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Putin's Soccer Ball for Trump Had Transmitter Chip, Logo Indicates (bloomberg.com) 241

Russian President Vladimir Putin's gift of a soccer ball to U.S. President Donald Trump last week set off a chorus of warnings -- some of them only half in jest -- that the World Cup souvenir could be bugged. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham even tweeted, "I'd check the soccer ball for listening devices and never allow it in the White House." It turns out they weren't entirely wrong. From a report: Markings on the ball indicate that it contained a chip with a tiny antenna that transmits to nearby phones. But rather than a spy device, the chip is an advertised feature of the Adidas AG ball. Photographs from the news conference in Helsinki, where Putin handed the ball to Trump, show it bore a logo for a near-field communication tag. During manufacturing, the NFC chip is placed inside the ball under that logo, which resembles the icon for a WiFi signal, according to the Adidas website. The chip allows fans to access player videos, competitions and other content by bringing their mobile devices close to the ball. The feature is included in the 2018 FIFA World Cup match ball that's sold on the Adidas website for $165 (reduced to $83 in the past week).
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Putin's Soccer Ball for Trump Had Transmitter Chip, Logo Indicates

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  • The WH has edited the official transcript AND edited the official video. So it's no mistake - https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/25/politics/trump-putin-transcript/index.html

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @03:07PM (#57008758)

    Left and Right, let's unite! Put aside our differences and work together for Make America Great Again. Let's do it! We can do it.

    Ebony and Ivory living in harmony? Awesome thoughts! Peace out.

  • by Train0987 ( 1059246 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @03:24PM (#57008896)

    Now that we know Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton it goes without saying that she must be given the Democratic nomination again in 2020. All potential challengers need to step aside. If it weren't for the Russian meddling she would've clearly won so she has to run again.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @03:32PM (#57008960)

      Now that we know Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton it goes without saying that she must be given the Democratic nomination again in 2020. All potential challengers need to step aside. If it weren't for the Russian meddling she would've clearly won so she has to run again.

      Sadly, I wouldn't put it past them - I think they really ARE that stupid.

      Most votes were not FOR Trump, but rather, AGAINST Hillary, and they refuse to believe that.

      • Most votes were not FOR Trump, but rather, AGAINST Hillary, and they refuse to believe that.

        I know, it amazes me how many serious pundits talk about districts "Trump Won" in 2016, when in reality Trump didn't win them as much as Hillary lost them.

        For every person I know that voted FOR Trump, I know 3 that voted AGAINST Hillary.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ichimunki ( 194887 )
        Most votes were not FOR Trump, but rather, AGAINST Hillary, and they refuse to believe that.

        Actually... most votes were for Hillary. She won the popular vote by some 3 million votes. Problem for her was: they were in the wrong states. But who's stupid, again?

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by msauve ( 701917 )
          "Actually... most votes were for Hillary. She won the popular vote by some 3 million votes."

          Actually, Hillary and Trump tied, with exactly zero votes each. All votes in a presidential election are for electors.
          • Re:#HerTurnAgain2020 (Score:4, Informative)

            by Train0987 ( 1059246 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @04:44PM (#57009374)

            Trump won 304-227.

            • by msauve ( 701917 )
              That's the electoral vote, not the popular vote, which is what the GP was talking about.
            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Which makes it look like a bigger victory than it was because those states give all their votes to one candidate, instead of proportionally based on the number of citizen votes each received.

              The fact is that most people didn't want Trump. The system handed him the win, a win by technicality. That's why he is so touchy about it.

              • Here's a map showing vote breakdown by county: https://commons.wikimedia.org/... [wikimedia.org]

                It's overwhelming.

              • by msauve ( 701917 )
                "The fact is that most people didn't want Trump. "

                That's true. It's also true that most people didn't vote for Clinton ("didn't want Clinton", in your parlance). No candidate's electors received a majority of the popular vote.

                And, the win wasn't in any way a "technicality," it worked exactly as the Constitution intended. There was never any plan for a popular vote for president - in fact, it's entirely up to the states to determine how electors are chosen. If a state wants to have their legislature or gov
    • by Train0987 ( 1059246 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @03:36PM (#57008976)

      I'm not sure why this is being modded as funny. She has to be the nominee again because of what The Russians! did to her. To deny her the 2020 nomination would refute the entire notion that the 2016 election was interfered with. Only one of Putin's trolls could be against this.

      • by kenh ( 9056 )

        I'm not sure why this is being modded as funny.

        Because you can't be serious!

        HRC lost in 2008 to a first-term junior senator from Illinois with zero legislative accomplishments, she had no business running in 2016, and her subsequent health issues (she's taken to wearing a life-alert badge despite 24/7 security detail!).

        That said, I would love to see HRC run again in 2020 - that would be hysterical! I bet her first stops this time around would be Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania!

    • She won't win (she's got the charisma of a dead trout and she's pretty much persona non grata in the party after losing to his orangeness) but she'd draw so much fire it'd be smooth sailing for the Dems.
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Train0987 ( 1059246 )

        How can she not win this time if she would've won last time without The Russians! meddling? If not for Putin she'd be running for re-election in 2020. Right?

    • Lot's of people lost in the election, including the GOP. They can't all be made whole by electing Hillary.

      The fastest path back to the rule of law would be for the GOP to either support impeachment, or failing that, to not nominate Trump as their candidate. They had serious doubts before, and those doubts have been confirmed several times over by now, not the least by Trump's traitorous blaming of Russian aggression on the United States.

      Trump needs to to go to jail for the prestige and reputation of

  • Why the outrage? (Score:4, Informative)

    by DatbeDank ( 4580343 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @03:26PM (#57008914)

    The summary says:

    the chip is an advertised feature of the Adidas AG ball

    Are we going to now say that Russia hacked Adidas, put a "spy! device on it (NFC of all things) for the sheer purpose of listening in on Trump?

    The Trump Derangement Syndrome has reached new epic proportions.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      Putin doesn't need a listening device to know he has Trump by the ball.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Adidas are Russian collaborators. Obviously.

    • is can they embed some sort of position-tracking chip in the ball so when players kick it high the video stream is augmented to show the vertical projection of the ball on the grass in real time? Not knowing in which direction the ball is going always bothered me when watching the game on the 2D screen.

    • If I remember correctly, Goal Line Technology relies on a couple of RFID chips being placed on the ball. Then they communicate with sensors placed on the goal posts and crossbar.

      However, I'm sure the sensors are used to spy on the goalkeepers.

  • by BarneyGuarder ( 44042 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @03:29PM (#57008944)

    Sounds like a great place to hide something in plain sight.

    A soccer ball with a transmitter that isn't supposed to have one would stand out. However, a soccer ball that has a *different* transmitter than it came with would be much harder to identify.

    • Sounds like a great place to hide something in plain sight.

      A soccer ball with a transmitter that isn't supposed to have one would stand out. However, a soccer ball that has a *different* transmitter than it came with would be much harder to identify.

      Good thought!

  • Obviously that NFC chip will link Trump to the C&C server Putin has set up to give Trump orders as to what he should work on sabotaging next. Russian cyberoperatives have clearly demonstrated their proficiency in hacking into any system they want, so hacking into whatever media server that chip links to should be trivial for them. Orders and other relevant data embedded in media files (a common steganography technique) can then be easily retrieved and decoded by Trump and no one would be the wiser.

    Ha
  • Nostalgia (Score:5, Informative)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @03:43PM (#57009010) Journal

    Remember when the biggest foreign relations scandal involving a president was giving a bust of Churchill back to England?

    Good times.

    • Lack of controversy in foreign relations simply means that nothing is happening - the status quo is being maintained. Which is great if you're happy with the status quo. But the majority of the world still lives under repressive regimes [freedomhouse.org]. So I'd classify maintaining the status quo as a foreign relations failure; a path chosen by a leader who was too afraid to take risks to try to change the world for the better.

      I'm scared to death of how Trump is handling foreign relations. But I readily admit he's sh
    • > Remember when the biggest foreign relations scandal involving a president was giving a bust of Churchill back to England?

      This is not a scandal involving president. Did you not read the whole summary ?
      the chip is an advertised feature of the Adidas AG ball
      This is a scandal involving main stream liberal leaning media and the idiots that work there pretending to be journalists.

      And people like you gobble it all up because brain damage seem to be rampant among people leaning to the left.. (don't wor
      • This is not a scandal involving president. Did you not read the whole summary ?
        the chip is an advertised feature of the Adidas AG ball

        I wasn't referring to the story about the ball. I was referring to the treason. The conspiring with a foreign power to fix an election and then paying them back with policies.

        • > I wasn't referring to the story about the ball. I was referring to the treason. The conspiring with a foreign power to fix an election and then paying them back with policies.

          Right. So just because somebody is repeating the some narrative over and over again you take it as evidence it actually happened ?
          I have no horse in this race... but i can smell when the sh*t stinks, no matter what somebody tells me.

          I can't imagine that anybody wanted Trump to win elections (even the Trump voters, who vote
          • I have no horse in this race... but i can smell when the sh*t stinks

            Did you check your shorts? Just sayin'.

            And I can't see why Putin would care for Trump to win over Hillary, Feel free to enlighten me.

            He wants to reestablish the Soviet Union and a weak American president over whom he has kompromat can help him with that.

            But don't take my word for it, Putin said it himself in no uncertain terms that he wanted Trump to win:

            https://www.theatlantic.com/in... [theatlantic.com]

            Even the White House, which for some reason edited t

  • Keep stupid clickbait headlines off Slashdot, will ya?
  • (Apologies in advance for not sticking to trump-bashing/trump-worship topic)

    How does the NFC thing work? Seems like marketing hype (well, duh):

    During manufacturing, the NFC chip is placed inside the ball under that logo, which resembles the icon for a WiFi signal, according to the Adidas website. The chip allows fans to access player videos, competitions and other content by bringing their mobile devices close to the ball.

    Let's say I'm watching the France/Croatia game at the World Cup and I want to see one of those player videos of Kylian Mbappe. All I have to do is run onto the field, grab the ball and hold my phone near it? Sounds like a lot of work. Well, compared to drinking too much beer and starting a fight with the other team's fans.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Location and distance to the sport. It gets people to the location of the game to use their mobile devices.
  • by Donwulff ( 27374 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @11:37PM (#57010854)

    In most cases, like this, an NFC chip is correctly described as transponder, not transmitter. It's a passive device that responds to magnetic field, at lengths around half a feet. So the "transmitter" headline is clickbait unfit for a (former) tech-site. It also seems like classic red herring, nobody knows if the ball was equipped with other toys by Russia, focusing on a known passive transponder distracts from that. On the other hand I get the joke potential as world leaders tend to receive gifts at every meeting, and there are certainly existing protocols to protect them from eavesdropping, bombs etc. Of particular note in this context, the briefcase that follows POTUS around and contains all the nuclear missile launch codes etc. is known as the "nuclear football" making things weird for this particular analogy.

    • Remember the embassy listening bug hack? That was materially similar to RFID. Now here we are arguing about an RFID tag. What if the tag plus the ball equals a wireless microphone and a RFID sniper device sending the proper signal to the ball both activates it and receives the signal? It's well within the range of technical possibility.

  • by Tom ( 822 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @11:38PM (#57010856) Homepage Journal

    Putin is a trained KGB agent. You seriouly think he and his people would come up with something so obvious and stupid and easily detectable? Seriously?

    The problem with the hysteria, both the anti-Trump and the anti-Russia one, is that it is a stupidity epidemic. It contains too much disdain and makes you underestimate them. Both. Trump, for all the spectacle and shouting, actually did a few things right. And Putin, whatever you think about him, is not an idiot.

    I'm sure the Russians are spying on the Americans - just like vice versa. But they would be idiots to do it like this. Someone watched too many stupid Hollywood spy movies.

  • Has the idiot had security check the firmware on the chip, to see whether it's *only* broadcasting what it's supposed to?

    I can just see it now, Putin visits the WH, and puts a collar and leash on Trumpolini, and walks him around the WH.

  • In the Soviet Russia, Adidas Spies on You!

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