Re: Euro bank notes to embed RFID chips by 2005

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Most proponents of "freedom" and "democracy" limit their support for them to
within the limits of narrowly defined outcomes.  The protection of the
innocent is always the price for smoking out the guilty. Whateeer happened
to the principle of letting a hundred quilty go free rather than putting one
innocent in jail?

Electronic fingerprint dusting of currency will allow the task of "following
the money" easily and quickly in all investigations, with implications way
beyond fighting counterfeiting.

A question I have been asking myself in recent weeks is that if Enron did
not run into finacial losses and forced to file bankruptcy, would there be
investigations of any kind on alleged accounting fraud and corporate
governance.  Criminality seems to surface more easily when businesses fail.

Henry C.K. Liu

Sven R Larson wrote:

> 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/