The E-Sylum:  Volume 10, Number 15, April 15, 2007, Article 26

ARTICLE: COUNTERING THE COUNTERFEITERS

The technology publisher C|Net had a nice interview this week with
Robert Schafrik, Chairman of the National Research Council committee
on currency counterfeiting.  The committee recently published a
report on the state of counterfeiting made a number of proposals
for anti-counterfeiting measure.  Here are some excerpts:

"Let's look at some of the specific suggestions. One suggestion was
the use of plastic in the currency.

"Schafrik: There is a security thread in there, which actually is a
strip of plastic, and so one could extend that idea--you know, embed
more plastic things or even a plastic window in the currency. There
are a lot of neat things that we thought of doing. Of course, the
Achilles heel that you've to look at is...the durability."

"Counterfeiters don't have to do something exactly right--all they
have to do is emulate it or make it good enough to pass once. So the
other trick is to design some of these new features like using plastic
(so that) if they did try to emulate that feature, it would still be
obvious that it was a counterfeit.

"I read that one possibility might even be to make currency uncuttable
--if you can cut (a banknote), it's counterfeit; if you can't cut it,
it's real.

"Schafrik: Right. You could embed something on one of the edges that
would be made from a very durable type of polymer, and you could twist
it, cut it or whatever and that would be proof positive."

"The report also talked about the Internet being a threat. How so?

"Schafrik: We said the Internet could be, and in fact it is being
exploited now by counterfeiters. In fact, a few of our committee
members went on to the Internet to see what they could learn about
counterfeiting. And it was amazing, all the information that's out
there, almost a recipe for how to do x, y and z, and where to buy
supplies, and what's the best kind of equipment to use, and all
this sort of thing.

To read the complete interview, see: Full Story

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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