> On Feb 24, 2016, at 1:24 AM, Richard Aiken <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> That sort of thing is probably why - as I understand it - lots of countries maintain stockpiles of bullion at Fort Knox, Kentucky. When countries trade gold with each other nowadays, it's a matter of sending through the appropriate paperwork, then soldiers get sent into the vault to move the actual bullion.

If even that; more likely it’s a matter of changing the ownership of ‘Shelves K319A-K324C’ from country 1 to country 2 on some computer somewhere.

Saw an documentary about Ft. Knox a while back. There was actually a big hooferaw in Congress in the 50’s over whether there was even any gold there anymore; the Treasury sponsored a visit with a bunch of bigwigs and filmed it; mostly rah rah propaganda type stuff, but they peeked into several ‘vaults’ which were more on the order of a deepish closet with gold stacked on shelves.

If you don’t have to open the place up to trade things it limits exposure to possible theft. If the gold just stays there, changing hands, better still.

Makes social engineering the gold *out* of there much more difficult, you cannot just fabricate gold trades, then show up at the gate with a commandeered Brinks truck (or fleet of Morris Mini’s 8-) to get ‘your gold’...

Of course, simply fraudulently commissioning (or hacking said computer) to do national gold trades, then taking your cash out as lines of credit on ‘your gold’ in Ft. Knox is perfectly doable, but since it doesn’t involve guns, explosions, car chases and lots of shiny gold bars being loaded by hand as the guards work their way towards you, it’s unlikely that it will ever be made into a Michael Bay heist movie or the typical PC adventure :-)

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs