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EFF Requests Help to Identify "Evil" Printers
jason writes "In preparation for a possible legal challenge, The Electronic Frontiers Foundation is requesting your help in identifying which printers are embedding traceable information in the documents they produce. Printer manufactures added this technology under persuasion from the government inorder to help combat counterfeiting operations, however this technology defeats the presumed anonymity most people expect from the documents they print."
I think my Epson 1280 does.
If I print anything, even one line of text from notepad, it will print the text, advance the sheet of paper most of the way, print something else you can't really see, then spit out the paper.
I think this is a good test. If you are printing only to the top of the page, and then it appears to spend time printing where you had no text, you've got one of these...
-Joejoejoejoe
Silly Rabbit: tricks are for kids.
Err no, they ask for "you to print and send us test sheets from your color laser printer and/or a color laser printer at your local print shop."
Not to figure out how to disable it.
The dots' minuscule size, covering less than one-thousandth of the page, along with their color combination of yellow on white, makes them invisible to the naked eye, Crean says. One way to determine if your color laser is applying this tracking process is to shine a blue LED light--say, from a keychain laser flashlight--on your page and use a magnifier.
I am billdar, and I approve this message.
What makes you think a driver can't call home and register your IP Address to the printer serial number? OR - maybe you sent in a mail in rebate for the printer? Just because you're paranoid don't mean they're not after you.
I work for a large printer/copier manufacturer in the technical services area (IT related) and can confirm we've been doing this for MANY years in our colour products.
We refer to the technology as "micro dots". Each dot can uniquely identify the device by it's serial number (which is not only printed on a label but also hardcoded in to the machine).
I also happen to live in Australia, where it'd be a cold day in hell before we told anyone who didn't have a court order the serial number of a printer that produced a page or who we sold it to.
The dots are MUCH smaller than 1mm as suggested here, however I can confirm that yellow toner is used. If you have a good magnifying glass (at least 8 times) and a sharp eye you can spot them, but it's really not easy.
Additionally, our machines all have anti-counterfeit technology anyway. If you try to print or copy a banknote from any major world currency, all you'll get is a black square and possibly an error code being displayed on the panel.
In the entire time I've worked for this company, we've never once had to do a micro dot check for the police/government/whatever - I'd know because there's only about 3 or 4 of us in the company that have the knowhow to do it and they all work in my department. (no, the govt doesn't know how to do it themselves and even if they did, they'd still need to ask us where that serial number is now).
I've deliberately avoided mentioning my employers name in this post. I'm pretty sure I haven't broken any confidentiality agreements with this post (all I'm doing is confirming, not supplying new info) but you can't be too careful. Suffice to say, I don't think it matters which major manufacturer, I'd bet my bottom dollar we all do it.
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Yes, the "evil" bit. Something along the lines of RFC 3514.
Actually there was a serial killer here locally (who received no press, because he only kidnapped, tortured and killed black women, but thats a different topic). Anyway he was finally caught because he mailed the local newspaper a map of where one of the bodies was buried. The police could tell by the map that it was printed from Microsoft's map site (whatever it's called) and MS kept logs of everything, and were able to narrow it down to that exact map and get his IP address, which lead to his ISP and eventually his arrest (he killed himself in jail the next day).
So, sometimes they DO want to know who printed that map to Boston!
It's not true that the EFF "only cares about the US", although its true the core of our expertise is in that country. We now have three people working on international issues. Cory Doctorow works in Europe; Gwen Hinze, an Australian, works on WIPO and free trade agreement issues. Ren Bucholz has just moved up to Canada and will shortly be taking on the job of policies in the Americas.
And EF Canada *is* still around.
How much more security can this country -- this nation conceived in anonymity -- survive?
The Federalist Papers were printed to pursuade states to ratify the Constitution, after it was already written.
The Constitution itself was not written anonymously, everyone knew who wrote it and who was at the convention.
The same goes for The Declaration of Independence.
The country was not conceived in anonymity, but it did manage to ratify its constitution by anonymously convincing some people to vote for it.
What?
Easy counter measure: When you print out your great govt conspiracy expose, take the set to the Office Max where you bought the tagging-printer and photo-copy the document.
Retail photocopiers wont catch the yellow-on-white and the small size of the dot because their resolution is too crappy. The copier does the work of getting rid of your tracks.
Now burn the originals and leak anonymously!! Woohoo.
The only PT Boat Journal on the web: http://www.PT171.org
So, yes, we would likely still have a constitution if Hamilton et al. could not publish under an alias.
1972, actually. Last time I checked, Greenpeace was non-violent and always has been.
Of course, if you consider civil disobedience to be "criminal eco-terrorism", then I might see where you're coming from.
The original post misstated the size. They are much smaller than 1mm.
No sig for you! Come back, one year!
Sure, the serial number is printed at the hardware level as a partially-filled array of yellow dots:
X_XXX__XX_X_X_X <-- printer "A"'s a binary bit pattern of Xs that gives a serial number of 23765 decimal
X_XXX_X__XXXX_X <-- printer "B"'s a binary bit pattern of Xs gives a serial number of 23869 decimal
I'm suggesting at the software level (in a driver) we direct the printer to fill the whole array. This will make the serial number unreadable, by giving all printers using the driver a completely filled and indistinguishable array:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX <-- Printer "A"'s pattern with the driver filling in all the dots now gives a fake serial number of 32767
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX <-- Printer "B"'s pattern with the driver filling in all the dots also gives the same fake serial number of 32767
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Probably less than 1mm, and you wouldn't probably notice it.
The Lexmark Optra N I'd used for several years at work turned out to be one of these. VERY faint yellow dots on the white parts of the border (I didn't test it on anything full-bleed though, so no idea what it would look like under those circumstances).
I'd used that printer for light-to-moderate graphics work for a long time, and never noticed. Heck, I barely noticed when I knew what to look for, but it was most certainly there.
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
1972, actually. Last time I checked, Greenpeace was non-violent and always has been.
Yeah, you're right. Raming one boat into another isn't violent, even when said boat is competing in the America's cup race. Breaking and entering into the control room at a Nuclear plant isn't either. Paying millions to the ELF (definately not a non-violent organization) is OK. So is trespass, destruction of property, forcibly boarding a cargo ship in flordia, etc.
I could go on... really I could
BBH
Only if the loss of privacy is one-way.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
It seems one would be able to expose a lot of these printers by replacing (or contaminating) the yellow ink with black.
Just try a sheet of black, glossy paper (magazine ads are good source). Toner ink has a matte texture, and is slightly opaque - when you hold your printed sheet so that light reflects off it, you'll easily see a dot pattern.
Oh, and make sure your test printout is pretty light, or you'll gum up the printer (toner doesn't fuse well to gloss surfaces)
This is totally offtopic, but I can't sit and be quiet.
Do you consider it terrorism to be responsible for the deaths of thousands of people? Because Greenpeace convinced the leader of Zimbabwe that genetically modified foods cause horrible diseases in their efforts to make all genetically modified food labeled.
Yeah, they're conservative sources, it's all I could find at short notice.
I don't care either way on the issue, and they might have a point about labeling GM foods - I haven't done the research. But it doesn't mean dick to starving Africans if the food is genetically modified or not. And that can certainly be considered terrorism.
Not as much as PETA, of course...
RTFA, the one at the EFF. They have lists of printers they've tested; almost all colour lasers have been found to have these dots. They have blown up images of patterns, which are spread all over the sheet. What they're trying to do is work out what these encode, so they're asking for test printouts along with printer data.