From the Sydney Morning Herald: Malaysian Airports To Install Money Detectors
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A quick scan of the wiki article on the ringgit doesn’t reveal any advanced detection mechanisms.
I know that dog can be trained to sniff out large amounts of currency, but this article is suggesting some sort of new technology. Any ideas what kind of device could tell the difference between a stack of polymer bills and a stack of anything else?
I’d think that the standard handbag scanners used at airports nowadays would do just fine at this. The device itself doesn’t need to tell the difference between a stack of polymer bills and a stack of anything else; it need only show the operator that the bag contains a stack of something which could be currency. Determing whether or not it is currency is the job of whoever opens the bag.
So I guess that’s my question. If the existing set of garden variety x-ray scanners can provide enough clues to trigger a manual inspection, what device could the article be talking about?
And if the existing crop of scanning devices has been seeing this cash on the conveyor belt all along, why haven’t they been doing something about it before now?
It’s a little robot that roams the security line asking if anyone can change a 500,000 RM bill.
Given the control the government has over the currency’s composition, wouldn’t it be trivially easy to develop a machine that is sensitive to one of those components. The type and nature of the bill itself, the scent of the ink, etc. I know American money has a distinctive smell; I’d imagine any currency would be similar. Since they’re looking for large amounts, the unit doesn’t have to be that sensitive. What exactly it’s detecting, though, the government is probably sensitive about.
The article indicates only that the scanners are new, not that the technology driving them is. A perfectly plausible reading is that they’ve purchased and installed extra garden-variety scanners (and hired the appropriate staff to operate them) to make the baggage checking process faster or more thorough (for example, in case they previous did only spot checks, or used a less sophisticated scanning technology able to detect only things like bombs and weapons).
It’s also possible that there is new technology which incorporates image recognition AI for identifying things which are possibly stacks of banknotes. Again, the technology need not reliably distinguish between banknotes and worthless pieces of paper; it need only reliably flag things which look like they could be smuggled currency so that a human can open the bag and check.
I went thru LAX a few years ago and the customs agent seemed to know within $400 the amount of currency that I had in my luggage. Then was really pissed off to find that some of the bills were old $100 bills. He spent more than 2 hours tearing my luggage apart in an effort to fine more and put it over the limit.
So I am sure they can detect any amount of cash that you have.
I think this is it - I can’t imagine there is some sort of external device that would be more accurate at detecting hidden currency than an add on to software that runs the X-rays. That may be cause my imagination is poor. I know - like the OP writes - dogs can detect them - and I’ve never heard of a device that can - nor do I believe one exists. I think the dogs can detect as few as 50 notes or so (perhaps less, but then you’d be running into too many false positives.
Sounds like the new RFID antiscan wallets and pouches are going to be pissing off the scanners.
My new pacsafe messenger bag is equipped with an RFID scan protection pocket in the front zippy compartment. Actually, since they are enclosed in an anti-slice metal cable mesh, they might qualify as all antiscan.