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mlmonkey parent
You do know that every color copier comes with the ability to identify US currency and would refuse to copy it? And that every color printer leaves a pattern of faint yellow dots on every printout that uniquely identifies the printer?
potsandpans
And that's not a good thing.
mlmonkey OP
I'm just responding to this by OP:

> Were politicians 20 years ago as overreative they'd have demanded Photoshop leave a trace on anything it edited.

wing-_-nuts
Nope, having a stable, trusted currency trumps whatever productive use one could have for a anonymous, currency reproducing color printer
fwip
Why not? Like, genuinely.
potsandpans
I generally don't think that's it's good or just for a government to collude with manufacturers to track/trace it's citizens without consent or notice. And even if notice was given, I'd still be against it

The arguments put forward by people generally I don't find compelling -- for example, in this thread around protecting against counterfeit.

The "force" applied to address these concerns is totally out of proportion. Whenever these discussions happen, I feel like they descend into a general viewpoint, "if we could technically solve any possible crime, we should do everything in our power to solve it."

I'm against this viewpoint, and acknowledge that that means _some crime_ occurs. That's acceptable to me. I don't feel that society is correctly structured to "treat" crime appropriately, and technology has outpaced our ability to holistically address it.

Generally, I don't see (speaking for the US) the highest incarceration rate in the world to be a good thing, or being generally effective, and I don't believe that increasing that number will change outcomes.

fwip
Gotcha, thanks for the explanation. I think that personally, I agree with your stance that it's a bad kind of thing for government to do, but in practice I find that I'm in favor of the effects of this specific law. (Perhaps I need to do some thinking.)
oblio
It depends on how you're looking at it. For the people not getting handed counterfeit currency, it's probably a good thing.
fwip
Also probably good for the people trying to counterfeit money with a printer, better not to end up in jail for that.
sabatonfan
Is this something strictly with the US currency notes or is the same true for other countries currency as well?
SaberTail
It's most notes, and for EU and US notes (as well as some others), it's based on a certain pattern on the bills: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation
mlmonkey OP
Of course, countries with plastic currency notes (like Australia) don't have to worry about this because their notes incorporate hard-to-counterfeit features like transparent windows.

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