Tiny Transmitters in Canadian Coins?

Check this article out:

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. Defense Department.

Security experts believe the miniature devices could be used to track the movements of defence industry personnel dealing in sensitive military technology.

"You might want to know where the individual is going, what meetings the individual might be having and, above all, with whom," said David Harris, a former CSIS officer who consults on security matters.

Source

Pretty interesting. Of course they wont reveal any ideas on who and why.

Hmm, doesn't like too great of a strategy to me...I don't think anyone would carry the coins around in the U.S. for long at all (when I find out I was slipped a Canadian coin I usually curse then throw it away). Is there any serious classified stuff the U.S. is doing within Canada that some other government wants to know about? I doubt it, but I'm not sure.

US currency and Euro's have RFID!

You can stick a Euro in the microwave the the RFID will pop!

Ive heard that the earlier Euros had some real problems... People walking through metal detectors or RFID stores security gates would have their wallets catch on fire!!!

Check out these pictures;

Originally posted by sp00n1


Ive heard that the earlier Euros had some real problems... People walking through metal detectors or RFID stores security gates would have their wallets catch on fire!!!

Well, no. There's not anywhere near enough energy in either to cause detectable heating much less fire.

It's too bad that no one has released any real info. So far all the quotes look like they're from a retired cop, who I'm sure is a "real expert". If they were actively transmitting, it wasn't RFID. RFID wouldn't make sense anyway, the range is too short.

However, it is interesting. I'll be sure to chunk any coins I get next time I'm out of the country doing any contracting. I've been approached by moderately obvious people more than once (you have to file foreign contact forms), but never would I have checked my change. You could do a lot in a big enough coin...I've made "one way GSM phones" smaller than a 50 cent piece, but that's without the battery, which is the bulkiest part.

Personally, if I was going to get a guy to carry an open transmitter around, I'd get my hands on his cell phone for long enough to reprogram it. That way you could turn on his mic and camera, maybe even record some voice wave files to his memory if he was out of contact for a while.

what's the sense of that??? would the person eventually spend or discard the coin? Not a very effective means of tracking I would think.

Originally posted by worldwatcher
would the person eventually spend or discard the coin? Not a very effective means of tracking I would think.

Unless, of course, it has to do with paper money as well... (see sp00ns post and pics above). Then you can track the drug cash until it winds up in the drug lords house.

Bingo!! Masqua, and even if the burn off the chips off the money, the evidence of that event will obviously be right there on that paper money.

interesting theory guys, I guess i can see how that would work, but I still think there is too much room for error for this method to be completely effective.

All great theories until it gets deposited in my change collector. Sits there for 4 years, then ends up in a coin counting machine at the supermarket. From there, to a bank, where it is exchanged for some electronic numbers. Then from the bank, it gets returned to Canada via fed-ex.

Originally posted by sp00n1
US currency and Euro's have RFID!
_snip_

If it was just coins, maybe they'd sit in your jar for 4 years, but how about a $20 bill?

Please check out these pics sp00n supplied.

I dont think the intent is to ever have the coins spent, but to place them on the person.

Most likely to track the person in the moments after an important contact.

And chances are even if the person finds the coin wherever its hidden, they will not discard it immediately.

I bet it was in a two dollar coin.

Originally posted by sp00n1

If it was just coins, maybe they'd sit in your jar for 4 years, but how about a $20 bill?

Please check out these pics sp00n supplied.

IIRC, no one can duplicate that but Jones, and only then in a "special microwave". A lot of people tried to duplicate it and failed.

Frankly, I find it unlikely. There's a really thick bit of ink there, and if it actually IS burning in circumstances that no-one but Jones can duplicate, it may be nothing more than that the ink is somewhat conductive and is getting hot like the susceptor in a bag of popcorn.

RFID parts are not invisibly small. They also need an antenna for the E-field parts, which they'd have to be in order to work as Jones hypothesizes, and that antenna will not be tiny or invisible either.

I've looked at random $20 bills under a microscope, nothing is there. Haven't looked at Euros, and I always cash out the bills, so I can't comment with any certainty. I do have a jar full of Canadian and Chinese coins though, maybe I need to go through them

[edit on 10-1-2007 by Tom Bedlam]

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
I've looked at random $20 bills under a microscope, nothing is there.

I spent a bit of time with a bright light and a large magnifying glass.



No luck there either.

But I was too cheap to toss the cash into the microwave to see what happens.

Dulcimer... I imagine we'll find out soon enough which coins they used. The story broke on CBC news this evening.

I say loonie. You sticking with twoonies?

I say twoonie because of the way the coin is constructed.

If DSS says there were transmitters in the coins, there probably was. I'm going to have to poke around on NIPRNET and see if anyone has a description.

I wonder if the coin was modified if it would still pass through a vending machine?...

I could see everyone gathering around going for a coffee and all using there new found Canadian coins.

"Mine doesn't work !" ... " Me either" ... " My coin is buzzing" haha.

Plus don't they sweep for this sort of thing?

Anyways... another article says:

Top suspects, according to intelligence and technology experts: China, Russia or even France — all said to actively run espionage operations inside Canada with enough sophistication to produce such technology.

I have heard alot about China and spy stuff within Canada... but France?

DGSE is big into this sort of thing. You don't go to France as a contractor and carry any data, they go through your rooms when you're out. DGSE also taps all your phone calls. A lot of corporate technical secrets are stolen by the French every year.

At any rate, the coin gimmick has been used before by several different parties. I recall a story where one delaminated in someone's pocket, and another one where the guy did in fact put it in a vending machine and took a closer look at it when it failed. A coin gimmick has a part line around the center. You can't make them out of solid metal, the RF can't get through.

Usually you do it to a sandwich coin. Coin bugs are usually used to record conversations and burst it out later when triggered. I suppose you could also record equipment emissions like radar signatures you were testing in a shielded lab, and dump that instead. You do generally shotgun a coin gimmick because people spend them, but what you want to do is get enough in there that you can catch one or more people on the way out the main gates.

You sit in a van near the gate and send constant interrogate sequences, eventually you hit paydirt and a coin unloads. It's not the sort of thing you would use to track people around since it's low powered and short distance.

There's another version that is just hollow and you use it as a Theremin harmonic bug, beam in some microwaves that resonate the coin hollow and the soundwaves hitting the coin will cause it to change resonance slightly. You can detect the phase changes in the reflection when that happens, but you generally can only do a resonance bug from the next room over.

Since they don't transmit all the time, you DON'T generally pick them up that way, since you put so many out to get a few back, you will eventually get someone that puts it in a Coke machine and it gets rejected, they look at it and see the part line. Or like the one I remember, it delaminates and you're looking at it when you dump it out of your pocket that night.

Originally posted by masqua

Originally posted by sp00n1
US currency and Euro's have RFID!
_snip_

If it was just coins, maybe they'd sit in your jar for 4 years, but how about a $20 bill?

Please check out these pics sp00n supplied.

The pictures supplied are misleading. I am not accusing anyone of fraud but U.S. currency DOES NOT have RFID chips in it. Hold any bill abov5 dollars up to a strong light and you can see and read it for yourself. The damage the microwave produces to the bills are caused by a thin mettalic strip embedded in the bill itself. The strip has micro printing that says "usa 20" on a 20 dollar bill. It does not have to be rfid to spark in the microwave, any metal will do that.

try it yourself , put a very this strip of tinfoil in in an envelope and put it in the microwave, you will get the same type of damage. Does that mean that the envelope had an RFID chip in it?

I am not sure about other countries currency but I suspect it is simply metal anticounerfeitting devices , not RFID.

On top of all that RFID does NOT mean you can track that chip wherever it goes. A RFID chip small enough to fit in money would have NO power source. Like most RFID tech, It relies on outside sources , usually the microwave radiation eminating from the Scanner. Because of this the range that you can "read" a real RFID chip is at MOST 5 feet. You can not possibly track rfid from space or even from across the street. This is one of those things that has grown waaaaaaay beyond the truth thanks to the internet.

[edit on 10-1-2007 by Tiloke]

Bravo, Tiloke exactly what I was going to post. Also another and from another thread today, MOST money has drugs on it being able to track it to a dealer or drug lord is impossible, it never touches their hands it well laundered before they see a dime. Which if you do a test on any money you own it wil most like test positive for coc aine.

We willingly allow ourselves to be tracked financially everytime we use our credit cards. Currency tracking is probably just another way to study our spending habits....
....proper marketing only works if we believe the store where we shop knows exactly what we want.....(although for me it seems whenever I buy something of "significance", the damn thing is on sale the week after!!!...never fails...).....
Maybe I should mention my intent to purchase OUT LOUD 2 weeks prior to actually purchasing a product just in case they DO have a bug in my house....