Wednesday, November 9

Why Nano GPS Chip embedded Indian currency note cannot be a reality

The TV channels, news papers and social media has been talking about new Indian currency of 500 & 2000 INR denominations that were supposed to have Nano GPS chips! Great idea that could make life easier for the government but an impractical one. More ever it that would be illegal and breach of privacy law for a government to track currency notes real time using GPS technology.
              Anyway we are only interested in the technology part so lets discuss the technical feasibility of the idea. If it were not illegal for the government to trace currency in your pockets, cupboards, briefcases and other secret hiding places then it would be every governments dream project to implement so called 'nano GPS based currency notes' and ensure each note leaving the treasury is accounted for, that there are no fake notes in circulation and all the notes traveling across the world to exotic locations and the safe tax havens could be tracked by the government revenue agencies sitting in a room.  GPS technology requires a server that can position a device and a device that can use internet to send its location to the GPS server which means the 'Currency notes with GPS chips' would have to send signal to GPS server and for that they would require a power source and that is what makes the idea unimplementable, even if the countries law allowed tracking of currency.

Why would a government want to use GPS Chip in Currency notes if it were not against privacy laws?
  1. Every illegal activity involves paper money transaction to avoid leaving traces
  2. Illegal activities like drug trade, fake currency, terrorism, bribery are huge industries that are affecting economies of all countries
  3. Tracking of genuine/fake currency notes is not possible at point of services and so it is not easy to control the fake currency notes that get pumped into the economy
  4. Monitoring the high taxpayers (& non taxpayers) and their currency transactions would be possible if notes could be tracked
  5. Government can (and does) track all your electronic transactions but not the currency transactions without ability to track currency notes
As the Finance Minister said in future he would like more and more people to use electronic money to curb corruption and ensure all people pay taxes that are due to them. 

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