Canadian Coins Not Nano-Tech Espionage Devices

Necrotica writes "An odd-looking Canadian coin with a bright red flower was the culprit behind the U.S. Defence Department's false espionage warning earlier this year. The odd-looking — but harmless — "poppy coin" was so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. Army contractors traveling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them. The worried contractors described the coins as "anomalous" and "filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology," according to once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails obtained by the AP."

State of Fear

[A beautiful mind]

Kind of expected in a state of overly paranoid affairs. Paranoia is where rationality gets thrown out of the window.

Re:wow

[neoform]

No kidding "wow"..

It was a Remembrance Day (ww2) coin.. why would this strike anyone as suspicious? As for the "man-made" bit.. well, it's a coin.. who'd they expect made it?

Remembrance Day coin?

[MrJynxx]

Aren't those the special Tim Hortons(Canadian version of crack in a cup) Remembrance Day coins they gave out a few years back? Funny they thought it had a microchip in them. Man some people can be so naive.

Re:State of Fear

[ReTay]

"Kind of expected in a state of overly paranoid affairs. Paranoia is where rationality gets thrown out of the window."

Yeah but the great thing about paranoia is you only have to be right once for it to all be worth while. :)

All this tells me...

[mwvdlee]

All this tells me is that the Americans think it's possible for coins to be used as spying devices. They wouldn't think it if they weren't somehow certain. I'd be carefull with American coins if I were you ;)

Canada vs. US

[Kimos]

I can't think of a more appropriate example to illustrate the differences between our two countries.

Re:No big deal

[radtea]

I would rather they have lots of false positives to avoid true negatives

Unfortunately, this sort of indiscriminate paranoia ensures that the true negatives will be missed in the midst of a sea of garbage.

The intelligent response to events like 9/11 is to recognize that law enforcement effort should be prioritized as always, focussing resources on the people most likely to do harm, and to accept that a certain level of risk is necessary to preserve some essential liberty.

Re:Better Safe Than Sorry

[aadvancedGIR]

I was telling myself that if I was a spy and my target was american, I think I'll try using something that looks like a nickel, not an odd-looking foreign commemorative special edition coin. OTOH, you may expect the guy to keep it as a souvenir instead of using it in a vending machine. Anyway, swapping his watch, phone or pen seems the better solution, it is slighly harder to perform, but once it's done, the guy is bugged with something apparently harmless he wants to keep whith him anywhere he goes.

From the original FUD piece

[brian0918]

"The report did not indicate what kinds of coins were involved. A service spokeswoman said details of the incidents were classified."

So, basically, a weird looking coin led the government to believe there was an international threat, and the reason this belief remained intact for more than... say... 30 seconds, is that these idiots were too dumb to Google "remember souvenir" (the words on the coin), and yet they're given the ability to classify such nonsense, escalating a problem that could've been resolved by asking any Canadian to empty their pockets, into a threat to national security.

Are they really stupid enough to think that spies are going to make tracking devices in the form of big red X's, and then put those devices on coins that are unlikely to stay in their possession for more than a day?

The most hilarious part are the comments by one of the U.S. contractors, who sounds like he just got his Official Little Orphan Annie secret decoder pin in the mail:

"It did not appear to be electronic (analog) in nature or have a power source," wrote one U.S. contractor, who discovered the coin in the cup holder of a rental car. "Under high power microscope, it appeared to be complex consisting of several layers of clear, but different material, with a wire like mesh suspended on top."

Hardly surprising...

[who's got my nicknam]

given the current state of affairs in the US. When you live in a totalitarian state, you see enemies behind every bush (insert appropriate joke here). To the commenter who said it only takes being right once to make it all worth while I would say "You're deluded, my friend." One of your great statesmen once said that if you give up your freedom in exchange for security, you will end up with neither; this is being borne out as we speak. Americans are not "safe" from terror - they may be safe from terrorism, but as we can see from the daily news reports, Americans are a terrified people. Those contractors who freaked out about our memorial coins were obviously not feeling "safe", and felt it necessary to file a report about their suspicions. (Incidentally, what they assumed were "nanodevices" were likely the ink dots from the printing process; the Royal Canadian Mint isn't known for its quality when it comes to short-run commemorative coins.) This is just another incident that, along with the Boston Police department's War On Things That Blink, make me glad I have absolutely no reason to travel to the US. For your sakes, I hope you get a new administration with a brain in it next time round!

focus

[crAckZ]

http://www.gcn.com/print/22_10/21970-1.html [gcn.com] worried about a coin but they cant keep track of the laptops. i think they need to focus on some of the important things before looking with the naked eye for nano-spy gear

Projection

[Excelcia]

When you are a country who's law allows the kidnapping of foreign nationals, who's laws allow "rendition", who's laws allow Guantanamo to exist... a country who spies on everyone else, then you see yourself in others too. One tends to expect from others the sort of treatment you meet out. Conversely, the society for which the above is unthinkable tends not to see those threats everywhere else. This story isn't so much funny, as it is deeply... deeply sad.

Re:Canada vs. US

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that Americans live in constant fear and paranoia.

We remember those who fought for us so we don't have to live in fear.

Re:No big deal

[nasch]

We're not laughing at them for being suspicious and checking out something they weren't familiar with. We're laughing at them for being suspicious and not checking it out. They knew it was a Canadian coin. A quick Google search on "canadian quarter red flower" probably would have cleared it all up. Confirm that with a phone call to the Canadian embassy. The whole thing could have been over in ten minutes, and then if it becomes public, they say yep, we wondered about those coins but we quickly discovered they're harmless. Now, they've demonstrated that not only are they paranoid about anything looking slightly strange, but they also don't have any idea how to investigate it. So we'll have the aforementioned sea of false positives, and if there are any real positives we don't have any reason to think the government is capable of doing anything about it. I don't find this situation reassuring, because we're being asked to give up some liberties without any evidence that our security is improved anyway. And no, that doesn't mean I necessarily approve of giving up liberty for security.

P.S. whoever "they" are

Never.....

[budword]

Never attribute to malice (or paranoia) that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. There is no way the USA can stay on top for long, when even the "bright" people in the USA are brutally stupid.

Re:wow

[vonhammer]

But, it shows you how they think. It was suspicious to them because they are thinking along those lines. It gives you a hint at what they think is possible and how it might reasonably be used.

Or else, they're just a bunch of tin-foil spy wannabees.

Re:State of Fear

[Torvaun]

In the same way, being overly trusting is similarly useless. But we're not looking at two fire alarms, one always buzzing and one never buzzing. We're looking at two fire alarms, one that's hypersensitive, and gets set off by guy with lighter, and one that's undersensitive, and may not trigger even when there is a fire. I'd rather have my fire alarm going off for 110% of the fires than going off for only 90% of them.

Or, to remain true to my sig, I'll take an order of paranoia, cut the conspiracy theory.

I'd be insulted if I were Canadian

[Jimmy King]

Not because of being accused of spying but because of being accused of being stupid enough to implant "super secret spy technology that is intending to go completely unnoticed" in a non-standard object that stands out and draws attention instead of in a perfectly normal looking quarter.

Re:Remembrance Day coin?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would a spy coin have a big bright red flower on it to draw attention? No, these guys are just paranoid bozos.

Clever Canadians...

[baKanale]

I can't think of a better concealment method than hiding bugs on coins by painting a red poppy flower on them!

You know, aside from hiding a bomb with a mooninite LED sign...

Re:State of Fear

[gvc]

Actually, you'd be perfectly happy with your alarm going off for 1000% of all fires (10% positive predictive value). Since house fires are relatively rare events (maybe 1 in your lifetime) I daresay that 10 falses in your lifetime would be tolerable. But a fire alarm that went off 10 times per week would be utterly useless.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not just wow. More like, wow, the terrorists really have won (i.e. they have provoked a particularly harsh and wide-ranging alteration of the world political system). People are afraid of the change in their pockets for fuck's sake. Government secret wiretaps? Who needs them. I'm willing to bet that this post will be stored on a great deal more servers than the ones hosted by Slashdot. The supposed idea is to collect everything and then sift through it for the "evil" parts...in practice they collect everything and look at what they choose to look at, all without the inconvenience of any sort of warrant or other legal requirement.

Re:Canada vs. US

[Clover_Kicker]

Of course, the association of poppies with WW1 isn't really a part of American (US) culture. We cleverly avoided that part of that bit of unpleasantness.

The US eventually got dragged off the fence and into WW1. 120,000 men killed, 200,000 wounded [roangelo.net].

Re:Hardly surprising...

[ScentCone]

When you live in a totalitarian state

Well, at least we live in a country where we have dictionaries and whatnot that allow us to look up that word and understand what it actually means, and then look around the world and see where it's actually true.

You know, in countries next door to places where contractors actually do get bugged, kidnapped, and killed by people with a political agenda. If you're in that line of work, you've been to seminars where other guys in that line of work tell you what it's like to have your hotel room surveiled, your luggage tracked, or your co-workers decapitated. Canada isn't next door to Iran, but it is a place - just like the US - through which flows (and in which lives) folks with certain connections to operations like Hamas or countries like China and Iran that have a long track record of military and industrial espionage. Do you REALLY think that the US is a "totalitarian" state? What word do you use for places like Cuba, where (unlike the US or Canada) you can get shot for desparately trying to leave. Or North Korea? Are you THAT addled by your dislike for the US that you're that willing to close your eyes to places where such nonsense is the very nature of daily life and death, just so you're more comfortable using that label to score political points?

Tavern

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what happened is someone got one of these at a tavern, as change. They decided it would be funny to fill out a report on it. They just forgot to put "j/k" at the end of the report.

Re:Hardly surprising...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you REALLY think that the US is a "totalitarian" state? What word do you use for places like Cuba, where (unlike the US or Canada) you can get shot for desparately trying to leave. Or North Korea? Are you THAT addled by your dislike for the US that you're that willing to close your eyes to places where such nonsense is the very nature of daily life and death, just so you're more comfortable using that label to score political points?

I really think it is a totalitarian state compared to Canada, Japan, or most of Europe. It's much less totalitarian than North Korea and Cuba, and a little less totalitarian than China. Y'see, it's not a binary choice here. There's some gray involved. I don't compare the US to the worst countries in the world, I compare it to the best. And by that metric, it appears wanting.

Re:Hardly surprising...

[ScentCone]

A woman who is 3 days pregnant is *just* as pregnant as a woman whose belly looks like a beachball. Whether or not the accusation of the US being totalitarian is correct, if the correct word to use for Cuba was totalitarian, and the US fulfilled the same criteria as Cuba, then it would, in fact, be totalitarian.

Yeah, and some people see a fat young woman with no wedding ring and just assume she's a pregnant young bimbo, and form all sorts of invalid opinions which - even after they've been shown their idiocy - they have a hard time shaking off. The analogy police say: totalitarian is as totalitarian does. I agree that if we can all agree that Cuba is a totalitarian state, and that if the US carried on just like Cuba, we could also call the US a totalitarian state. But it clearly doesn't, and thus isn't. You're talking about semantics as a peculiar way to avoid actually addressing the fact that the GP is a little daft, referring to the US as a totalitarian country.

From the dictionary: of or relating to centralized control by an autocratic leader or hierarchy : authoritarian, dictatorial; especially : despotic b: of or relating to a political regime based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation especially by coercive measures (as censorship and terrorism)

No matter how much people on the left THINK it serves them to trot out that word and so heavily mis-apply it to the current administration, they never seem to quite figure out that its the folks on THEIR side that push the nanny state, more state control of business, more state influence over culture, more state influence over who gets what job, etc. There's far more censorship-ish urges pushed forward from the left than there ever is from their counterparts... so I always find this sort of conversation deliciously ironic.