or even France — all said to actively run espionage operations inside Canada with enough sophistication to produce such technology.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service said it knew nothing about the coins.
Well, ain’t that a perfect ponder? And they call US conspiracy theorists!!!
Don’t ya know we transmitters in in ALL our Loonies and Toonies…
Speaking of loonie, ahhh never mind.
Brad, I’m guessing some of your readers may have some coins they’d like to dispose of just in case they’re carrying transmitters. Would you be willing to dispose of those coins as a service to your readers?
Or should they send them on to Thomas Noe?
These transmitters can also be put in paper now. So junk mail can be used. But they do not transmit very far.
Spy coin report overblown, U.S. official says
So maybe they’re tracking general movement patterns…
Ben E # 5. See this line 🙂 “But the item about the Canadian coins item appeared to be the result of only partial intelligence.” They are partially intelligent. Anyway if you had to carry a few of those coins around you’d quickly get rid of them as they weigh down your purse.
We do use the Loonie to win hockey games though. Maybe the Defense Department could look into that.
http://ca.events.yahoo.com/2602...es-venues.html
Looks like Joe Friday’s back on the job. Did they find any LSD in those coins?
That’s how my wife and I track our kids. We give them Canadian coins and tell them they are excepted everywhere. They aren’t, so they are always in their pockets…and we track ’em! On our Cap’n Crunch Canadian Coin Tracker…
If you were going to fool around with any coins – you’d use what we call the ‘toonie’ – a 2 dollar coin that consists of a copper insert surrounded by a silver ring – much as if you pushed a penny into the center of a half dollar. That makes it easier to exchange the insert and avoid leaving evidence of tampering.
And – – you’d have to assume some kids were experimenting with ‘rfd’ tags because there is no way to control where the coins are going to travel as they are passed from person to person.
I would assume that even Homeland Security would realize that these were more ‘notes in a bottle’ than the tools of high level espionage.
I find the story suspicious only because it is difficult to transmit RF signals from the interior of a coin to the exterior. The metal of coin forms a small Faraday cage. So unless there is an external antenna from the interior of the “toonie” to the exterior, the RF signals from the inside do not penatrated the outer cladding of metal.
For example, you could have a piece of fine (but insulated) wire run from the interior and then wrap around some part of the outer edge of the coin. this may be inconspicuous enough and still serve as an antenna for the transmitter inside.
But, if the story is true, I find the irony delicious. The same RF ID tracking, Wal-mart, P&G, and the Department of Homeland Security tells us no danger at all at a personal leve, is considered a grave danger (national secruty threat no less) when applied to “important” people.
I love the irony that it is spy chips for all peons but no spy chips for us, the important. We’re special.