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They’re for carrying cash through dangerous territory:
SDR Traveller caters to people who, for one reason or another, need to haul huge amounts of cash money through dangerous territory. The bags are made from a super strong, super light synthetic material designed for yacht sails, are RFID-shielded, and are rated by how much cash in US$100 bills each can carry….
All of the anti-counterfeiting features of the new Canadian $100 bill are resulting in people not bothering to verify them.
The fanfare about the security features on the bills, may be part of the problem, said RCMP Sgt. Duncan Pound.
“Because the polymer series’ notes are so secure … there’s almost an overconfidence among retailers and the public in terms of when you sort of see the strip, the polymer looking materials, everybody says ‘oh, this one’s going to be good because you know it’s impossible to counterfeit,'” he said.
“So people don’t actually check it.”
This story is just plain weird. Regularly, damaged coins are taken out of circulation. They’re destroyed and then sold to scrap metal dealers. That makes sense, but it seems that one- and two-euro coins aren’t destroyed very well. They’re both bi-metal designs, and they’re just separated into an inner core and an outer ring and then sold to Chinese scrap metal dealers. The dealers, being no dummies, put the two parts back together and sold them back to a German bank at face value. The bank was chosen because they accept damaged coins and don’t inspect them very carefully.
Is this not entirely predictable? If you’re going to take coins out of circulation, you had better use a metal shredder. (Except for pennies, which are worth more in component metals.)
A hollowed-out U.S. nickel can hold a microSD card. Pound and euro coins are also available. I blogged about this about a year ago as well.
Seems like the Swiss may be running out of secure gold storage. If this is true, it’s a real security issue. You can’t just store the stuff behind normal locks. Building secure gold storage takes time and money.
I am reminded of a related problem the EU had during the transition to the euro: where to store all the bills and coins before the switchover date. There wasn’t enough vault space in banks, because the vast majority of currency is in circulation. It’s a similar problem, although the EU banks could solve theirs with lots of guards, because it was only a temporary problem.
It’s getting worse:
More counterfeiters are using today’s ink-jet printers, computers and copiers to make money that’s just good enough to pass, he said, even though their product is awful.
In the past, he said, the best American counterfeiters were skilled printers who used heavy offset presses to turn out decent 20s, 50s and 100s. Now that kind of work is rare and almost all comes from abroad.
[…]
Green pointed to a picture hanging in his downtown conference room. It’s a photo from a 1980s Lenexa case that involved heavy printing presses and about 2 million fake dollars.
“That’s what we used to see,” he boomed. “That’s the kind of case we used to make.”
Agents discovered then that someone had purchased such equipment and a special kind of paper and it all went to the Lenexa shop. Then the agents secretly went in there with a court order and planted a tiny video camera on a Playboy calendar.
They streamed video 24/7 for days, stormed in with guns drawn and sent bad guys to federal prison.
Green’s voice sank as he described today’s sad-sack counterfeiters.
These people call up pictures of bills on their computers, buy paper at an office supply store and print out a few bills. They cut the bills apart, go into a store or bar and pass one or two.
Many offenders are involved with drugs, he said, often methamphetamine. If they get caught, so little money is involved that federal prosecutors won’t take the case.
It’s interesting. Counterfeits are becoming easier to detect while people are becoming less skilled in detecting it:
Part of the problem, Green said, is that the government has changed the money so much to foil counterfeiting. With all the new bills out there, citizens and even many police officers don’t know what they’re supposed to look like.
Moreover, many people see paper money less because they use credit or debit cards.
The result: Ink-jet counterfeiting accounted for 60 percent of $103 million in fake money removed from circulation from October 2007 to August 2008, the Secret Service reports. In 1995, the figure was less than 1 percent.
Another article on the topic.
Magic fingers and an unerring eye gave “Hologram Tam,” one of the best forgers in Europe, the skills to produce counterfeit banknotes so authentic that when he was arrested nearly £700,000 worth were in circulation.
Thomas McAnea, 58, who was jailed for six years and four months yesterday, was the kingpin of a professional operation based in Glasgow that, according to police, had the capacity to produce £2 million worth of fake notes a day enough potentially tom destabilise the British economy. More may remain out there undetected.
[…]
“Some of Hologram Tam’s money is still out there. It’s that good that if I gave you one of his notes, you wouldn’t know it,” a police source said.
The detectives also found templates for other forgeries including passports, driving licences, ID cards, bank statements, utility bills, MoT certificates, postage and saving stamps and TV licences.
Excellent story of security by obscurity:
Feigenbaum put the dime, encased in a 3-inch-square block of plastic, in his pocket and, accompanied by a security guard, drove in an ordinary sedan directly to San Jose airport to catch the red-eye to Newark.
The overnight flight, he said, was the only way to make sure the dime would be in New York by the time the buyer’s bank opened in the morning. People who pay $1.9 million for dimes do not like to be kept waiting for them.
Feigenbaum had purchased a coach ticket, to avoid suspicion, but found himself upgraded to first class. That was a worry, because people in flip-flops, T-shirts and grubby jeans do not regularly ride in first class. But it would have been more suspicious to decline a free upgrade. So Feigenbaum forced himself to sit in first class, where he found himself to be the only passenger in flip-flops.
He was too nervous to sleep, he said. He did not watch the in-flight movie, which was “Firehouse Dog.” He turned down a Reuben sandwich and sensibly declined all offers of alcoholic beverages.
Shortly after boarding the plane, he transferred the dime from his pants pocket to his briefcase.
“I was worried that the dime might fall out of my pocket while I was sitting down,” Feigenbaum said.
All across the country, Feigenbaum kept checking to make sure the dime was safe by reaching into his briefcase to feel for it. Feigenbaum did not actually take the dime out of his briefcase, as it is suspicious to stare at dimes.
This isn’t the first time security through obscurity was employed to transport a very small and very valuable object. From Beyond Fear, pp 211-212:
At 3,106 carats, a little under a pound and a half, the Cullinan Diamond was the largest uncut diamond ever discovered. It was extracted from the earth at the Premier Mine, near Pretoria, South Africa, in 1905. Appreciating the literal enormity of the find, the Transvaal government bought the diamond as a gift for King Edward VII. Transporting the stone to England was a huge security problem, of course, and there was much debate on how best to do it. Detectives were sent from London to guard it on its journey. News leaked that a certain steamer was carrying it, and the presence of the detectives confirmed this. But the diamond on that steamer was a fake. Only a few people knew of the real plan; they packed the Cullinan in a small box, stuck a three-shilling stamp on it, and sent it to England anonymously by unregistered parcel post.
Like all security measures, security by obscurity has its place. I wrote a lot more about the general concepts in this 2002 essay.
Interesting security problems from India.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.