>Assuming your theoretical evil maid is a US government employee, it raises an interesting question: are NSA/US government employees allowed to forge/duplicate US currency in the pursuit of protecting national security?
Why would they need to counterfeit the notes? Is there something stopping the NSA from calling up the treasury and asking for uncut sheets with specific serial numbers?
Would they even be breaking the law if they decided to go it along and reverse engineer the printing process? While the Treasury is granted the right to print physical money[0] it does not exclude anyone else from physically printing money as well. Further counterfeiting/forging currency[1] needs to have the intent to defraud.
I get your point though. I guess it would operate similarly to the operations of undercover police who have to break laws as part of their work. I suspect a lot of oversight would be needed from the upper levels of the organisation so as not to fall foul of the Justice Department.
Why would they need to counterfeit the notes? Is there something stopping the NSA from calling up the treasury and asking for uncut sheets with specific serial numbers?
Would they even be breaking the law if they decided to go it along and reverse engineer the printing process? While the Treasury is granted the right to print physical money[0] it does not exclude anyone else from physically printing money as well. Further counterfeiting/forging currency[1] needs to have the intent to defraud.
I get your point though. I guess it would operate similarly to the operations of undercover police who have to break laws as part of their work. I suspect a lot of oversight would be needed from the upper levels of the organisation so as not to fall foul of the Justice Department.
[0] - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5114
[1] - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/471