Tim asked for a translation. I thought it was one of John's more declarative summaries. It this case, it's reality that's skewed. Voila:
At 3:30 PM 7/24/96, John Young wrote:
The WSJ Page Ones a loser's game
There is an article on the first page of the Wall Street Journal about financial losses...
about the CIA's role in promoting Japanese pachinko cards to halt the surreptitious funneling of betting cash to the construction of a North Korean nuclear plant.
The Central Intelligence Agency told the Japanese government that Pachinko parlors (many run by ethnic Koreans) were sending hard currency to North Korea which was assisting it in building a plant to produce fissionable materials. The Japanese decided to strong arm Pachinko parlors into using magnetic cards instead of cash to discourage money laundering.
And the op's nuking by the Kobe quake looting of card-reading mechanisms, cracking encryption codes, and counterfeiting not-so-smart cards for counter- tipping the house fix. Mondex, watcher bleedin arse.
During the Kobe earthquake recovery, a number of Pachinko machines were stolen, reverse engineered, and fake cards produced. They were then cashed in -- causing massive losses to the issuers. The encryption technology was very weak. Mondex watch out that the same thing doesn't happen to you. DCF "I've been translating engineers into English for years. John's no problem."