I Know The Guy Who Owns This Place

I received one of the new $5 bills in change the other day which prompted myself and a coworker to wonder how they did the rumored anti-counterfitting protection. So I thought I’d try it out. I tossed the new $5 and an old $5 into the scanner we have at work to see what would happen.

The results were surprising. It didn’t scan correctly. You can see what I got back here.

Here’s the best comment I’ve seen on why it likely didn’t work:

Deke McClelland said… “My understanding is that it works like this: In cooperation with governments, security, and software firms, the International Bank has devised an elaborate matrix of recognizable patterns that may be embedded into the design of paper currency. The matrix includes the yellow circles mentioned earlier, as well as a variety of lightly colored waving lines and subtly patterned background images. This matrix has worked its way into the new US bills, as well as all Euros, English pound notes, and who knows how many other currencies. The International Bank petitions tech developers such as Adobe to incorporate its scan detection protocol. Adobe added it to Photoshop, which satisfied all parties, but omitted it from ImageReady and other Adobe apps. Hence the potential for madcap humor in dekePod.

Given the fair-use options, and the many workarounds (the one I show in dekePod is just one of several), I am skeptical of software’s ability to limit counterfeiting. Those that have successfully counterfeited money have done much more than scan it, clean it up in Photoshop, and print it two-sided on sheets of 20-pound bond. The real savvy bad boys weave and watermark their own paper and print the ink in layers, frequently using old-school presses. I might recommend spending less effort constraining fair-use activities and more effort looking for guys who are etching lithgraphic plates to resemble real money.”

Pretty interesting and cool.

~ by bryan on April 6, 2008.