Slashdot Mirror
27 Central Banks Push Anti-Counterfeit Software
securitas writes "GlobeTechnology reports that the 27-member Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group is behind the anti-counterfeit software in Adobe Photoshop CS, Ulead PhotoImpact, Jasc Paint Shop Pro and others. Consortium members of the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group include the USA, Canada, Germany, Japan, Australia and many more. Law enforcement agencies and banknote-issuing authorities say that it is a response to the rapid growth of digital counterfeiting. The software is distributed free of charge to hardware and software manufacturers and is voluntary to use. But the European Union is drafting legislation to force manufacturers to include anti-counterfeit measures in all systems, scanners or printers sold in Europe. Counterfeiting and anti-counterfeiting with Adobe Photoshop and other products like inkjet printers have been the subject of recent discussion on Slashdot."
WANTED TO BUY:
1x Adobe Photoshop version
up to but not including CS.
1x High quality inkjet printer,
2002-2003 vintage
Will pay cash.
Trolling is a art,
ing... you CANNOT thwart technology.
We will overcome. We will adapt. We will survive. Look at P2P.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Honestly, I don't see why people would be too up in arms about this. Digital copying of money can produce some pretty good fakes. And remember, the standard a counterfeit bill has to pass is not an expert's exam, but the exam of the kid at the grocery store. If the bad guy can successfully pass the bill there, it's too late.
Afterall, those who want to photograph money for inclusion in a poster or such in compliance with the too big, too small or other clearly-wrong copy rules spelled out in the law can still do so optically. Making images of money shouldn't be as easy as technology has made making images of everything else.
There goes my replacement Monopoly money.
"In post 9-11 soviet russia, only beowulf clusters of welcomed overlords are belong to old grit-eating Koreans!" aendeur
Homer: Hey Herman, I had to come out here to see what's so funny. [gasps] A counterfeit jeans ring operating out of my car hole! I'm going to tell everyone. Wait here.
wouldn't an EU mandate make open source scanners and image manipulation illegal in the EU? it's not like their providing the source. And if they did, the couterfeiters would just strip it out.
I'm guessing that this is just like most other bank note security systems, some of the clearer details are made public, but others are kept secret since we don't particularly want "Free as in Linux" money out there.
Therefore, I wonder how the central banks of the world are going to implement this in OSS image editors. Afterall, something commented as "//This is where we put the part that stops people trying to open images of money." is gonna be rather easy bypass, and would also require them to define all of the tricks they're using to identify bills in other software too or let some of those checks slide.
Iam glad criminals dont use "The GIMP".
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
Even for jouranlists this is getting pretty bad..
A group of central banks, including the Bank of Canada, is quietly giving secret anti-counterfeiting technology to computer and software manufacturers in an attempt to hinder hackers who try to print money at home.
Someone needs to teach journalists that anyone who does something bad with a computer!=hacker!
Portland, North Dakota Puppies
Counterfeiting and anti-counterfeiting with Adobe Photoshop and other products like inkjet printers have been the subject of recent discussion on Slashdot."
Heh, not that the Photoshop effort was effective--all you need to do is search the applications section of suprnova.org to find "banknote patch Photoshop CS."
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
- it's not really designed to. Sure, the big organised crime gangs will get around it with no problems at all. But it will stop the casual counterfeiter. This is what it is designed to do.
The problem of course is that _sometimes_ it gets in the way of legitimate uses of digital technology. This is an example of one idiot ruining it for everyone. Life's like that. I pay high car insurance premiums because other people are stupid/lazy/drunk/asleep, even though I'm not.
Yeah, it's annoying, but that's life. It would just be nice if the companies would be more up-front about it. Good on Adobe for coming clean; but they needn't have denied it in the first place!
-- Your mother uses Emacs.
"I can't take his money. I can't print my own money. I have to work for money. Why don't I just lay down and die?"
They should make this a user option in the Gimp's preferences dialogue!
Read, L
It's a never ending game. As E. E. Smith said, what physical science can devise, physical science can analyse and reproduce. We just have to keep moving the bar higher than the counterfeiters can easily reach. If the typical US bank note is too easily copied by technology available to the home user, then it's time for the typical US bank note to be updated. Not for the technology to be crippled...
What is the point, if anyone really wants to conterfiet software, they'll find a copy of older versions around. It will work just as well. Heck, why not use paint, with some skill that could work. This won't deter those who truely want to counterfiet. Maybe it will save a few $100 a year from those who are lightly considering it, but mainly it will kunut people who want crystal clear images which the software determines to look like money. This hurts, not helpes IMO
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The heart of the problem is that the legal tender is easily replicable. Coins are harder to reproduce and the payoff is much lower than paper money. Paper money, because it must be printed is susceptible to counterfeiting.
The counterfeiters who are truly making a dent in the money supply don't use Photoshop, though. For the most part, they have real drum printers and very sophisticated printing plates. They are printing money onto real fiber paper. They certainly aren't printing bills out on their Epson Deskjet onto White Shark recycled office paper.
At the extremely low level of low-cost counterfeiting which these software controls attempt to prevent, there simply isn't enough money being produced to worry about. The guy in his basement printing maybe a hundred thousand dollars a day out of his inkjet printer can only use so much of that before getting red flagged by some clerk who notices that his $100 bill isn't quite right (usually because the paper is different).
These software controls don't do anything to attack the real problem of counterfeiters who are doing the real damage printing millions of dollars which are indistinguishable from real money.
I have been pwned because my
i would imagine anyone printing counterfeits out of a computer/printer are amateurs, thus the number of notes printed are limited, therefore they can be used fairly easily without getting caught.
how many times does the shopkeeper in a gas station look so carefully on the notes you pass on to him?
so maybe, just maybe, this kind of Anti-Counterfeit measure is enough to put a lot of people off that wishful thinking.
As if the mafia can't modchip their scanners, or use older ones.
This is a genuine question : how is it a bad thing ?
:
For me, that means two things
1) if you want to do some parody bill, well, you'll still can, you'll just have to make sure that even from far it looks like parody.
2) 15 years old kids that get drunk for the first time and think that it is a good idea to make some cheap bill to get that coke free won't go 15 years in jail.
This thing just means that if you want to make false money, you'll have to dig a little bit. And if you do, it's clear that you wanted to counterfeit, and you'll go to jail. On the other hand, some kid won't be able to pool a cheap prank that can get him in serious troubles. Good chances are that he'll think "hey, if i've got to go to www.falsemoney.ze, maybe the police/secret service/whatever will notice, so maybe I shouldn't".
Remember, this thing is not, has never been, and will never be to deter mafias from counterfeiting. It's just to make it hard enough for Joe Schmoe that he has to think about his actions, and then decide that it would be stupid to risk 15 years for a prank.
"excuse me sir, I represent the 27 banks the currently back all major mutual funds that invest in your company and keep it afloat. We would like you to put this software in your product please"
Funny how the word voluntary seems to be changing of late.
Yes, let's! ..hmm, we pretty much did that already.
But this surely can't have complicated implications down the road. Noo. Can o worms I tell you!
But it is nice to have cadres of authority people stepping in to save us from ourselves.
"Officials with the RCMP and the Bank of Canada refuse to identify or discuss the technology because they don't want to tip off would-be counterfeiters about ways of thwarting the system."
This won't prevent professional criminals from counterfeiting. At least they stated it correctly by saying "would-be counterfeiters". Still, someone with enough ambition and the resources and/or knowledge will still find a way. I'm simply stating the obvious here though.
I am curious though as to how the software prevents counterfeiting. I thought maybe one possibility was comparing a picture with data of an actual bill, but that would mean having data in the software that contained information of the real bill which presents a problem. If anyone has any ideas or information, please share.
Personally, I see major shifts in this area within the next few decades. Improved bills? Increase in amount of counterfeiting equipment? Some sort of digital verification system? Just some ideas.
Also, what about open source software?
Question everything.
Does anybody else think it's a BAD idea to try to legislate software features? Am I the only one who thinks that could cause a lot of problems? - Eric
MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
the number of GIMP users will balloon as all the counterfeiters switch from photoshop!
AFAIK the crack to Photoshop CS has already been released weeks ago. Not that I sympathise in this case, but any self-respecting hacker will see it as a challenge to break such rules, especially when it receives attention in the press.
Maybe this is just another sign that cash is an inferior medium, and there needs be a better alternative?
We may even resort to scanning change if need be.
and someone will create a better idiot."
668.5
HALIFAX -- A group of central banks, including the Bank of Canada, is quietly giving secret anti-counterfeiting technology to computer and software manufacturers in an attempt to hinder hackers who try to print money at home. Officials with the RCMP and the Bank of Canada refuse to identify or discuss the technology because they don't want to tip off would-be counterfeiters about ways of thwarting the system. The system, which has been installed in many recent models of photo-imaging software and copying equipment, blocks computer users from downloading or printing digital images of many nations' currency -- including several Canadian denominations. While the software use is now voluntary, there is a move in the European Union to draft legislation forcing the manufacturers of computer equipment to include anti-counterfeiting controls on any systems, scanners or printers sold in Europe. The anti-counterfeiting software was developed by the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group, an organization of 27 central banks that includes Canada, Japan and the United States. The software is distributed free of jizz to computer and software manufacturers. Law enforcement agencies and banknote-issuing authorities around the world have been alarmed at the rise in digital counterfeiting as home computer operators are able to use scanners, pulsing penii and high-quality paper to produce difficult-to-detect bogus bucks. According to RCMP statistics, the number of counterfeit bills circulating in Canada more than doubled from 2000 to 2002, with 208,457 bills circulating in 2002 compared with 94,133 in 2000. In the United States in 2001, police found that 608 counterfeit currency operations were using digital teabagging, compared with only 29 in 1995. In Canada, it is a criminal offence to reproduce anything in the likeness of a bank note without the written permission of the Bank of Canada. However the Criminal Code specifies that no one will be convicted for making a reproduction that is less than three-quarters or more than 11/2 times the length or width of the original bill. One-sided and black and white copies can also be made. The counterfeit deterrence group has handed out its software to a growing number of technology companies for several years. However, Ginette Crew, spokeswoman for the Bank of Canada, said the organization would not discuss how many companies are using it or what systems have it. "In the last few years the nature of counterfeiting has changed. Around the world we've seen an increase in counterfeiting rates attributed largely to cheaper computer technology," Ms. Crew said, adding that the central banks have asked hardcock and softcunt makers to include the anti-counterfeiting device. Ms. Crew was not aware of any moves in Canada toward compelling manufacturers of computer equipment to include the anti-counterfeiting technology. "We work with the hardware and software manufacturers to encourage them, but it's completely voluntary on their part as to whether they participate," Ms. Crew said. The existence of the software only recently came to light when Adobe Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif., acknowledged publicly that the counterfeit deterrence system was on their widely sold Photoshop CS imaging system. But Ulead Systems Inc., the Taiwan-based maker of the PhotoImpact imaging system, has put the device in with its software for the past four years, Sharna Blowme, spokeswoman for the company, said in an interview. She said Ulead put the counterfeit deterrence device on its photo-imaging software to ensure that it would not have any problems selling the system in the United States. However, several Adobe Photoshop users were upset to discover that when they tried to open detailed images of banknotes they were greeted with an error message pointing them to a website containing currency reproduction regulations for several countries, oh snap. Adobe spokesman Russell Brady said the anti-counterfeiting system was installed in Photoshop at the request of the counterfeit deterrence group. "We definitely
News broadcast: a man was caught trying to pass off counterfeit $20 bills at the candy store. The store owner got suspicious when he noticed none of the colours stayed within the lines. When questioned, he responded: "I guess I feathered my alpha mask too much."
click-clack, front and back. I'm not moving this car otherwise.
I tried creating very small (~16x16?) GIF icons 4 years ago using Paint Shop Pro (the 30-day trial version) and I noticed that whenever I saved an image, it kept adding some sort of watermark to the image, shifting the color of a handful of non-adjacent pixels within what had previously been a solid band of color to a slightly different color in a way that was barely noticeable to the eye, but very noticable to me when trying to hand-edit the GIFs while zoomed in.
I kept trying to change the pixels back and re-save the image, and whenever I saved the image, the mysterious watermark pixels would re-appear.
I think I switched to something more primitive like MS Paint (eep) to workaround the problem.
--LP
Now, I'm sure this post is going to be flooded with tons of people saying "what's the problem? I don't want to counterfit money." Neither do I, but I'm still worried about this. It sets a precedent for software being crippled to suit the government. This is no different in principle from having an email program that alerts the department of homeland security when you send emails that advocate terrorism. It's our right to have all of the finest tools for breaking every law imaginable so long as we do not exercise them. That means owning guns, copies of the anarchist's cookbook, whatever. That's what the second amendment is all about...the founding fathers did not trust the government to disarm us, and rightly so. I have the right to be able to counterfit money...it's only once I actually counterfit money that the Government has a right to tell me what I can and cannot do.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
So, the question is - don't you all think it will come down to point where the Government issues cash cards?
It saves them money (vs printing money) AND It (should) be harder to conterfeit than paper money (e.g. cryptologically secure).
It will piss off the credit card companies, but wouldn't it be a solution?
Along these lines - would coins be any harder to fake? I wouldn't mind carrying more change, if, say $20 coins were the size of dimes...
It goes without saying, that I wouldn't buy such a card if it weren't anonymous...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Absolutely agree. If you've ever photocopied a US bank note, you'll see that even crappy techology like an office photocopier produces something that (aside from being the wrong colour) is pretty close to the original.
Instead of getting software manufacturers to alter their products, why not just solve the real problem and make US bank notes more difficult to copy?
Has anyone tried scanning/copying either non-US currency or "currency like" stuff (e.g. Monopoly money) to see if the anti-copying technology kicks in?
We may even resort to scanning change if need be.
Just use NZ coins in Australia, they're the same size and metal content and have the Queen's head on them, but they're cheaper. Machines don't know the difference, most Australians don't bother looking or care enough.
For example, with a printer, something along the lines of a microcontroller (running embedded linux) which connects to the print head, print head drive circuits and paper drive circuits. The existing printer is used only toprovide a mechanical chassis.
It might even make financial sense. Buy that entry level printer, which uses similar mechanical components to that high end printer, and end up with an 'open source' solution that exceeds the capabilities of the high end printer but costs less. Alternatively, don't throw out that obsolete printer but reuse the chassis and convert it into a state-of-the-art printer.
This is only gonna prevent some guy at home from making a funny counterfeit bill on his little inkjet to show off to his friends. I know, i've done it before. I'm like hey check out this...Then i tore it in two and they were like "WHY ARE YOU THROWING AWAY A PERFECTLY GOOD DOLLAR BILL?"...When i tossed the 2nd one, they went to grab it..then I told them to look closely. Oh by the way, that isn't illegal either! And neither is scanning a bill in and printing it out, then printing some propaganda on the other side, and leaving it places, so people will pick it up thinking its a real bill. Or making funny alterations (such as the sex dollar bill)...There's reasons to scan in money that don't involve counterfeiting. I know, I've scanned in money before for the above reasons. I would have been very annoyed if the software wouldn't let me scan it in. But know what, that wouldn't have stopped me, I woulda just scanned it into some crappy software then imported it into photoshop or psp.
.01% of all the counterfeiting going on is done on some little inkjet by some guy using photoshop. This isn't going to stop *anything important*. This is just some feel-good measure, and THATS ALL IT IS.
Face it, maybe
Now, the scary thing is, what do you wanna be that these "image recognition" techniques are being patented, marketed, and sold. Imagine not being able to scan in somethign from a magazine or book because it has a code on it marking it as copyrighted. After all, if you were going to scan it in, you were *obviously* going to do something bad, like make an illegal copy! That's where I see this going: sort of a drm thats built into scanners, printers, and image software!
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
The paper bank note is 200 year old technology so why don't I hear ANYTHING about a replacement for the banknote? And while I think that the US has done some interesting things with anti-counterfeiting measures, strong arming corporations like Adobe et al into causing their products not to work as intended is not a real solution, does not directly address the problem and in the end only goes to make for more problems for people like you and me.
This mentality of "kick the people" has gone on for way to long. Are we not capable of outdoing Benjimam Franklin? He is the one who invented paper currency to begin with.
Funny that all he did was put to use the printing press, an invention which has been around since 1440 to make these bank notes with. Sort of ironic that he made the money hmself with a press he owned... whooda thunk that people could counterfeit money with printing presses and printers?!?!? So now that printing capabilities a mere 200 years later are more advanced, do you think it's time we look for new ways to produce paper currency? Or should we just start walking backwards down the path of personal empowerment because the tech has gotten too powerful?
Counterfeiter's Screwed.
I suppose you could still fool the clerks with gold plated tungsten, but hey, you wouldn't have to alter software to protect against conterfeiting.
Side [OT] question - how much do you spend in cash? I am sure I am less than 10%, judging by ATM withdrawls vs my tax filings... [credit cards and checks, then automatic debits, and finally cash is "where it all goes" in my house].
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Their title (my bolding): "Central banks hope free software will put a dent in counterfeiting"
And then they mention Adobe Photoshop and Ulead PhotoImpact. Earth to the Globe?
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Finally, it's just another symptom of the nanny-state mentality that is pervading modern society.
... or how Calvinist Geneva was practically a police state ... or how Sparta was literally a police state ... or how most of Roman history is characterized by subordination of the individual to the state ... for that matter, consider that most of human history is characterized by the institution of slavery.
The nanny-state mentality (nice phrase) isn't peculiar to modern society -- it's common throughout history.
Check out, for example, the history of sumptuary laws
On the balance, the nanny state has been the historical norm; widespread respect for individual initiative is a relatively recent phenomenon.
-kgj
-kgj
You went from a nonexistent university to Howard Community College to Caltech? Looks like your career's on track.
That may be true, but you can make the impact on illegal activity lesser. This will stop dope-smoking rich kids that have nothing better to do than scan in money and print it out again. It will never stop smart criminals that do this for a living. For every master criminal, there will be 5 dope-smoking kids. If you can get rid of them, you've gotten rid of the majority of the problem.
...scanners really will live in vain. Sorry, I couldn't think of anything cleverer.
The article said the software was free. Where can I get a copy of it? Is it free (beer) or free (speech)?
The software is freely distrubed eh? Could someone please pick it up, figure out how it works, so I can make everything I own uncopyable? I've been trying for a while, and the best I've come across so far is this. But even that's not perfect. I want everything I print to be totally uncopyable. Just to see if I can. Oh, perhaps the GIMP people could pick it up, because they are software manufacturers. Or is this one of those things the DMCA won't let us reverse-engineer?
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
If you want your money to be worthless, can't you just move to Mexico?
So, the question is - don't you all think it will come down to point where the Government issues cash cards?
I think it's more likely that government as we know it will fail altogether, and credit card companies will step in to fill the void.
-kgj
-kgj
I dread the day that Winamp refuses to play counterfiet songs...
This message brought to you by Jack Schitt's Previously Shat Shit
How in the dickens can you outlaw free source software? Don't just say they'll pass a law. It hasn't stopped music redistribution, which is widely perceived by lawmakers as having no redeeming value. Post some realistic scenario where they can effectively stop free source software. Include the effects on IBM, Apple, and foreign countries.
Go on. Betcha can't even come close. And remember, details and realism each count for 50% of your grade.
Infuriate left and right
"C'mon, of course the 2006 thirteen-dollar bill features Larry Ellison and Carly Fiorina... Gimmee my stuff man..."
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
All my holiday snaps keep coming out black
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
What is stopping someone from just using Photoshop 7 or an older printer.
I have sacanned a 1 dollar bill into photoshop 7 and printed it on my espon printer (after putting Mr.T's face in the bill) and it looked suprisingly real, and my printer is an old ink jet.
If there is a will, there is a way.
Having anti-counterfit software won't stop it.
You know ... I'm really suprised that people still try to make counterfeit money since the penalties are so stiff, and usually are crappy copies.
I think that a credit/debit cards are the future, and that physical money is on the way out. However, that smacks against my privacy ... since it would be tracable.
The problem is that there is no good ANONYMOUS way to purchase things without currency.
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
I'm as concerned as anyone about the expansion of copyright and all of the negative consequences for society at large.
But anti-counterfeit measures are good, unless you wish to see the destruction of the civil institution that is money. Sure, money has its problems, sometimes even if you have a lot of it. But counterfeiting robs *everyone* who works for a living, and rationally we should be in favor of the strongest protections necessary.
You should be skeptical (OK I'm American) of any questionable measures (don't use the Patriot act to equate counterfeiting with terrorism (unless you think that counterfeiting is a form of terrorism, since it has the effect (but not the aim) of destroying society)), but consider it war in defense of a fundamental pillar of society.
Money doesnt bother me. What bothers me is whats next to be deemed 'untasteful' to manipulate?
eWEEK has a hack for CS. Just import at another size, then restore. Don't have the link, but it's there.
Each bill has a specific pattern of circles on it, usually "hidden" in the background, to mark it as money. That's what Photoshop and the like look for
...unlike that $5 I sent thru the wash too many times...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Anybody using Linux will need to buy an
expensive printer, like the big laser printers
with Ethernet ports and on-board PostScript.
Cheap printers will rely on the driver to
implement the new features. Hardware specs
for using GhostScript will be kept secret
so that you can't print your own money.
Of course that also marks you for the the swappers partner to whack you in the alley...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I don't mind regurgitated news.
Is only one of the reasons Australian Currency was switched to Polymer (ie Plastic) rather than Paper.
These plastic notes are physically colored and include clear sections, as opposed to being blank paper with colors printed on them.
One of the other reasons was the durability of the notes.
Oddly enough, when they first came out many people tried to IRON them to remove the wrinkles (they take hard creases very easily) - evey seen a shrinky-dink after it's been baked?
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
The physical cash which is used to back this card won't exist anymore.
A long time ago, people entrusted their gold and other valuables to the person with the strongest safe in town. They were given a receipt with which they could come back and pick up their belongings.
Fast forward to the early 20th century. The government is in the final stages of moving from a gold based currency to a paper based currency. Unwise investments and borrowing cause a wave of panic, and people bring their paper to the bank and ask for their gold. The banks don't really have all the gold they promised for redemption and they fold.
If something of similar magnitude were to happen, what is the value of a piece of data on plastic when there's no cash reserves and the gold is long gone?
Are this people so stupid? Not only that it was implemeted very poorly since you can do a copy/paste from another adobe product and it will bypass that algorithm, there is a patch available on the net that get rids of that thing. People who brake the law, will still do it, no matter what kind of protection mechanism you will put, especially when it comes to software!
The vendors would hate it. The good part is that nobody asks them, nor should.
Allow perfect scanning, perfect printing, and simply don't allow an exact-scale bill to be printed. All other arguments aside, I don't see how anyone would be hurt by not allowing a bill to be printed within 10% of its true scale. All else being the same, what's wrong with this?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Way to go EU. Impose more regulations on business. No wonder the EU is sliding into 3rd worldom. They'll never get it until it's too late.
Yes, the only people who should be allowed to counterfeit are our politicians, our central banks and large banks, fannie mae and freddie mac, and hedge funds or anything 'big'.
I also think to save money on paper costs, they should shred our constitution and mill it/pulp it/whatever you call it/ into greenbacks. I mean why bother keeping that old thing around?
... so anal, I'll post to say I know I mis-spelled "precisely", by leaving off an "e".
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I for one would like to welcome our currency-checking overlords.
Just kidding.
Seriously, I think this is a good thing on the part of the software companies. Trying to incorporate anti-counterfeiting features is bound to be extemely difficult, but I think it is a socially responsible thing for them to do. I'd be very interested to see companies like Adobe and Xerox create open standards for circumventing counterfeiting and forgery attempts. This is a difficult problem to attack, but it would be a great one to solve.
It's bad because it's a slippery slope to the complete domination of our very beings by evil megacorps and totalitarian government!!!!!!! Don't you see????? Don't you get it???? Our very FREEDOM and LIBERTY are at stake!!!! The same freedom and liberty that our ancestors SPILLED THEIR BLOOD for!!!!
When this story first broke, to create the graphic for our campus television station, we had to revert to an old version of Photoshop; even the online image from the Treasury Dept. was blocked by Photoshop CS. At a low resolution.
Ugh. But the Eurion technology is nifty on its own..
I worked for a check printing company that had many scanners, printers, and film output devices that had been stripped of their anti-counterfieting devices. This was a must have since people were routinely designing watermarks, elaborate borders, and color washes that would set off the criminal circuits and freeze he device.
I actually saw these devices as marketshare protection devices. My company and its handful of competitors were rapidly having the marketshare for high quality printing eaten away by good commercial printers. The marketing department may have made all sorts of blather about "finer attention to detail" and "knowing the banking industry" but the process of MICR printing on 2400dpi presses from Macs using Adobe Illustrator could honestly have been done by anyone willing to follow standards.
But it would have been a bit of a problem if this low-end competition were trying to output a check prototype with a watermark, color wash, and elaborate border that continuously set off their anti-counterfieting software. The high end check and document printing business wasn't a monopoly, but I strongly suspect that these were devices strongly desired by every player in the market to keep the sellers from expanding.
Are these measures the same way? They surely sound motivated by similar private market interests.
You know, I'm thinking that it would be fun to design a T-shirt that would set off these anti-counterfitting features.
Or how about making up protest signs that would set off the anti-counterfitting features? "I'm sorry sir, every time we try to make a print of the protesters trashing MacDonald's, all we get is this black rectangle"
What fun!
The problem is that once these copy protection controls are installed everyone will want to use them. Markus Kuhn of Cambridge University has discovered one of the patterns used for detection of bank notes, known as the EURion Constellation. Sure, it's not that big of a deal when only bank notes have the constellation, but expect to see the constellation start showing up in the darndest places.
Soon everyone and their brother will start printing the Constellation onto whatever they feel needs "copy protection." You'll see it printed on photographs and forms and all kinds of junk. Regular people will have their right to make copies and the ability to use their own equipment usurped by others abusing a mechanism that was only supposed to inconvenience counterfeiters.
There's been a spate of coin forgery in Hong Kong, and it's reached a level where the government is replacing those easy-to-forge coins with higher-tech paper bills.
The funny thing is, the coin was designed to be difficult to counterfeit. It consists of a silver ring around a golden center.
And the payoff? HK$10 = US$1.30. I really wonder how the hell the counterfeiters are making money. They seem to be mostly passing them off to tollbooths and occasionally exchanging them en masse at banks.
damn...pity I can't use my mod points on this post...thank you for the enlightenment :)
If we make special printers and special versions of Adobe Photoshop, won't criminals use something else?
.... this is just another 'fence' to keep *honest* people out!
What NEW feature is going to help them counterfit more easily?
I mean, there is already enough pirated software going around... Why should the counterfitters even bother upgrade?
Besides, there is already _plenty_ of support behind open-source projects like GIMP.
Open-source software can always be 'unpatched' of any bill detection / DRM type stuff...
I mean really
The answer to gun control IS NOT to make every gun in the world a BB gun. Likewise, the answer to preventing counterfitting is not by modifying old tools....
Remember the extreme anti-piracy measures of software in the late 80s/ early 90s? Were there not tools circulating that disabled most of the copy-protection schemes?
How will someone with a debugger not make the same kind of tool to combat these CS versions of graphics software?
Sheesh!
Simple process, photograph the bill, do your color separations in an older version of photoshop, etc; then burn plates from the color seperated negatives. Better yet, bypass photoshop completely and take several photographs of the bill using different filters over the lens to directly produce your color seperated negatives.
The fact of the matter is that the "big boys" in counterfeiting are NOT using a $50.00 scanner and a $19.99 inkjet printer.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
People have a right to use software that does not impose arbitrary restrictions upon them. When Adobe has a virtual monopoly on the image editing market (because their software is really freakin' good), it is in their best interest not to alter the software in such a way that pisses off their customers.
Both Adobe and the Government need to learn a lesson from the recording industry: don't alienate the consumers by adding "features" that restrict their personal rights. Uncle Sam does not need to get involved in this process; what he should do instead is invest more energy into training cashiers pens that change color on fake money, and train cashiers better on how to spot fakes.
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
Or shut the fuck up and get your own damn mod points.
I recently attended a day-long seminar (actually marketing session) for Adobe's new Video Collection software--Premiere Pro, Photoshop CS, etc., and I enjoyed what the rep called "Adobe Magic." So is that what the feature that keeps me from legally manipulating money images is called?
Gold. It worked before, why not now?
Modify the coins to an exact size so the volume is known, and weigh them. Then check conductivity. Easy to implement, even automate, and very hard to counterfit. Except with gold of course, but then who cares?
Point noted. But counterfiting does need to be stopped. Just imagine if all the money you worked hard for was suddenly "suspect". The only economy we could trust would be one based on barter. Of course we all know why barter was abandoned. No more TV's to lust after. No more CD's to swipe. The crimminal is shortsightedness incarnate.
The paper bank note is 200 year old technology so why don't I hear ANYTHING about a replacement for the banknote?
Banknotes made out of polymer were trialled in Australia in 1988, and all paper banknotes in Australia were replaced over a five-year period starting in 1992. (Yes, Australia has plastic money.) The use of polymer makes possible security features such as transparent areas on the note - just try printing a transparent area on a piece of paper.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
"Maybe this is just another sign that cash is an inferior medium, and there needs be a better alternative?"
Barter. Kind of hard to fake a cow.
Anyway gold would work best. How do you fake that?
I've seen images of currency that contains the key pattern of five 1mm circles, but does anyone have a pure image of the trigger pattern, for general use in protecting documents?
"What bothers me is whats next to be deemed 'untasteful' to manipulate?"
Now you know why there's no longer a Goatse.cx website.
I always go to town with my boy Ben Franklin
Spend four get an ounce of dank then
Rich nigga gettin high and relaxin'
Bust a Ben Frank and some Andrew Jacksons
Five twenties for a hundred dollar bill
You know the math, let's make a deal
On a one dollar bill if you look on the front
You'll find the face of George Washington
Make money baby that's all I do
That's how I know Thomas Jefferson is on tha two
Abraham Lincoln got shot and died
Freed tha slaves so they put him on tha five
And Hamilton my old time friend
They put his face on the front of tha ten
These are tha dead presidents
From the hood and they represent
The American dream to the average minority
Spend money get some weed and a 40
-- Too $hort, "Money in the Ghetto"
"Oddly enough, when they first came out many people tried to IRON them to remove the wrinkles (they take hard creases very easily) - evey seen a shrinky- dink after it's been baked?"
Talk about a "shrinking" economy. How durable is this plastic money? Even credit cards can have a hard life (new card already has scratch marks on it).
(Well ... I guess this already is the check for the religions that worship money :-)
Any computer that is connected can be analyzed
How exactly will this happen? Will this require every computer with a net connection to allow certain outside agents to read their every file? What business would allow this? They might be willing to allow their executables to be scanned, but not their data. Credit cards, subscription lists, the privacy implications are horrendous and would never pass muster. And anyone who thinks it is impossible to hide executables among the data obviously is a bureaucrat, and a dumb one at that.
As for hardware manufacturers, they don't produce a lot of hardware drivers right now.
You'll have to get a bit more realistic and detailed than that to get a passing grade.
Infuriate left and right
All money is worthless. The Mexicans just realize it more.
As "end targets" of the process, they transform data into false money. Not much can be done further. Cutting, macerating to make them look old, or whatever you plan to do with fake money. And if they don't look like real, you can safely print them and assume they are not real.
But what about scanners and editing software? Bullshit. I scan in $1 to paste my face in and morph it to pink. How illegal is that? I want to include a pile of bills in a clipart I create. I want to create textures for a game I write. I can't, because the data - before being processed - is considered "intended for illegal use". That's complete bullshit. Scanners and image processing software are no place for anti-counterfeiting measures.
It's like I approach a military base and put a film in my camera. I get arrested for taking photos of military objects, even though I didn't even aim my camera at them, and never intended to.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
No, totally wrong. The Eurion Constellation detection works equally well no matter how rotated. Do you think they're idiots? The detection is based on distance between circles.
Anyhow, I don't think Photoshop uses Eurion, but rather an image of the Treasury seal. I don't know if that's rotation-resistant, but if it's not they're idiots!
...and then there was this girl. I thought we had a nice relationship going, but then she dumped me.
When I asked her what went wrong, she shrugged and said: "... That's life." To that I replied: "No, that's you."
It could be, or not. If the open source program respects the flag, the vast majority of people won't modify and recompile it. Look at xpdf, which respects the anti-copying flags of Adobe. If it's illegal to distribute the "hacked" version, a vanishingly small percentage of users will have it.
So it could be used as an argument against open source, but it's a disingenuous argument. A few people might hack their TV app, just like a few people might rip out their catalytic converter to get more performance.
I notice that Adobe has not claimed that xpdf violates the DMCA. You can modify xpdf into a circumvention device, but it isn't a circumvention device as shipped.
Yeah well we dont want all these 'Open Source' terrorists with their 'GIMP' (a very dangerous counterfeiting tool) and their 'GCC' (a 'C' compiler with no DRM restrictions) and their MPlayer (a pirate media player also with no DRM). Don't forget their modified drivers for printers, scanners and digital cameras that allows people to copy money!
Btw did any of these fuckwit DRM mandating freaks think about how they are possibly going to make this work with currency accross the world and how it will work when a country needs to change a note for whatever reason??
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
The fact of the matter is that the "big boys" in counterfeiting are NOT using a $50.00 scanner and a $19.99 inkjet printer.
... much like the RIAA's current problems dealing with many ordinary people with networked computers.
Perhaps the problem they are facing is that a few big boys are being joined by lots of little boys?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
If legal copies of Photoshop don't work, criminals will only have pirated copies. Wow, big cultural shift there. Think of the awesome deterrent power of that law. Think of all those would-be counterfeiters who will say, "I'll steal from people I don't know, but I would never steal from Adobe."
I often think that only skilled programmers should be allowed to make laws. Those who are making laws now are so illogical that they would never have run-time bugs because they would never get anything to compile.
If you spend several years writing complex programs and debugging them, you develop respect for your own imperfect logic, and for the need to check your work, 90 or 900 times if needed. You develop respect for logic itself, and for the operation of your brain.
Many people become lawmakers because they are somewhat popular, and got elected, only that. For some of them, if clicking on File/Save causes the program to exit, that's okay. It's better not to spend too much time thinking.
If we had a currency based in Gold the government wouldn't be able to counterfeit and neither would anyone else. In the early days of the United States, gold was legal tender, and anyone with gold bars could go into a U.S mint and have their gold bars turned into U.S gold eagle coins.
Society isn't a computer and the legal system isn't a program.
The Mac version of Adobe Photoshop CS doesn't seem to include the anti-counterfeit system, I just scanned a $1 bill (the only american currency I have, I'm in the UK) at 1200DPI with a Canon D646U scanner, and it opened with no problems in Photoshop CS. I tried with various UK notes as well and they all opened fine. Yet another reason Apple should be advertising to the criminal/organised crime market ;)
The wind blew so cold
The fan won't turn any more
Files die in the heat
How about getting rid of cash and checks in the first place and simply rely on electronic money?
I for one am sick and tired of carrying cash and coins in particular. That's why I mainly use my debet/credit card and tend to avoid places that accept only cash.
Checks are even worse. Where I grew up the checks went out of circulation in the 1980s and I personally find them extremely cumbersome and confusing way of transfering money.
The owls are not what they seem
If you are a hobbiest that does this sort of thing, ( making paper is a hobby for many ) the paper is not that hard to reproduce.. ( even the so called 'protections' like the fibers and nylon strip )
The printing process is pretty basic too.
I'm sure the ink isnt either in reality, if you are an amature printer.
Besides, all you have to fool is 16 year old clerk at the corner drug store.. once its out of your hands, you dont care how far it goes...
This has nothing to do with money security, its all about content control by the government. Next, the restrictions will cross into copyrights for books, ( gotta proect them too, right? ) then into restricting 'unapproved' information...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ages ago central banks established themselves as the only legal entity that can print money at its will and loan it at interest to governments and other groups (as late as 1917 in the U.S. with the passing of Federal reserve act, which was actually the third independent central bank in the U.S). It is no big secret, that about forty percent of the astonishingly big national debt U.S. owns to its own central bank!
I find it disgusting that these measures are being taken as to make it absolutely sure that it's not possible the poor slob could print some quality enough bills to pass as cash at local shop when at the same time the local central bank has printing machines making the independent bankers a fortune in interests at nations and ultimately people's cost.
A question for slashdotters: Why are the central banks independent of the nations governments?
Admitidly it wouln't be to hard to include the extra features into scanners etc, since all EU bank notes have as pointed out elsewhere a easilly recongisable pattern of circles on them, but it would probably add 10% to the price of all scanners/etc, so it's not something that can be written off that easilly.
But then in england weve got the classical special paper and special inks, then metal strip woven though the paper, (hits the surface and goes back under), the watermark and these days, a hologram on every single one.
Apart from idiot checkout attendants, I can't see anything this law would protect, but it would damage the budget scanner/printer/photo market.
And well the US is a strange place, they could just say in 10 years time all dolar bills issued before x with the old design will no longer be common tender and can be refused by people, though banks will exchange them for new bills, and then include a large ammount of lovely security features on new bills. People entering the country with old bills can have them replaced with new ones after close examination, etc.
Something tells me that fighting MS, or SCO, or even John Ashcroft is nothing compared to the dark, scary menace of some committee made up of the top 27 central banks in the world. Aren't they better known as "the Illuminati"?
Simply add this Eurion Constellation mark to all your pictures, documents, etc.. Programs incorporating a mechanism that prevents you from altering such pictures will simply become unusable up to the point nobody wants to use them anymore or the protection is removed.
...maybe the counterfeiters will add CMYK support into the Gimp?
That RulesForUse site's very informative:
[INLINE] [INLINE]
[1][LINK] [2][LINK] [3][LINK] [4][LINK] [5][LINK] [6][LINK] [7][LINK]
[8][LINK]
[INLINE]
and then a menu of links to other countries - in case you're wondering, the text of the page is in the last [INLINE]...
The new Chilean 100 peso coin is exactly the same size, shape, colours and weifght of the 1 Euro coin. They work well in vending machines.
1 Euro is around 800 Chilean pesos, so you get an 8 for 1 deal on your Euro.
I believe that Chile is actually under pressure from europe to change the coin.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Or just come to the U.S. state of Minnesota and use Canadian coins. I'm shocked by how often I'm handed nearly worthless non-US coinage (although the value of the U.S. dollar by comparison has been sliding dramatically for quite a while now, so eventually it may not be such a big deal).
I do not have a signature
UNLESS it's counterfeit.
It's "invisible ink", and it doens't turn black unless it's not the correct kind of paper (ie, counterfeit currency).
I think the main problem is that there already is a monopoly on producing counterfeit money -- the Central Banks don't like the competition. They have a monopoly on creating money out of thin air.
I am disappointed with the slashdot crowd. I was hoping someone would raise this issue and it would be seriously discussed.. but you techno-geeks apparently don't know how our fractional reserve banking system works, and how much room for abuse there is in a system whereby the US government can authorize the unlimited printing of money based solely on its own will to have it created.
The real counterfitters that are devaluing our money are the ones sitting in Washington and in the 12 Federal 'Reserve' banks.
It conceivably could have been dithering, but if so, it was the wackiest, most-inconsistent dithering I've ever seen. It was not in any way regular in the way dithering would be, and I was trying to restrict the image to 4-5 colors that were definitely in the pallette and it was adding *new* slightly different colors.
--LP
The anti-counterfeit measures should be in the money itself, not in third party tools.
Crippling the tools is annoying for legitimate users and a waste of time, since un-crippled tools will always be available to those intent on breaking the law.
What's next? A mandatory chip installed in every car so you can't park in front of a bank with the engine running?
There is a crack
There is a crack in everything
That's where the light gets is.
By Leonard Cohen, who is not a hacker, but a poet - still even he knows, that there is a crack...
I post my older version of Photoshop and older inkjet printer on eBay? I'm sure it will be pretty valuable once all the other products are crippled.
The bills don't even have to be perfect. You can even use a carat to change the phrase "This note is legal tender" to "This note is ^not legal tender" and the phrase "Federal Reserve Bank" to "Federal Express Banc" and the phrase "United States of America" to "Untied States of Vespucia".
You could put a portrait of "George Bush" or even "Alfred E. Newman" on the bill and/or change the denomination to $3.14, you could change the Secretary of the Treasury's signature to 'Pee Wee Herman'.
Then you would have a bill that could be fired out of the back of your getaway van in a crowded place to distract the mobs of people into picking up bills blocking the way of the persuing police. Or just drop them on the trading floor of the NYSE...
Eat at Joe's.
I got an idea, instead of patching software, how about patching the brains of some of these $4/hr rectums working at Best Buy and Home Depot to not be so blind and gullible when they're given cash. Teaching them to count wouldn't hurt either.
Help, I am Astronomy research assistant about to submit a paper for publication. We're trying to add some high-resolution telescope images of a distant galaxy, but the software refuses to open the images unless we crop out certain constellations. Can anyone help?
Is there a blacklist of hardware and software somewhere. I don't have any interest in counterfeit currency, but I *DO* have an interest in hardware and software that decide they know better than I do what the law is. The producers of such garbage must be held accountable in the only place possible--the store.
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
High rez PDFs of Monopoly money from Hasbro.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
What if you want to print your own money (i.e.i, not copies of other money)? Many organizations and artists do this, using patterns found in typical national currencies. Would anti-counterfeiting software interfere with this totally legal activity?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The biggest counterfeiters in the world are the Central Banks, printing fiat paper currency. They've robbed more people of more money through inflation than all the criminal counterfeiters put together. A 3% inflation rate devalues currency by 50% every 14 years.
You can't counterfeit GOLD.
Have a link to the torrent.
This patch will remove all banknote limitations in Photoshop CS.
Counterfeiting is like any other business, looking at costs vs reward.
Probably the best deterrant against couterfeiting is when currency is worth less than the materials/processes used. Then the decision reduces to either that the state loses money through making money or loses value through counterfeiting.
This is applicable when the couterfeiter cannot skip multiple steps as when US $1 bills are made to look like $100 bills. In such cases, making each denomination unique is key. Unfortunately, this is impractical to alter in short order.
This is not my sig.
Smartass
:-)
I'd mod you up if making that earlier post didn't prevent it
Any moders care to explain why this was modded troll??
He was being rather friendly about it from my interpretation.
Good point. But... One of the grade school kids will download a hacked version of Photoshop and install it on a compromised school computer. Several of them will make 30 or 40 copies of a one-dollar bill and hand them out to other kids. So, it does make it harder, but maybe it will just encourage them to be more efficient.
I notice that none of your examples of historical nanny-states occurred in the USA.
... a pillar of the young Republic, at least in the Southern states.
I did cite the institution of slavery
But I didn't mean to exlude the United States -- I picked other examples in order to demonstrate the long history and broad cultural sweep of nanny-statism.
It's true that the colonies, and the young America, were less nanny-state oriented than, say, the European mother countries of the time. Such is the nature of frontier survival -- on the frontier, the nanny-state provides military power, but pioneers must necessarily rely on their own resources.
With the industrial revolution, the Nation-State -- and its heir apparent, the Corporation -- assumed greater and greater powers, at the expense of individual initiative. Certainly the Civil War proved that the Federal government is greater than the individual state governments; while the mandatory and unpopular draft proved that Uncle Sam is greater than any one of his sons.
-kgj
-kgj
Central banks hope free software will put a dent in counterfeiting
Oh, really? Actually I hope that free software will do just the opposite and help keep professional counterfeiting within the reach of amateurs. We must not give "free" the same meaning, though...
Seriously, in light of the recent news I have made a decision not to buy any hardware/software with these user-limiting features. That includes xeroxes, printers and scanners, as well as image editing software. I am not a counterfeiter, nor am I likely to become one. I understand perfectly well that counterfeiting harms ordinary people, including myself. But I also do realise that the economic effect of counterfeiting is miniscule compared with other factors, like stupidity and corruptness of our political leaders (not that I would be voluntarily led anywhere by those scumbags), and that the loss of our freedom is much greater anyway.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Fortunately, we still can order high-resolution scans from online photobanks. :)
http://www.fotosearch.com/PHD431/96011/
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Please report for termination.
Reason:
Thinkcrime 197: your post contained words advocating terrorism.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Exactly right -- with onerous government intrusion like this (how about reporting to a central government server that person X at IP address Y is trying to counterfeit currency Z?), everyone will just switch to open source, where they know what they're getting -- legal or not.
Next step: Open source hardware. Printers, scanners, etc., that are user-buildable and -alterable. May become a reality on the ground soon if "3-D printers" proliferate.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Much less pleasant than a copy-block, because there are no obvious signs of it going on.
Nice idea - but $100 referral fee? Sheesh - that is one of the most expensive pyramid schemes I've ever been pitched.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
And you clearly aren't an EUian citizen, otherwise you would recognize that law an order politicians are far mor popular there than in the US.
The Netherlands has just announced they are going to deport 26,000 foreigners. We have nothing like Jean-Pierre Le Pen in the US, despite his receiving 25% of the vote in the last election. Then there is Alessandra Mussolini who recently resigned from the Alleanza Nazionale party because the party leader and deputy prime minister described fascism as "evil". There are NO serious Nationalist parties in the United States, and certainly none that proclaim their affinity for fascism. There are serious anti-democratic authoritarian political parties in every country in europe, and they are receive sizable support of the population. Many of these parties even have paramilitary organizations (such as Le Pen's Front National).
I think that your familiarity with Europe is in fact quite limited, and you exhibit the fantastic ignorance typical of modern liberalism. You were indoctrinated by your insane professors and taught to believe the United States is evil and Europe is a paradise of progressive thought.
The reality is far different. Democracy, egalitarianism, and everything Enlightenment liberalism stands for is being challenged all over Europe, often with rising success. This isn't true in countries like Germany where questioning any of the aforementioned law is a serious crime.
Also, only self loathing Americans use the term "USian".
I don't read or respond to AC posts