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Mandatory Banknote Detection Code?
metamatic writes "The European Union is planning to introduce legislation to make it mandatory for software developers to add black-box banknote detection code to their graphics software.How will this apply to open source software? Is it time to get writing to your Euro-MP?"
...will software developers be required to keep up with new note faces? If old software blocks all note faces as of 2004, will developers face penalties for not updating their software in 2008 when the currency is redesigned?
I don't like the idea of being legally required to update old software. Will this happen?
Yes - it's been in the media over here in Europe. In Germany apparently a good number of forgeries were even re-distributed through ATMs of some banks, who - for the sake of saving a couple of Euros - reloaded the ATM cartridges themselves, instead of carting of the money to the German National Bank who would check the banknotes and fill the ATM cartridges with absolutely authentic banknotes. The issue behind this is that normal merchant banks and people on the street do not know EVERY security detail of the Euro banknotes. Seven details have been published, the others are being kept secret by the national banks so that forgers will not get to hear about them.
Or use a solution that is available now:
Australia and New Zealand have adopted "plastic" notes for a while... I believe it is a big barrier for the cottage counterfeiting groups.
Well, Euro banknotes already have unique codes printed on them. E.g. I've got here one starting with X0688...
But of course, the unique codes only help partially: If you get two banknotes with the same code, you know one has to be wrong. But if you get only one banknote with a given code, how do you know if it's the original one or a copy? Also, when replicating per printer, it probably would't be too hard to give every one a different number.
But Euro banknotes have some security measures which I can't see how to replicate with a printer (like a metallic surface strip).
They don't have RFID, though (and I hope they'll not have them in the future - I wouldn't feel too well if any potential thief could just use an RFID reader to find out in advance if stealing my wallet would be worthwhile).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Austrailia has done a good job with thwarting forgery in more than just the media that the bills are printed on. Really good counterfeiting operations in the United States take a batch of one dollar bills and bleach them to remove all the stuff from the one, except they protect the serial number, then they reprint a higher bill's value onto it. That won't work in Austrailia, because every bill has braille and the larger the note's value, the larger the note. A one and a five arn't the same size.
Learn something new.