Articles in the Times OnLine and others are reporting a new and very convincing link between credit card fraud and terrorist funding. It doesn’t get much uglier than this.
According to the reports, there are Chip and PIN readers deployed in more than 40 stores in the UK with extra circuits inside, possibly added during their manufacture in China, that are capturing the card data and sending it to Al-Qaeda headquarters in Pakistan. There, the information is being used to access cash and airline tickets. There are reports of as much as $100 million stolen from the U.S. alone.
Frankly, I’m not sure which part of the news is worse. The Chip and PIN cards that were supposed to be safe have, once again, been proven to be anything but. Al-Qaeda has obviously garnered enough high tech minds to be able to pull off just about anything they want.
I’m not prone to paranoia but as sure as I’m sitting here typing this, we’re in big trouble from more than one enemy. The current economic situation is not the only thing attacking us. Terrorists and the credit card companies are doing a number on us too. And it isn’t going to get better any time soon.
Update
The press is no longer reporting that this is happening in the UK. “Throughout Europe” is the latest language.
I did say it wouldn’t get better anytime soon.
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