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Currency Detection Discovered in More Products
netbsd_fan writes "BUGTRAQ is reporting that anti-counterfeiting spyware is being found in more and more products. What is also interesting is that these products block fair uses of currency images which do not break the law. What incentive do printer manufacturers have to treat their customers like criminals? Is this a precursor to DRM in scanners, CD drives, and output devices?"
Search on the usual suspect newsgroups and you'll find a "patch" that can easily be applied to Photoshop CS to turn the currency detection off.
It has been public information for a long time that there have been currency detection in digital color copiers. When I worked at Xerox this was publicly acknowledged (~4 years ago).
The currency detection was used to imprint a watermark into the reproduction image. That watermark identified the copier model and serial number that made the photocopy. The result was that the secret service could track down photocopied currency to the exact machine it came from. This supposedly worked for US bills, but I don't know if it recognized other foreign bills.
All thats changed now is that some devices stop printing the currency and instead print out some informational junk in its place. HP apparently does this in its Windows drivers, while Xerox did its watermarking in firmware on the actual device.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
what happens when the note design changes?
As many people have pointed out, in every Slashdot FP on this topic, the detection algorithm works by finding a pattern of five small circles in a particular configuration (which looks vaguely like the Cingular logo, without the head-dot).
This same pattern occurs on US, Canadian, EU, and presumeably many other forms of world currency, so the same algorithm can detect all of them, without modification (and more usefully, without a huge library of bill designs that needs constant updating as various countries change the pictures on their money).
To make a new bill design fit the detection algorithm, the government needs only include that pattern of five circles somewhere in the design.
I included a link to a PDF of the pattern in a Slashdot post from a few days ago, if you want to see it.
Someone has alredy written a tool to remove this "feature" from Photoshop CS. There is'nt a piece of software written that cannot be patched to fix these "problems". POS detection is the best way to foil counterfit cash and the dastardly devils that make it and pass it off.
In most civilized countries, telling his parents would probably be the appropriate penalty.
As an ancap, I believe this is completely legitimate for the private companies to include this type of anti-counterfeit detection. The day could come when it is enforced by government, which I believe is completely against their Constitutional powers, so I'd prefer to see it done privately. You are free to stop using software or printers that enable this 'feature.'
On the other hand, all governments of the world legally counterfeit money every day. Back when money was real hard currency (whether it was gold or silver or dirt or wood), government didn't have the ability to steal from the citizens. Today, they do it constantly using something known as inflation. They print new fiat currency, which causes costs to rise for everyone. And we allow this. Sure, government blames it on business and the free market, but inflation can only truly occur when someone introduces new currency into the market -- sometimes counterfeiters do but it is rare. Government counterfeits every day, lowering the value of our stocks, our bank accounts, and any currency in our pockets. A silent form of taxation, and one that hurts everyone at every level of wealth.
The United States is going to protect its currency very heavily
ROTFL!
So that's why the US$ scores high on the easy-to-fake scale?
Compare to european currencies, both before and after the Euro, the US$ is cheap paper with green print on it. Maybe they should go and solve the problem at the root.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
With Photoshop we all heard about the workarounds. Though, I was wondering how effective the algorithm is in the first place. Does the quality of the bill come into question? I scanned a slightly used ten-dollar bill, and there was no trouble importing it into Photoshop CS. I saved the picture as a *.psd, and had no trouble reopening it. I applied several filters on the image with no problems. I have yet to try this on a 20-dollar bill. Either it only detects 20 dollar bills and higher, or the quality of the bill (i.e. slightly creased) dramatically affects whether the software detects currency.
There's a guy that started printing his own money. This is not illegal, ANYONE can print currency and use it for transactions as long as both parties agree to the value of the currency. A good example of this is Disney Dollars or supermarket script.
Anyway... you can use use it to make purchases all the time. His money is backed by actual deposits of gold and silverin an actual warehouse, not debt and guns. The money is widely used for commerce.
If you don't like the Fed and corporations restricting your digital imaging of bank notes, then go take a look and try it out.
*I ma not, nor am I affiliated with norfed, I am not an authorized exchange center and I make not money from the currency, I'm just a happy user of the notes.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
51% is right. The gov employes people to carefully go through and count money from accidents (fire exposed, roted, etc.) Then refunds the money as long as 51% is there.
The website is owned by the european central bank and has linked listing rules of use for currency images for numerous countries.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
So can you get copier paper with this symbol in a watermark?
Yes, as I noted in another post in this thread. At CeBIT last year there was a company showing off a variety of security related products. They had a number of different kinds of paper and special printers and inks, aimed at companies who need to distribute trackable copies of sensitive things. There was a box of what looked like plain white photocopier paper, except it had thin wavy blue lines printed in quarter circles around each corner, and the little pale yellow circles all over the page. The thin blue lines are generated by an analog engraving process, which ensures that there are many frequency components to a moire pattern when scanned by a digital scanner. An FFT will pick up the large number of frequencies, and interpret the mark as coming from currency, triggering the anti-counterfeiting circuit in photocopiers.
The sales droid identified the yellow circles as "Digimarc circles", and I've been using that assumption ever since. The paper was expensive, at something like 2 euros/sheet for a box of 25 sheets. Now I want a copy of those yellow circles so I can make my own watermark to stick behind my own documents. I just isolated the circles on a 20 euro note, now I have to clean up the image and make it repeat all over a page and then find a copy of photoshop to see what happens.
Also at CeBIT was a whole collection of photocopier manufacturers, all of whom prominently listed anti-counterfeiting as a feature to comply with various national laws. I didn't see any try to hide the fact you couldn't photocopy money, but most of them wouldn't allow anyone to test it because the reset procedure was too difficult.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on