Re: Euro bank notes to embed RFID chips by 2005

[Sven R Larson <larson@xxxxxx>]

Big Brother.
/srl

"Alan G. Isaac" wrote:
>
> I almost missed this great story.
>   http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20011219S0016
> Alan Isaac
>
> Euro bank notes to embed RFID chips by 2005
> *By Junko Yoshida*
> *EE Times*
> *(12/19/01, 3:03 p.m. EST) *
>
> SAN MATEO, Calif.  ---  The European Central Bank is working with
> technology partners on a hush-hush project to embed radio frequency
> identification tags into the very fibers of euro bank notes by 2005,
> *EE Times* has learned. Intended to foil counterfeiters, the project
> is developing as Europe prepares for a massive changeover to the euro,
> and would create an instant mass market for RFID chips, which have
> long sought profitable application.
>
> The banking community and chip suppliers say the integration of an
> RFID antenna and chip on a bank note is technically possible, but no
> bank notes in the world today employ such a technology. Critics say
> it's unclear if the technology can be implemented at a cost that can
> justify the effort, and question whether it is robust enough to
> survive the rough-and-tumble life span of paper money.
>
> A spokesman for the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, Germany
> confirmed the existence of a project, but was careful not to comment
> on its technologies. At least two European semiconductor makers
> contacted by *EE Times,* Philips Semiconductors and Infineon
> Technologies, acknowledged their awareness of the ECB project but said
> they are under strict nondisclosure agreements.
>
> The euro will become "the most common currency in the world" at
> midnight on Jan. 1, when 12 nations embrace it, according to Ingo
> Susemihl, vice president and general manager of RFID group at
> Infineon. The ECB and criminal investigators in Europe are already on
> high alert, worried not only about counterfeiting of a currency most
> people haven't seen, but also of a possible increase in money
> laundering, given the euro's broad cross-border reach.
>
> The ECB said 14.5 billion bank notes are being produced, 10 billion of
> which will go into circulation at once in January, with 4.5 billion
> being held in reserve to accommodate potential leaps in demand.
>
> *Thwarting underworld popularity*
>
> Although euro bank notes already include such security features as
> holograms, foil stripes, special threads, microprinting, special inks
> and watermarks, the ECB believes it must add further protection to
> keep the euro from becoming the currency of choice in the criminal
> underworld, where the U.S. dollar is now the world's most
> counterfeited currency. The ECB spokesman said his organization has
> contacted various central banks worldwide --- not just in Europe ---
> to discuss added security measures for the currency.
>
> In theory, an RFID tag's ability to read and write information to a
> bank note could make it very difficult, for example, for kidnappers to
> ask for "unmarked" bills. Further, a tag would give governments and
> law enforcement agencies a means to literally "follow the money" in
> illegal transactions.
>
> "The RFID allows money to carry its own history," by recording
> information about where it has been, said Paul Saffo, director of
> Institute for the Future (Menlo Park, Calif.).
>
> The embedding of an RFID tag on a bank note is "a fundamental
> departure" from the conventional security measures applied to
> currency, Saffo said. "Most [currency] security today is based on a
> false premise that people would look at the money to see if it is
> counterfeit," he said. But "nobody does that. The RFID chip is an
> important advance because it no longer depends on humans" to spot
> funny money.
>
> *RFID basics*
>
> The basic technology building blocks for RFID on bank notes are
> similar to those required for today's smart labels or contactless
> cards. They require a contactless data link that can automatically
> collect information about a product, place, time or transaction. Smart
> labels produced by companies such as Philips Semiconductors, Infineon,
> STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments are already used in such
> applications as smart airline luggage tags, library books and for
> supply chain management of various products.
>
> "Two minimum elements you need for RFID are a chip and an antenna,"
> according to Gordon Kenneth Andrew Oswald, associate director at
> Arthur D. Little Inc., a technology consulting firm based in
> Cambridge, Mass. When a bank note passes through reader equipment, the
> antenna on the note collects energy and converts it to electric energy
> to activates the chip, he said.
>
> The antenna then "provides a communication path between a chip [on the
> bank note] and the rest of the world," said Tres Wiley, emerging
> markets strategy manager for RFID Systems at TI. For its part, the
> chip "is a dedicated processor to handle protocols, to carry out data
> encoding to send and receive data and address memory" embedded on the
> chip.
>
> Although the industry is "well down the road with the smart label
> technology," Wiley said he was "a bit surprised to learn that someone
> goes to that extent --- to embed RFID into bank notes --- to combat
> counterfeit money."
>
> A number of challenges must be overcome before RFID tags can be
> embedded on bills, said Kevin Ashton, executive director of the Auto
> ID Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The most
> obvious one is the price," he said. Today's RFID tags cost between 20
> cents to $1.00, and "that's not economic enough for most bills,"
> Ashton said. "We've absolutely got to get the cost way down." The goal
> of the Auto ID Center is to find an application that requires billions
> of RFID chips to bring their cost as low as 5 cents, he added.
>
> While most chip companies with RFID expertise are keeping their plans
> for money applications close to their chest, Hitachi Ltd. announced
> plans last July for a chip designed for paper money that would pack RF
> circuitry and ROM in a 0.4-mm square circuit measuring 60 microns
> thick. Although the chip features no rewritable capability, Ryo Imura,
> chief executive of Hitachi's Mew Solutions venture, said at the time
> of announcement, "We'll consider them for the next generation [of]
> products." Hitachi's chip stores encrypted ID information in ROM
> during the manufacturing process, presumably to replace the serial
> number of each bank note.
>
> Even without writable memory, Hitachi's chip is said to be fairly
> costly. Hitachi declined to be interviewed for this article.
>
> While the size of the rewritable memory embedded on an RFID chip will
> determine the kinds of information it can store, it also affects the
> chip's cost.
>
> *Affordable with bigger bills*
>
> It is unclear whether the ECB will incorporate RFID chips into all
> euro bank notes or just on the larger bills. The EUR 200 and EUR 500
> bank notes in particular --- equivalent to roughly $200 and $500 in
> value --- are expected to be popular in the "informal" economy.
> Embedding a 30 cents chip into a EUR 500 bill would make more sense
> than putting it into a European buck, several industry sources said.
>
> Manufacturing processes are also considered a major hurdle to
> embedding a low-cost antenna and chip onto bank notes. "The chip is
> already so small," MIT's Ashton said. "To connect the two ends of a
> coil --- an antenna --- at precisely the right place on a chip could
> present a major problem."
>
> A printing process is an option, Ashton said, but "you need a
> breakthrough in the high-volume manufacturing process." Such a
> technology does not exist today, he said.
>
> Size and thickness are key attributes of an RFID chip for paper
> currency, said Karsten Ottenberg, senior vice president and general
> manager of business unit identification at Philips Semiconductors.
> "For putting chips into documents, they need to be very small --- less
> than a square millimeter --- and thin such that they are not cracking
> under mechanical stress of the document. Thinning down to 50 micron
> and below is a key challenge." That would require advanced mechanical
> and chemical techniques, he said.
>
> Bank notes present "an interesting future application for us," said
> Tom Pounds, vice president of RFID projects at Alien Technology, which
> holds the rights to a fabrication process that suspends tiny
> semiconductor devices in a liquid that's deposited over a substrate
> containing holes of corresponding shape. The devices settle on the
> substrate and self-align. Rather than working on the interconnection
> to an RF antenna one chip at a time, "we can do a massively parallel
> interconnection," Pounds said. Bank notes are not Alien's primary
> focus at present, he said.

--
Sven R Larson
Ph.D.; Assistant professor of economics
Department of Social Sciences, 22.2
Roskilde University
PB 260
DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark
http://www.ruc.dk/english/