From: adam.philipp@ties.org (Adam Philipp)
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 94 12:54:50 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Cash
Message-ID: <m0r8aJK-0005VhC@powergrid.electriciti.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>At 12:25 PM 11/18/94, Dana Albrecht wrote:
>>>From alt.2600...
>>> bill's top edge and gently pulling it out. I've heard that airports will
>>> soon have "Money Detectors" that will count total cash carried per
>>> person. I'd like to figure out how the system works.

It does not work.

>This one has been flying around ever since the strips were
>put in place. It has been refuted as techically infeasable.
>(I don't remember the exact arguement, it had to do with the
>strips being mostly nonreactive and there being no real way to
>count how many/what denomination is in a stack.)

     Correct. A number of people have run tests on the strips (no, I didn't
archive the articles, they were about 5-6 months back) and they are just
what they appear to be, inert plastic strips put in there to make faking
money more difficult. Many paper currencies arounf the world use plastic or
metal foil strips in their money to make the bills more difficult to
reproduce. I am familiar with the Israeli shekel (NIS) that has had foil
strips in it for years...
     The main problem with detecting the strips is that it is faily trivial
to have a detector that will determine if some strips have gone through, but
having one that detects with any accuracy would be difficult to manufacture
and still keep paper currency proportionately cheap. I suppose
mini-transmitters in the 400 or so $10,000 bills might not be too far
fetched, but it seems ridiculous.

>>Assuming this is true, it would seem that even good, old fashioned,
>>paper currency doesn't provide the level of anonymity that one
>>would think.  Scary...

Assuming many falsehoods is scary... Now if only I could finish my mind
reading aparatus...


     Chalk this up with the FCC licensing modems and MAKE.MONEY.FAST

          Adam

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