RFID Tags in Euro Banknotes 481
psychictv writes "CNET News.com is reporting that Euro notes could be embedded with RFID tags in the future. 'RFID (radio frequency identification) tags also have the ability of recording information such as details of the transactions the paper note has been involved in...'" The EU has been considering this for a while. You'll never even know they're there.
New mugging tool (Score:5, Insightful)
RFID tags that record? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you'd be hard pressed to find an RFID tag that could record transaction information inside a bill. You'd need an external device to do the recording.
Robberies (Score:5, Insightful)
Daniel
Where's that bill been? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gov't Survelliance (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:New mugging tool (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, while we are at it, lets put it on scanners at our stores, and we can detect if employees are leaving with more money than they came to work with.
Privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, excuse me. What about the privacy factor in all this?
If the government / police are able to track illegal transactions then what is stopping them looking at my normal transactions? I don't want just anybody having access to the information about where I buy everything from my lunch to my porn.
This is cash we are talking about and they wanna watch it. Pfft.
Cheap web hosting [cheap-web-...ing.com.au]
Re:RFID tags that record? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:RFID tags that record? (Score:2, Insightful)
If RFID tags were "required" in order to pass the bills as legal tender, then I imagine that anybody who had a defective one would have to exchange it at the bank, just as if it had been torn in half. You wouldn't lose the money, but you couldn't perform untraceable transactions, either.
Kids, some of you are missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
The Powers are going to eliminate the cash economy. Period. Nothing and no one escapes the net.
We are entering a prison like no other in history, for it will be the entire world.
Thats not how you steal money. (Score:1, Insightful)
Transfer money to a Swiss bank account (Billions)...
Do the time (15years max)
Come out and retire.
Or if you white collar.
Get a job at XYZ bank.
Embezzle money in a Swiss bank account(trillions)
Do the time (10years max?)
Come out and retire.
If you a dirty scumbag
Buy a gun
Hold up a bank for a few hundred thousand.
Get shot, do the time (25years max)
Come out, and kill yourself.
Where is the anti-American brigade now? (Score:1, Insightful)
Come on guys, let's be consistent.
Alex
Re:Thats not how you steal money. (Score:2, Insightful)
Get hired as CEO of company X
Destroy its long-term viability to make shareholders happy about the short-term growth
Get a huge bonus
Get hired as CEO of company Y...
Daniel
Re:Nice. (Score:5, Insightful)
RFID chips are passive devices that respond when a reader transmits a certain RF code. The RFID chip uses the energy from the "ether" to respond. If anything, an RFID will absorb a small amount of radiation and convert it to heat, not the other way around.
You'll probably get cancer from having a cell phone strapped to your waist long before you get it from an RFID chip.
Not Cash Any More (Score:5, Insightful)
That would make US dollars a lot more popular in some important quarters, which the EU doesn't want. Therefore, I predict that the Euro will get these embedded tags only after the U.S. starts seeding them into its own currency. The desire to create a "cashless society" here, and eliminate untraceable commerce, has a long and sordid history.
The problem with embedding these things is that they're easily fused, so banks would also need to start refusing fused notes, and people would have to start carrying detectors because they might otherwise end up with undepositable paper. The alternative is that fused notes are still negotiable, but then they would all get fused in short order.
Anti-forgery? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like that'd be pretty effective...
Of course, they can't possibly make this a *required* feature of all bills. You have to be able to microwave the money and still use it, otherwise y'all Europeans will start screaming bloody murder.
The privacy invasion happens when you aren't paying attention: When you don't realize that your subway card placed you at the scene of the crime, or whatever. As they gain more and more surveillance techniques, eventually it'll be impossible to pay attention to all of them.
Re:Great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are you buying something that you're ashamed to admit you buy?
I guess it's just me, but I have no problem going into an Adults Only Video and renting a porn in broad daylight, or buying a porno mag off the magazine rack at my local store. I also have no problem walking into a drug store to buy condoms, pregnancy tests, etc. If the clerk gives me a strange look, I just wink at her.
Don't get me wrong, I don't parade it around the store for all the little kids to see, but I'm certainly not ashamed to buy it.
Having travelled various parts of Europe, I also don't think most Europeans would be that worried about being "tracked" buying porn either. They're a lot more open with the idea of sexuality over there.
You made an error (Score:5, Insightful)
You misspelled "personal privacy of any kind".
Re:New mugging tool (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Kids, some of you are missing the point (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah. And giving women the vote will lead to an amazonian-like society where we're all socalist democrats who don't drink booze...
We don't have freedom and choice because of privacy or cash or rifles. We have it because we have multiple parties in power that know that the best way to keep themselves in power is to keep the other guy out of power--which is best done by fragmenting the populace, which gives us freedom and choice.
Next step toward TIA (Score:4, Insightful)
and no doubt make an appropriate entry into your Total Information Awareness database file.
Or, to look at it from the other angle, if you are engaged in any "suspicious" behavior, what's to stop the TIA/Dept of Homeland Security system from deactivating your money?
I don't like this one bit. Nosir.
Slashdot double standard (Score:2, Insightful)
Just an observation...
Re:Privacy (Score:2, Insightful)
Children being expelled from school for having the wrong haircut, citizens getting arrested for wearing a PEACE-T-Shirt, people being locked away for months and months for no good reason without access to a lawyer, attacking other souvereign states without having any reason but greed and arrogance, companies having the right to store and sell information about everything you did in your life whether it's correct or not, companies demanding drug testing before giving anyone a job, bookstores recording information about which books you rented, airlines having to report who flew where & when to the Government and you're telling me about "individual freedom and privacy" in the US?
The US is becoming more and more like a 3rd world dictatorship and you're just too stupid to notice, you even want to elect (re-elect? Nah!) the people who brought you all this.
Good luck, you'll need it.
Re:Privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
while i agree that tracking of cash might become more widespread, it's not really a new thing.
Re:New mugging tool (Score:3, Insightful)
Daniel
Microwave? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a major problem with schemes like these: if the RFID tags are authoritative, they make legal tender impossible to distinguish from counterfeit without a special device, which I can't see everyone carrying around with them every time they have to collect money from their dorm buddies for pizza.
The problem here is that counterfeit money won't be detected until the recipient tries to use it in a store or a bank, and then he gets the double-anal: one, from losing the value of the currency he thought he had; two, from the police who arrest him for using counterfeit currency.
Cheers,
Kyle
No no no no! (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no ether! [virginia.edu]
History [st-and.ac.uk] . Learn it or repeat it.
Re:Kids, some of you are missing the point (Score:1, Insightful)
If everything is tracked.. cash (RFID), credit cards (electronic authorization), etc.. they can have it set up so you can not purchase without being authorized by a computer.. albiet cash will eventually dissapear.. leaving only credit card/ATM style electronic payments
whoever controls the computers (government) can control the flow of money.. if you are not on the "authorized" list, then you can't even spend the cash in your wallet, it's deactivated..
From the way things are heading.. it does not seem far fetched.. the notion of having to accept the mark of the beast in order to make any type of monetary transaction...if one had the power to force that upon you..
Re:New mugging tool (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:New mugging tool (Score:2, Insightful)
On the contrary. It makes him more likely to kill you to prevent you from reporting the stolen money before he has chance to unload it.