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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.
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.
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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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.
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
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.