Hollow Spy Coins 322
Bruce Schneier's blog links to a few sources for hollow spy coins, one being BoingBoing's Bazaar — where a nickel that can hold a microSD card costs $27. Another is Slashdot's sister company ThinkGeek, where you can get hollow quarters and half-dollars in the low 20s. As if corporate and government security geeks didn't have enough to worry about.
Sounds rather disappointing, really (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sounds rather disappointing, really (Score:5, Interesting)
I could just as well call my wallet a "spy wallet", as it can hold mico-SD cards too.
That analogy doesn't work unless you're suggesting that you wouldn't use your wallet as a wallet. In this case, the coin is not really a coin. It's a fake, intended to deceive. On the other hand, I do agree with you that it seems like a slashvertisement.
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"Actual coins are precision hand milled to create a secret compartment inside" from Thinkgeek description.
It's the most expensive half-dollar you'll buy without being a collector, though. Potentially the most expensive you'll spend, depending on the contents of the micro SD card.
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No, in the U.S. you may do anything you want to a coin as long as it is not with fraudulent intent, e.g. bleaching a $1 bill and reprinting it to look like a $100 bill, etc.
http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/coins/portraits.shtml#q13 [ustreas.gov]
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Re:I just inserted a microSD card into my pee hole (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Sounds rather disappointing, really (Score:5, Insightful)
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The weight would be off; a vending machine would probably reject it. However, I don’t think they’re going to be individually weighing your quarters at most checkpoints.
Re:Sounds rather disappointing, really (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes, but if you got the weight correct, you’d have to worry about spending it accidentally...
(Actually you’re going to have to worry about that anyway, because cashiers don’t weigh the currency either. Only vending machines do that.)
Re:Sounds rather disappointing, really (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but if you got the weight correct, you’d have to worry about spending it accidentally...
(Actually you’re going to have to worry about that anyway, because cashiers don’t weigh the currency either. Only vending machines do that.)
For countries outside the US, you cannot spend a US coin. For those in the US, get the equivalent modification for a foreign coin.
"Oh that coin, it was left over from my last overseas trip. Nothing to see here."
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There are companies [spy-coins.com] that will sell you coins from many different countries, if you're worried about spending your spy coin...
Re:Sounds rather disappointing, really (Score:5, Interesting)
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Because you can't just, you know... put the coin in a different pocket?
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I've found that I'm fairly absent-minded about which pocket I put my keys or pocketknife in. 95% of the time (or maybe 99%), they go in the Correct Pocket, but sometimes I find that I've swapped m car and house keys, or put both in the same pocket. I don't know why I do it. If I had a hollow coin, I'd mis-pocket it even more easily. A better solution, I think, would be to make sure it was a denomination you don't normally carry. A nickel, perhaps ... or a Canadian nickel (which are uncommon but not unhe
Re:Sounds rather disappointing, really (Score:5, Funny)
Use red paint to mark a clear X on all your spy coins. That's what I do and I haven't accidentally spent one yet.
Re:Sounds rather disappointing, really (Score:4, Informative)
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True story:
I once made a two-tailed coin as a birthday present for my brother. I used a large file with flat spacers attached that were exactly half the thickness of a coin. With a small jig to hold the coins, I filed away one side from each. I then filed a bevel around each inside edge, sandwiched the halves together and filled in the bevel by soldering. As a final touch, I filed small vertical lines around the edge of the coin.
Aside from having two tails, the result was pretty much indistinguishable from
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Yeah, and that makes my phone a spy-phone too! Cool!
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(When it's ajar, for the uninitiated.)
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This is just a slashvertisement for hollowed-out coins. I would really consider them "spy coins" as the title is selling them to us. A "spy coin" should actively do some spying, really. I could just as well call my wallet a "spy wallet", as it can hold mico-SD cards too.
I suggest we call them "anti-ACTA coins".
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You could put a tiny robot inside that comes out at night, takes pictures and climbs back into the coin before dawn.
It's contact hides in a gumball machine. Codename Bubbles.
Re:X-ray impervious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hiding in plain sight (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering how laptops have become fair game for involuntary search and seizure at US borders, I think putting your 'important stuff' on a microSD card inside a hollow coin is probably a good idea.
My blackberry has a microSD card in it. I have passed through many different customs / airport security examinations and nobody has ever examined the contents of the card. I don't see the point of paying for an even smaller microSD card carrier, when I already have a small microSD reader that I carry with me everywhere that nobody ever raises an eye towards.
And even if my phone is off, or the battery is dead, it still does just fine at carrying the card and looking extremely ordinary. You could also substitute most Motorola phones in the same role, and any number of other phones that I haven't paid attention to that also use microSD.
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sure, that sounds good and all, but it's not realistic or related to what you're replying to. a cellphone is not a laptop. While both can hold enormous amounts of data (16gb/32gb microsd - I think most blackberries can only hold 16 max if I recall correctly), apparently border searches and the likes constitute searching laptops - they make a distinction.
My android phone holds significantly more data (and can do more, functionality wise) than your blackberry - it could be "more dangerous". Yet they could ca
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Exactly... also Border Guards might start cluing in to cell phones at some point at which point BlackBerries and such wont be a safe spot. The coinage presumably looks to x-rays and stuff like a normal coin which means they probably wont make you empty out your wallet and search each and every coin you have on you.
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So the coin makes sense but mostly all of the devices point out how security is basically stupid at best.
I disagree with you on that. The purpose of these coins is just to hide the microSD card. Except that a hollowed-out coin would look more suspicious at the airport scanner. You can physically put the same microSD card into your phone (any phone that takes a microSD, that is) and raise no suspicion whatsoever.
Hence the coin makes no sense, unless you don't own a phone that can take a microSD - in which case you're a terrible excuse for a spy.
So if the point is to make security look silly, then the be
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Send me a hollow coin and I'll do it. I've X-rayed guns before (http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m5/J_M_Lambert/Guns/SR9X-ray.jpg), and condsidering the way it's easy to see through a metal magazine, and through the brass cartridges inside of it, I'd speculate that it should be pretty easy to differentiate hollow coin from a normal one.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Oh, no, they actually care about laptops. And phones. They actually know those can hold data, so just might take them even if they can't find any.
Tape it to the circuit board of your travel alarm clock. Or your electric razor.
Re:Hiding in plain sight (Score:5, Insightful)
But no, seriously, do you think that the day will never come when people's phones are seized? Laptops are more valuable than phones, so if they are willing and able to get away with dispossessing you of those, the only reason phones aren't being taken is that they don't feel that is useful 'right now'. Someday some undersecretary is going to think 'phones carry lots of data now too, we should be searching those as well!' and boom, a new policy will be put in place, and you'll be saying goodbye to your microSD card.
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You don't even need a phone that actually uses micro SD cards.
You can tape a micro SD card in the back of a low-end ordinary cellphone. Since the phone isn't viewed even as a computing device, the only way the border agents are going to find anything is if they actually take the back off the phone.
The only way to keep data from entering/leaving the country would be to shut down travel entirely, shut down the mail, shut down the parcel services, and turn the US into North Korea.
I shouldn't say that too loud
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But you dont need to. MicroSD cards are trivial to hide. Hide one in your shirt collar, belt leather, a simple slice to your shoe heel, etc... It's brain dead easy to hide them. I think the MicroSD card is the modem spy's best thing since sliced bread as they are dirt cheap and everywhere.
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I had precisely the same idea: A hollow coin is also an effective Faraday cage. Not only is it good to disguise the contents from casual (or even somewhat close) examination visually/physically, it’s also going to shield it from more intrusive forms of electronic detection.
Re:X-ray impervious? (Score:4, Interesting)
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My girlfriend's a magician. One night I was driving down the highway, she touched my leg, and I turned into a hotel.
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No, it just means you have a spy pocket you could sell to sucker for 20 bucks.
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Great.... (Score:2, Funny)
Now I have to start running everyone who enters and leaves through a giant EM field?
Sigh... the shareholders aren't going to like the cost of those generators and the shielding...
More than that, how do I sufficiently shield the porn they bring in with them? If that gets damaged there'll be hell to pay.
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Good luck with that. The coin is also a Faraday cage.
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Voltage is relative. A hollow coin will prevent anything inside it from being able to perceive any voltage potential difference. It doesn't matter if you plug the thing into a 120kV line as referenced to ground, the microSD card still won't feel a thing. So no, it doesn't need to be grounded.
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An actual Faraday cage only needs to be grounded because if it somehow goes hot, you want it to ground through the one you installed, not you when you touch it.
Re:Great.... (Score:4, Informative)
X-ray? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Not sure. All x-rays I've seen just show metal as a bright spot, not much relief. And either way, all you have to do is keep the coin in your pocket. I never take my belt, rings or glasses off and have yet to be beeped by the metal detector and I've been flying twice a week lately. A little bit of metal is allowed. Just keep the coin in your pocket and take all other metal off and you'll almost certainly raise no suspicions or alarms.
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Even if it does look weird under an X-ray (which I doubt), the coin in question is more likely shielded by other coins in the purse. Besides, airport securities tend to look at a e.g. jacket as a whole, for knifes, guns and such -- bigger objects; who will ever look for a weird coin in a purse in a jacket?
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While I concede it's unlikely anyone would actively look for such a thing - let alone find it - if they do you have a problem.
Previously, you were Just Another Passenger.
Now, you are A Passenger Who Has An Item Obviously Designed to Hide Something Right Under Somebody's Nose.
If that doesn't attract further interest, I don't know what will. I think the "take it out and plug it into your phone" suggestion was better.
Slashvertisement (Score:5, Insightful)
hey kdawson, if you're going to try to slip in an ad for your sister company in a "news story", at least mark it up as an advertisement.
This is just wrong. kdawson should be fired for such a breach of ethics.
Re:Slashvertisement (Score:5, Insightful)
Even as a "slashvertisement" - isn't the idea of a hollowed out quarter with enough space for a MicroSD card cool? Are there not interesting consequences for security experts and people concerned about corporate espionage? In other words - won't this "slashvertisement" stimulate some interesting discussion? If you have such a problem with kdawson's "ethics" log the fuck in and take him off your index.
are they even legal? (Score:3, Interesting)
if they look like real money, is it even legal?
or do the hollow coins come from the mint?
Re:are they even legal? (Score:5, Informative)
That said, I've never heard of anybody going after currency defacement operations(even the overt ones. Those "souveneir penny" machines that crush a graphic associated with whatever attraction the machine is located in have been around for decades, and the Secret Service has shown no signs of caring) unless they involve wholesale export of coins for their melt value(I think there was some issue involving the old pure copper pennies during one of the spikes in copper prices fairly recently).
If you somehow got caught, and your hollow nickel contained a microSD card with a copy of secret_leaked_CIA_documents_that_the_illuminati_don't_want_you_to_have.doc, they'd probably throw a defacement of currency charge at you, just for completeness' sake; but, while almost definitely illegal, they aren't exactly a huge legal risk.
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The "defacement of currency" charge that people toss around doesn't really apply to tearing up a dollar bill, or crushing a penny. The defacement charge is there as a hedge against people drawing a zero on the end of a five dollar bill and trying to pass it off as a fifty.
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"Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of the United States, or any foreign coins which are by law made current or are in actual use or circulation as money within the United States; or Whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into the United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered, defaced,
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Actually, that only criminalizes fraudulent alterations. E.g. milling the edges of silver coins, bleaching money and re-printing higher denominations.
Pressed pennies and hollow coins aren’t intended to be used fraudulently, so I’m pretty sure that statute doesn’t apply.
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Plausible deniability? (Score:2)
What's with plausible deniability in that case? Like: "I got that as a change from the cafeteria (or other place), no idea whose it is." If a data on the stick is encrypted with TrueCrypt, does that give you a Double Plausible Deniability bonus?
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Well.. interesting question..
They _are_ made from real coins and they don't purport to be worth anything more than the tender they were milled from.
Now, what happens if you try to pass one off at a store? Well, my guess is you would just be an idiot. At $20+ for a hollow quarter, you're better off just giving them a real quarter. Yes, the store would be out 25 cents, but I'm not sure that would be "counterfeiting" as, again, it was real money and again isn't purporting to be worth more than face value (i
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Counterfeit?
No.
Maybe on a technicality
Not even close. It's a real coin. If you hollowed it out entirely, just leaving the outside nickel plate, It would still be worth its face value.
As far as I can tell, to make a hollow quarter, you take _two_ regular quarters of similar quality and you cut off the back of one and hollow out the center of another then mate the two.
You can get a carbide end mill of sufficient size to mill out the center, no problem, without resorting to using two coins. You can also abr
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Can't speak for these in particular, but usually hollow coins start life as real coins.
The cheap ones, they just cut in half, gouge out a little pocket, and add a concealed hinge/pivot. The nicer ones actually unscrew and look almost like a very tiny pill bottle.
And I suppose, for the same reason those penny-squishing trinket-makers don't break the law, neither do these.
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or do the hollow coins come from the mint?
Yes... they’re real; just hollowed out.
I’m still not sure about the legality though; intentionally destroying US currency is illegal, I think.
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Well, as far as I understand it, defacing money is only an offense if it is done _fraudulently_. Meaning, or at least including, bleaching of lesser denomination bills and reprinting them as larger denominations (make a $1 bill a $100).
Defacing money isn't illegal wholesale as you can walk into nearly any tourist attraction and see those penny squishing machines that make souveniers.
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With regards to those penny squishing machines - the company that makes those is not violating the law even in the most strict sense of the word. They are essentially fancy hammers. We don't outlaw hammers.
A strict reading of the law would make the person putting the penny through the machine the actual defacer.
As far as I can tell, the Secret Service has better things to do than to go after millions of tourists.
--
BMO
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It's illegal in the US, but also almost universally unenforced.
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Which basically means that you're OK, so long as you don't try and fraudulently pay for something with it as though it were a real unaltered coin...
Just wait a while ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Victim of the Economy... (Score:3, Funny)
Just another way for the mint to save money!
inevitable jokes (Score:3, Funny)
penny for your thoughts?
your turn, post your own bad puns
are you a k5 retard? (Score:2)
why do you guys pick on mike?
Spyfolder (Score:5, Funny)
You too can store things INSIDE your very own SPY FOLDER. Features include
Store things inside.
Keep things separate from other things that are not inside your SPY FOLDER.
All this and more!
Again, all yours for just 20 quid. Call 555-HAPPYDUDE now.
Watch out! or else.. (Score:4, Interesting)
the Defense Department might think these coins are for espionage, just like the foreign Canadian quarters from 2007:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003697628_spycoins08.html
Nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
I was a amateur magician when I was ten or twelve, and I'll be 58 next month. You could get those coins at any magic shop way back then, or through the mail from catalogs; I owned a couple of them. Also, any machinist can and could make them easily.
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Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry, I'll get off your lawn.
Monty Python Slippers (Score:2, Informative)
I keep The Rabbit of Caerbannog plush toy in my magician's hat.
That's nothing (Score:5, Funny)
Micro-SD? I can fit a whole usb flash drive in my spy-rectum!
What's the point (Score:5, Insightful)
You can walk right through security (airport, border, corporate) with a microSD card in your pocket and nobody blinks an eye. Trying to "smuggle" a MicroSD card through is more likely to result in you getting caught and treated badly (even if it isn't even illegal). If the data on the MicroSD card is what you're trying to hide, a better spy device would be a trick card... say, which was internally partitioned into two cards with some very obscure way (SW or HW) of switching between them. Put innocuous data on one side, stick it in your camera, phone, music player, whatever. Even if the goons search the card, that's all they find. Short the right contacts or send the right command, and get access to the "evil" data.
TrueCrypt file named DSC43423.jpg (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you'd be better off with a TrueCrypt file named DSC13423.jpg stored on an SDHC card loaded inside a point and shoot camera. Better if it is surrounded by other images with sequential numbers that make sense too.
Re:What's the point (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah you make a good point - it would be extremely difficult if not impossible from a truly secure system such as the SCIFs used by government institutions to secure data. On top of all the policies regarding compartmentalization and data restrictions, you simply have no way to physically transfer data from the machine to a storage device. This has been thought of. These guys fought the Russians during the cold war. You're not going to get one over on them with a hollowed out coin and an SD card.
No biggie (Score:2, Interesting)
No problem (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm still torn: Is this a cheap shot at advertising or is Bruce really so deep in the doo that he has to peddle crap now?
People, microSD cards are what their name suggests: Insanely TINY. They also don't really check on metal scanners that scan your body unless they're set to a level where the hemoglobin in your blood might set them off. Remember that tooth gap where your wisdom tooth used to be? Perfect place to put it while you go through whatever scanners your company might have in place.
So please...
When you see a guy trying to open a coin... (Score:2, Insightful)
FBI Hollow-Nickel Story (Score:5, Interesting)
Hollow Nickel, Hidden Agent
What’s a nickel worth?
No, it’s not a riddle. It’s a case straight from the pages of FBI history.
It all started in June 1953, when a Brooklyn newspaper boy picked up a nickel he’d just dropped. Almost like magic, the coin split in half. And inside was a tiny photograph, showing a series of numbers too small to read.
Even if the boy kept up with the front page news on the papers he delivered, he probably never would have guessed that this extraordinary coin was the product of one of the most vital national security issues of the day: the growing Cold War between the world’s two nuclear powers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
The coin ultimately made its way to the FBI, which opened a counterintelligence case, knowing the coin suggested there was an active spy in New York City. But who?
New York agents quickly began working to trace the hollow nickel. They talked to the ladies who passed the nickel on to the delivery boy, with no success. They talked to local novelty store owners, but none had seen anything like it. A lot of shoe leather was ruined, but no hot leads emerged.
Meanwhile, the coin itself underwent expert examination. FBI Lab scientists in Washington pored over it. They immediately realized the photograph contained a coded message, but they couldn’t crack it. The coin did yield clues, however. The type-print, Lab experts concluded, must have come from a foreign typewriter. Metallurgy showed that the back half was from a coin minted during World War II. Ultimately, the coin was filed away, but not forgotten.
The key break came four years later, when a Russian spy named Reino Hayhanen defected to the United States. Hayhanen—really the American born Eugene Maki—shared all kinds of secrets on Soviet spies. He led FBI agents to one out-of-the-way hiding place, called a “dead drop,” where FBI agents found a hollowed-out bolt with a typewritten message inside. When asked about it, Hayhanen said the Soviets had given him all kinds of hollowed-out objects: pens, screws, batteries, even coins. He turned over one such coin, which instantly reminded agents of the Brooklyn nickel. The link was made.
From there, Hayhanen put investigators on the trail of his case officer, a Soviet spy named “Mark” who was operating without diplomatic cover and under several false identities.
After painstaking detective work, agents figured out that “Mark” was really William Fisher, aka Rudolf Abel, who was arrested on June 21, 1957. Though Abel refused to talk, his hotel room and office revealed an important prize: a treasure trove of modern espionage equipment.
Abel was eventually convicted of espionage and sentenced to a long jail term. In 1962, he was exchanged for American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the U.S.S.R. and held prisoner there.
In the end, a nickel was worth a great deal: the capture of a Soviet spy and the protection of a nation.
Link: http://www.fbi.gov/fbihistorybook.htm [fbi.gov]
1950's technology (Score:2)
Why should "corporate and government security geeks" be especially worried about 1950's technology [fbi.gov] ?
Loss prevention nightmare (Score:2)
For those who work in an electronics store (or it's distribution centers), this will be a loss prevention nightmare for your tiny chips (like MicroSD).
"Oh, just a wad of change? No problem sir! Go on ahead..."
On the other hand, if I accidentally put it through the Coke machine on the way out of Fry's, I think I'd have what's coming to me. ;-)
These seem like neat toys... (Score:3, Insightful)
They seem virtually irrelevant as either a security threat or a tool of asymmetric covert operation, though. MicroSD cards are already small and durable(resistant to liquids, magnetic fields, a number of common solvents, surprising amounts of mechanical strain, etc.). Perhaps more importantly, they are already dirt-cheap and extremely common consumer electronics. Unlike, say, little bits of microfilm, which might not like being stored under your tongue or embedded in the gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe, and which are instantly suspicious on discovery(since virtually nobody used tiny pieces of microfilm in the course of ordinary activity. Libraries always used long spools or large cards of the stuff, and hardly anybody else used any at all), a microSD card, even a plainly visible one, arouses no particular suspicion. Virtually every mid-market cellphone comes with one, lots of PMPs use them for storage expansion, you can even get them at pharmacies.
Even in fascist Orwellistan, or some high-security facility, where it would be legal and accepted to inspect people for them, it would be an immensely tedious chore, because they are so common.
If you are running some sort of high-security operation, your computers would(unless you are a terminal incompetent) be configured without any means of transferring data to unapproved storage media(configuring the OS to, say, only load drivers for USB_HID devices with vendor ID matching whoever your vendor is, and load no driver and send an alert with the machine name, logged on user, and lsusb output to IT security is not commonly done; but it is hardly rocket surgery.) Trying to stop secrets from leaving by physically intercepting tiny chunks of flash memory at the door is just stupid.
Re:These seem like neat toys... (Score:5, Interesting)
you can successfully hide a MicroSD card behind a Stamp on a letter (big stamp, big letter) and have it arrive intact. I did this as a bet to a friend. I sent it to him in florida from michigan.
I did modify the SD card. I sanded off the extended lip to make it all the same thickness, and I embossed the envelope where the st card was to go to give it a bit more room. it was undetectable by casual inspection, but if you flexed it in the stamp location you could feel it.
Spy's used to send microfilm cutouts under stamps all the time. I still have a MINOX camera that I paid a dear amount for back in the 90's when I was into collecting real spy trinkets.
Old news (Score:3, Funny)
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I call bullshit. There's no way you're from a culture that doesn't use any kind of coins at all. They're a little more rare, but they still outnumber electronics in the vending arena. Or does your world not have Coke machines, either? Maybe your bills print in $1.25 increments? Or maybe the machine keeps the change? Do you live and work in a crappy hotel?
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I am Mayan, we use rocks, chocolate, and virgins for money
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