Copying cash
[Dave Birch] I’m a big fan of podcasts, and listen to quite a variety. One that I enjoy is Skepticality. I’ve just been listening to the recent episode about the American TV show “Numb3rs“. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it’s a not-terribly-interesting drama about an FBI agent who solves crimes with the help of his Mathematics Professor brother. Anyway, on the podcast a couple of the producers (?) of the show were discussing making the show and they made a comment in passing that I couldn’t help but note. They said that they had been researching a show about counterfeiting and during the course of the research they had copied a $20 bill on a photocopier to see how well it came out. Shortly thereafter they got a phone call from the US Treasury. The photocopier was online, and phones home when someone tries to copy money! And the Treasury guys weren’t very happy to hear about the proposed plotline, about the FBI investigating some counterfeiters because, as all money nerds know, it’s the Secret Service (a branch of the Treasury until 2002, when it was moved to Homeland Security) who take care of that.
I thought the people on the show might have been exaggerating, but it turns out that not only do photocopiers have this feature built in to them, there are many printer drivers that won’t print scanned bills!! What’s more, this capability is widespread. Perhaps everyone knew about this except me.
Adobe and other makers of image-manipulation programs have, at the behest of a little-known group of national banks, inserted secret technology into their programs to foil counterfeiting, the companies acknowledged this week.
[From Adobe, others slip anticounterfeiting code into apps - CNET News]
I immediately started to wonder: how do they do this? What is it about money that is sufficiently distinctive for a scanner, copier, image manipulation software or printer to spot it amongst other pictures of Her Majesty the Queen, sinister-looking pyramids, stylised bridges or fine wavy lines?
Photoshop and other programs will no longer be able to open files containing images of several nations’ currencies, said Kevin Connor, director of product management for Adobe. The code to detect such images came from the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group, a low-profile association representing the national banks from Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
[From Adobe, others slip anticounterfeiting code into apps - CNET News]
But what is this code? I have no idea, but when I mentioned this on the Digital Money Blog, Stephen Murdoch from Cambridge helpfully posted a link to some more details here. Fascinating stuff, and not only for those of us obsessed with the technology of money. It’s not an Adobe thing, by the way. There are many companies involved
Not surprisingly, that’s unsettling to a company like HP. That’s why researchers at HP Labs and experts from the company’s printing and imaging business got together at the request of U.S. and international officials to help clamp down on counterfeiting.
[From HP Labs : News : HP Helps U.S. Clamp Down on Counterfeiting]
From a digital money perspective, this looks like a failing old technology relying on a form of coercion to perpetuate it, doesn’t it? Yet another hidden cost of cash.
These opinions are my own (I think) and presented solely in my capacity as an interested member of the general public [posted with ecto]
currency digital money european standards SEPA
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