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."
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.
This is a nice smoke screen to get people to accept gov't mandated tech. After this kind of thing gets through, the next thing will mandated DRM. Old equipment will be banned fron the 'net. "Upgrade" now or go to jail.
What?
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.
"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.
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.
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)
"Constantly checking for counterfeits steals processing power that I should be able to use for things I want my PC to do."
Especially if they 'enhance' the current method.
As I understand it, there is a pattern of circles on the currency, and the software checks for this.
If the bill is scanned or printed slightly offset from straight up and down (I've heard that just 1 degree can do the trick) then the pattern matching doesn't work and the bill is scanned/printed.
For them to fix this, they would need to check each increment of rotation for those circles.
I can see that taking quite some time...
(Better luck next time, guys!)
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
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.
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