Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Annals of numismatics: coins as devices for espionage
This is cool:
Can the coins jingling in your pocket trace your movements?
The Defense Department is warning its American contractor employees about a new espionage threat seemingly straight from Hollywood: It discovered Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside.
In a U.S. government report, it said the mysterious coins were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.
The U.S. report doesn't suggest who might be tracking American defense contractors or why. It also doesn't describe how the Pentagon discovered the ruse, how the transmitters might function or even which Canadian currency contained them.
Further details were secret, according to the U.S. Defense Security Service, which issued the warning to the Pentagon's classified contractors. The government insists the incidents happened, and the risk was genuine.
"What's in the report is true," said Martha Deutscher, a spokeswoman for the security service. "This is indeed a sanitized version, which leaves a lot of questions."
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.
Tracking coins are not obviously useful. What if the target pumps them into a vending machine or the tip jar at Starbucks? That becomes less likely if the spy drops the coin into the target's briefcase, where a stray quarter rattling around would be unlikely to arouse suspicion (especially now, when we all dump coins into our bags before we go through airport security).
Numismatic espionage is not entirely new -- the CIA has acknowledged that our own spies used hollow silver dollars to secure messages and such. The Agency says that it still uses the Eisenhower dollar "to hide and send messages or film without being detected." It claims this works because "it resembles ordinary pocket change, [and is therefore] virtually undetectable as a concealment device." Er, the Ike dollar does not circulate, never has circulated, and therefore in no way "resembles ordinary pocket change." So even if the CIA hadn't revealed the hollow Ike on its web site, I fervently hope that it does not believe that the value of the device is in its banality. (The large American coins -- the dollar and the half -- do not circulate, and so would arouse suspicion if a target suddenly found one in his bag. Large denomination Canadian coins do circulate, though, so if a large size is necessary to conceal the transmitter the tactic would be more like to succeed north of the border.)
I should add that any coin collecter fondles his pocket change reflexively, and just knows what particular coins feel like, including their weight and the sound they make when they hit the counter or the floor. The effectiveness of the deception, therefore, turns on the admittedly low probability that counter-espionage agents do not collect coins. The linked article does not reveal how we learned that the Canadian coins in question were bugged, but it would not surprise me if the ruse was discovered by a target who was highly attuned to the touch and sound of normal pocket change.
2 Comments:
By 
GreenmanTim, at
Wed Jan 10, 10:07:00 PM:
Say it ain't so! The Loony and the Two-ny are compromised currency? See, if they had stuck to paper money like honest folks, they...well, actually, you can integrate all kinds of stuff within our high tech, counterfeit foiler fins and C-notes. I think honest Abe on that five spot just winked at me.
By 
, at
Thu Jan 11, 10:45:00 AM:
I doubt this has much to do with tracking movements because RFID works only over a very short range. However, imagine that the perpetrating spooks put hardware into a photocopier at a trade show that would surreptitiously store copies only when these RFID coins are used.
