A Good Reason To Be Broke

This story was sent to me by a good friend and it kind of freaked me out. I am forever looking for reasons to justify being broke, but this one takes the cake. I find this scary on so many levels-- not that I have anything to hide, really!

And who knew the Canadians were so 007'ish? I suddenly have a new found respect for our Northern cousins!

Moral of this story, spend all your money before they can find you!

WASHINGTON (AP) - Money talks, but can it also follow your movements?

Updated: 12:43 p.m. PT Jan 11, 2007

In a U.S. government warning high on the creepiness scale, the Defense Department cautioned its American contractors over what it described as a new espionage threat: Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside.
The government said the mysterious coins were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.
Intelligence and technology experts said such transmitters, if they exist, could be used to surreptitiously track the movements of people carrying the spy coins.
The U.S. report doesn’t suggest who might be tracking American defense contractors or why. It also doesn’t describe how the Pentagon discovered the ruse, how the transmitters might function or even which Canadian currency contained them.
Further details were secret, according to the U.S. Defense Security Service, which issued the warning to the Pentagon’s classified contractors. The government insists the incidents happened, and the risk was genuine.
“What’s in the report is true,” said Martha Deutscher, a spokeswoman for the security service. “This is indeed a sanitized version, which leaves a lot of questions.”