Is this something strictly with the US currency notes or is the same true for other countries currency as well?

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

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.

And that's not a good thing.

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.

It depends on how you're looking at it. For the people not getting handed counterfeit currency, it's probably a good thing.

Also probably good for the people trying to counterfeit money with a printer, better not to end up in jail for that.

Why not? Like, genuinely.

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.

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.)

Nope, having a stable, trusted currency trumps whatever productive use one could have for a anonymous, currency reproducing color printer