No, Ecuador Doesn't Require Bank Permission to Photograph Money

This claim contains a fundamental logical flaw that a basic fact-check quickly exposes: Ecuador has used the US dollar as its official currency since 2000. The Banco Central del Ecuador (BCE) does not issue banknotes at all — it can only mint fractional coins. Any law purportedly requiring 'central bank permission to photograph currency' would be regulating photography of US Federal Reserve notes, over which Ecuador's BCE has no jurisdiction whatsoever. The BCE's actual legal mandate, as defined by the 2021 reforms to the Organic Monetary and Financial Code, is to 'guarantee monetary stability, dollarization, the provision of safe and efficient means of payment, and the generation of macroeconomic studies.' Photography permissions do not appear anywhere in this mandate. There is a real, narrower restriction in Ecuador: photographing military installations, police stations, and sensitive security facilities is discouraged and can lead to questioning by authorities — a common security rule found in many countries. This is security-motivated, not monetarily motivated, and applies to a narrower set of locations than 'government buildings.' The specific, colorful claim about 'explicit written permission from the central bank' appears to be a fabrication typical of 'weird laws' listicle content that conflates anti-counterfeiting laws (which prohibit reproducing currency for fraud) with photography restrictions, and then invents a bureaucratic permission mechanism to make the claim sound more official and bizarre.