>On Mon, 27 Sep 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> One small final comment: physical cash is not really anonymous (bills have
>> serial numbers, and certainly coins may contain secret marks. Why?
At 02:47 PM 09/27/1999 -0700, bram wrote:
>I believe at least part of the reason is to make heists difficult
It also makes basic counterfeiting more difficult -
the counterfeiter not only needs to make good-looking banknotes,
but needs to put unique serial numbers, rather than taking
a single banknote and copying it many times.
One effect of changing technology is that serial numbers on cash
did not provide much traceability in the past, but they do in the future.
There have been various proposals to put bar-coded numbers on cash
to make scanning faster and easier, but that's becoming less necessary.
OCR technology for reading numbers has become much more affordable,
and (either now or in the near future) it would not be difficult to
make ATMs which record serial numbers of cash when dispensing it.
Recording serial numbers used to be a slow manual process used
mainly for kidnap ransom and similar transactions - now it's
almost practical for drug payments and soon for everyday transactions.
Thanks!
Bill
Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
