Bugged Canadian Coins?

tundra_man writes "CBC has an article about RFID type devices in Canadian coins found on US Contractors. From the article: 'Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense.' The report did not indicate what kinds of coins were involved."

Motive???

[lecithin (745575)]

For the life of me, I can't figure a reason that somebody would do this. Coins change hands quickly and RFID has a pretty limited range.

Aside from:

"Passing the coin to an unwitting contractor, particularly in strife-torn countries, could mark the person for kidnapping or assassination"

But that doesn't seem practical in this case.

Anybody make sense of this?

Re:Motive???

[batquux (323697)]

Makes ripping off Canadian vending machines just a little bit tougher?

Re:Motive???

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

I also read the article and thought WTF.

I seriously doubt anyone managed to mung currency and insert a real RFID unit.
What I do think however is that in a small percentage of coins they resonate at the same frequency as an RFID which would appear as though they were magical.

If you did infact hollow out a bit of a coin and replace some of the metal with an electronic bug the weight and bounce (striking against a piezo sensor) would cause such a difference any coin mech you inserted it into would reject it.

Re:Motive???

[archen (447353)]

Although it doesn't say what kind of coin was involved, I would guess it's almost certainly the two dollar [wikipedia.org] coin. Mainly because I'd guess it's easy to pop out the center part of it that is a different metal. Even if you put plastic in there, the metal frame around it would make it feel pretty similar to a normal coin. There is also an advantage that when you cross the border you can't unload $1 and $2 coins. You can try to pawn off the small change to people who aren't paying attention (a problem in itself for northern states), but no one is going to take the big change - some won't take American dollar coins for that matter. Anyway that means they are more likely to keep the coin at least until they return to Canada.

Also it's better if vending machines reject the coin. If you can't spend it in a soda machine you're going to just keep the coin, and probably try another.

A Day In The Life Of A Twoonie

[ackthpt (218170)]

• 0700 In Harry's Pocket
• 0734 Tim Horton's for Coffee and Apple Fritter
• 0756 Change for Mary's purchase of Coffee and Scone
• 0810 Given to sad looking homeless man to buy food with
• 0812 In Beer Store register
• 1217 Change for Robert's purchase of something to drink with lunch
• 1259 In the till at Tim Horton's for coffee and donut
• 1349 Change for Alice's purchase of coffee
• 1412 Given to sad looking homeless man to buy food with
• 1425 Placed on two dollar bet for Murray's Little Girl to show in the 3rd race
• 1446 Paid out to Harry for bet on Mum's De Woid to win in the 3rd race

i see a trend here, eh.

Re:A Day In The Life Of A Twoonie

[digidave (259925)]

"i see a trend here, eh."

Yes, this is obviously a clever ploy for the Canadian government to discover where all the Tim Horton's restaurants are located.

Re:Motive???

[lawpoop (604919)]

The only conclusion that I can come to is that someone is tracking these contractors to figure out who they are.

These can't be general circulation coins. It's too expensive to put RFID in a coin, and there's no use for it. If the government was minting RFID coins, even as a test-run, there would be *some* mention of it *somewhere. If the government were doing it for legit purposes, they would own up to it after these reports. These coins must be being specially made.

Why would you want to make them? I don't think you're really worried about the coin itself; you are worried about the person carrying the coins. You don't need to know where they are at any moment -- there is no infrastructure to track a single coin. You just want to correlate a person carrying these tagged coins on a regular basis with the source of the tagged coins. It's a kind of 'swarming' identification. If the person regularly has a number of tagged coins in their pocket 3 days out of the week, you know they must be one of the people interacting directly with the source. This person is part of the group of people you are trying to identify.

Imagine a customs checkpoint on the border with thousands of people passing by every day. Suppose you know that there are some 50 contractors passing by there every day on their way to work in Canada. For whatever reason, you can't figure out who they are in any other way. But suppose you have access to the Canadian money supply inside the vending machines of the worksite. So you make sure that all of the Canadian money coming into the vending machine is tagged. You have a scanner inside the customs booth. Everyday, there are a number of cars where the driver has anywhere from 0-3 tagged coins. You know these guys must be getting tagged coins from the vending machine you control.

NOT an RFID is my bet.

[Ungrounded Lightning (62228)]

For the life of me, I can't figure a reason that somebody would do this. Coins change hands quickly and RFID has a pretty limited range.

If you RTFA article closely you'll see that the souce told the press that transmitters were found in coins.

Then (in paragraph 11) reporter notes that the type of transmitter was not disclosed. In paragraph 12 he starts speculating about RFID. The rest of the article (and possibly part of the preceeding section - along with the Slashdot headline) is based on the unfounded assumption that the transmitter IS an RFID-type device.

Which strikes me as totally bogus.

IMHO it's more likely that the "transmitter" found is a remotely-powered area audio bug, like "The Great Seal Bug", the martini fake olive bug, or the "diodes in the wall" bugs. Planted on a person it would bug his conversations and those around him until he spent it - hours or days later. (As you can imagine from the martini-olive bug, which is only useful while the spy is toting the martini, in some situations long-term bugging is an unnecessary bonus.)

Such bugs can be simple: A shaped cavity with a flexible membrane over it is one way to do it - the cavity resonates, giving a strong reflection, while the sound modulates the cavity's effectiveness, AMing the reflection. Another is just to fasten a diode to something that can be vibrated by sound. The diode frequency-doubles the reflected signal or mixes two of them to produce the sum and difference frequencies (sorting the diode's reflection from most ordinary reflections) and the vibration of it along the line between the bug and the monitor phase-modulates the return with the local audio. No fancy circuitry or local power supplies necessary.

I presume this one did involve at least a diode, or some semiconductor circuitry, since it was found in a radio scan - which is often done by looking for the frequency-multiplying and/or frequency mixing effect of diodes / semiconductor junctions. Finding a pure cavity resonator bug - or even identifying what it is when you have it - is a bitch.

Bugging the audio at a conference, or the conversations of a contractor at work on classified projects, would be worth planting a bug on him and having it there for only a few hours. After that, if he "spends" it, so what? (At least until they are noticed and a way found to identify them BEFORE the conversations to be monitored.)

Re:Extortion?

[Slithe (894946)]

Canada's equivalent of the CIA

Would that be the CI-eh?

Re:Motive???

[UncleTogie (1004853)]

"...to homeless people who you know will spend it on drugs..."

That's funny, Spanky... when *I* was homeless I was FAR more interested in staying fed, getting a job, and getting back to where I was now. So were most of the guys at the shelter.

My question: Did you have a big helping of WhiteBreadNess this morning, or do you watch too much cable?

...and to stay ontopic, I have to ask: While everyone here is usin' RFID tags as a reference, the article states that

As a result, the type of transmitter in play -- and its ultimate purpose -- remain a mystery. However, tiny tracking tags, known as RFIDs, are commonly placed in everything from clothing to key chains to help retailers track inventory.

Assuming you're not limited to RFID limits, in theory how much power could one of these spit out? What distance could they be tracked from?

Re:Motive???

[by Anonymous Coward]

You need to change pants more often.

Re:Motive???

[HTH NE1 (675604)]

Either you only want to track that person for a very short amount of time, or you're really interested in tracking the money itself.

I doubt this is intended as a coinage solution for Where's Willy [whereswilly.com], the Canadian currency form of Where's George [wheresgeorge.com]. And the duration of the track of an individual depends on when the subject is expected to make another purchase. And it doesn't have to be very long to get useful, potentially compromising information, or just get the subject close enough to a reader wired to an explosive device.

Scarier is the thought that such RF trackers are just the test run, gathering distribution data to see what will happen when they replace the RFID chips with tiny samples of Polonium-210 [wikipedia.org] or other more deadly toxins.

In Canada...

[EXMSFT (935404)]

coins track YOU!

Perhaps this is overblown?

[8127972 (73495)]

At least this Globe and Mail report thinks so:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20070110.wspycoin0110/BNStory/National/home [theglobeandmail.com]

RFID chips

[User 956 (568564)]

Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada

With RFID chips costing a fraction of a cent apiece, the addition of such a chip must at least triple the value of whatever canadian currency you add it to.

Re:RFID chips

[MyNymWasTaken (879908)]

No argument, here. However, the Canadian Dollar is close to reaching parity with the US Dollar.

Canadian Dollar to U.S. Dollar Exchange Rate [yahoo.com]

The crazy dude on the corner

[antifoidulus (807088)]

screaming about how the birds are spying on him makes a bit more sense now.....

Takes WheresGeorge to a new level!

[RobertB-DC (622190)]

Wow, and I thought I was on the cutting edge by stamping bills and entering them into Where's George? [wheresgeorge.com]

In fact, a April Fool's joke I recall was that WG had developed a way to track US dollar coins, with a machine that would emboss a unique serial number into the coin's smooth edge. The new project would be "Where's Sackie [usmint.gov]?"

Looks like the Canadian government is way ahead of the curve on that one. Better alert the folks at Where's Willy? [whereswilly.com], the northern branch of Where's George?.

Logical course of action? Invade Canada!

[uber_geek9 (879433)]

These RFID coins are clearly the work of Canadian Terrorists trying to harm the American people.

hmm

[dheera (1003686)]

well, for sure, it would make creating coin vending machines much easier to implement, mechanically. once i was in canada and received a coin that looked like this [members.shaw.ca] which i initially thought was fake, but believed later after reading online.

Re:hmm

[camperdave (969942)]

That is a commemorative coin marking the 60th anniversary of D-Day, and the 90th anniversary of WWI. The poppy became the symbol of remembrance of our war dead through the poem In Flander's Fields, written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian battlefield doctor in World War One.

Is this even true?

[Mr 44 (180750)]

From the article:
"The report, which first came to light in a U.S. newspaper, has since been posted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists, an organization that tracks the intelligence world and promotes government openness."

Well, I don't see it on fas.org (search [google.com]), and if its in a "american newspaper", its one that google news [google.com] doesn't search.

Something just doesn't sound right about this whole story.... It makes no sense, and there's no other cites for it.

It's actually a value added feature...

[gwn (594936)]

As the world knows it is cold up here in the Great White North eh! There is usually lots of snow too, eh! Well I can tell you from experience that with all our socialist programs we pay lots of taxes and as a result we don't often end up with folding money, eh! So when your coins go missing it really hurts, eh! Like when you lose a handful of coins in the deep snow, eh! So with RFID coins you just get the portable reader out and scan for the coins to find them, eh! Or, you scan your couch to see if you can afford to order in a pizza with back bacon, eh! You walk in to Harvey's (like McDonald's but much better) and they scan you on the way in and let you know what you can afford, eh!

Re:There's not a chance that this is real.

[JazzHarper (745403)]

RFID does not require a processor or battery. Consumer RFID devices for
implantation in animals (Pet-ID, HomeAgain) are about the size of a grain
of rice.

Re:Defence?

[camperdave (969942)]

Tire is definitely spelled with an i here in Canada.