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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."
From TFA:
The millimeter-sized dots appear about every inch on a page, nestled within the printed words and margins.
Can anyone produce a human-readable example of this?
Perhaps it's time to unfold my tinfoil hat and use it to cover my printouts instead.
Bang Logic - Serious Small Business Services
I wonder if the government will be using these printers themselves, they have more to hide than anyone else. Now when a confidential document is leaked it can be more easily tied to a government official.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
(I got it first!!!)
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
This explains all of the random pin-misfires I'm having on my dot-matrix printer! Thank God that it's just my government protecting me from terrorists^H^H^H counterfeiters.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
My old Epson LX: printouts are so atrocious you just know they come from an LX: they embed the printer model in the form of smears and distortion in the text.
Then again, I just use it to print listings, it's not exactly photo-quality...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Finding Evil Printers should be easy. Just test for the Evil Bit.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The print heads rotate 360 degrees while ejecting green ink at great force and saying, "your mother svcks cocks in hell".
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
EFF deserves a bit of respect for this. They're trying to let everyone else know what companies are doing behind their little white walls to lock you down. Personally, I'm going to make a donation right now to EFF. They need some big-time exposure to change the normal cow-like brainless mob of AOL users into intelligent thinkers.
Send your current model color laser printer to me. I'll even send you a 7 year old inkjet that I currently use as a footrest.
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.
How exactly is this supposed to work? I buy a printer with cash from Office Max, take it home, and print some phony money. The money is reported to the secret service, which takes it to the printer manufacturer, which tells them that the printer was shipped to an Office Max in my town.
Assume I had the common sense to only use the printer for counterfeiting. What exactly do they do now? Get a warrant for every house within 50 miles of said Office Max, and check the serial number on all the printers?
And here I was thinking all along that it was just a crappy printer that messed up every inch or so.
Maybe I could add a few more of mine in Photoshop just to make things more interesting.
Better that than suggesting that Xerox (and Canon and HP) should be shot for caving into foreign governments who use this to suppress free speech, all the while not telling us that they're doing it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
What kind of evil are we talking about here? The kind where replacement cartridges cost more than the printer itself? Or drivers that are fully supported under Windows but Linux requires black magic to work? Or that cables are not included?
It's nice to see the EFF trying to stamp out the evil printers. But there's a lot of work to be done.
It reminds me of the old joke (or was it true?):
Some amateur counterfeiter was driving around the Appalachians to find some hillbillies to swindle. He found a couple of dumb-looking guys sitting on their front porch, stopped the car and said, waving a freshly printed note: "any of you guys have change for a $18 bill?". One of the guys reach in his pocket and says: "sure, d'ya want 2 nines or 3 sixes?"
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Somebody ask
- Alexander Hamilton (later the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, the same Treasury that Lorelei Pagano now works for),
- James Madison (later fourth President of The United States), or
- John Jay (later first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court)
why they published the Federalist Papers anonymously under the name "Publius".Ask them if they'd have been able to write the these brilliant arguments that shaped the Constitution of the United States of America if the very paper they'd printed it on could have been used to strip then of their anonymity?
Could they have made their arguments as forcefully, would they have allowed their ideas to have been so revolutionary, if they had known any political opponent could trace those papers back to them, perhaps deny them jobs or political offices because of disagreement with their ideas?
Would we even have the Constitution that we have today if these great men had not been able to use the pen-name "Publius"?
Hamilton and Madison and Jay forged (ahem) our Constitution in anonymity, but counterfeiting specialist Lorelei Pagano tells us that those three silly boys didn't need their anonymity? That in order to be safe from counterfeiters, we have to give up our right to anonymous politically agitation?
How much more security can this country -- this nation conceived in anonymity -- survive?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
This administration is neither the first nor the last one to use law enforcement officers to harrass the opposition. Practical freedom of the press is undermined when it is too hard to write anonymously.
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't make it any less true.
You want to stop counterfitters? Design real money, instead of the single-colour, same sized bills that they keep making. Take the mom-and-pop operations out of the picture, then work on the foreign governments, and organized criminals.
Back during the Cold War, anyone who owned a typewriter was required to submit a typing sample to the government. The idea was to create a database so to assist in tracking any given document to a specific typewriter.
The US Government has removed the ambiguity from this process, and made it far easier to definitely tie a document to a printer.
Well, except for the fact that I'm sure the government has a couple printers lying around that can add whatever serial number and printer model they want.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
How do "most people expect anonymity from the documents they print?"
Printed pages are NEVER anonymous. Apart from fingerprints, DNA traces, ink and paper matching, how many people print stuff that they pass out anonymously? Most letters have a sender, books and other prints have a copyright note. And once you distribute any printed materials, others can trace it back.
If you go to the trouble to buy the printed at Best Buy at a best buy 500 miles from your home with cash that you got from a bank while wearing a full body condom and face mask, don't transport it in your car, and keep it in a clean room at an anonymous location, I agree that you probably expect privacy. But at that point, you have probably been arrested as a weirdo somewhere along the way.
If it's behind the laser window, you're screwed. Optics are touchy to a level that can only be described as premenstrual.
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.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
It's prints "Page 1" at the bottom, dumb ass.
The EFF is concerned about this technology because they've read their history books. And because some people who participated in writing the history books... had to be very careful about what they printed those books on. And because the systems of government used in the Warsaw Pact countries from 1917-1991 was - to many people, myself included - "evil".
I posted this a few months ago, the last time the topic came up. This is not just about counterfeiting. (And as a guy who likes money, I hate counterfeiters with a passion almost equalled to my hatred of spammers, which is pretty freakin' intense.)
In Soviet Romania [google.com], a sample page from every typewriter had to be registered with the police, so that any samizdat produced could be quickly traced back to the typewriter's owner. Use your imagination as to what happened to the owner, or Google for it.
In Soviet Russia [geocities.com], all photocopiers were registered with the KGB and kept in secure rooms, to which physical access was restricted.
The West is probably still playing catch-up.
Do this, and the EFF will have a larger, more diverse database of printer identifications than any manufacturer. And just where's their Privacy Policy on this?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I wonder if they used their karma bonus though?
Personally I'm guessing they did it so the British or anyone else didn't mod them '-1 DEAD!'
I think many of you are missing the point here. This is NOT to be able to take a document and track it back to a specific printer, but rather to irrefutably link the document and the printer.
"They" will never find a counterfeit document and then look for the printer, they will find the printer and then link the documents printed as corroborating evidence. This will be used once a suspect is available and a with a search warrant present and the printer seized, now with the micro-dot encoded serial number they can prove that Document A was definitely printed on Xerox Model X3Y Serial number: sdf78s6d5sdf46s4df98 which resides in the office a Mr. John Q. Public. at 321 Main St. Spingfield, MA; this removes plausibly deniability from the case. No more will a printed document carry any form of anonymity, there will be no reasonable doubt if this is called into evidence at a trial, do you REALLY want an almost iron-clad evidence of every document printed to be available?
A time for Yes Minister quotage i think:
Sir Humphrey: "Bernard, the Official Secrets Act was not put in place to protect the secrets, it's there to protect the officials."
And
Sir Humphrey: "In the spirit of "Open Government", one should always make public anything that can easily be discovered by some other way."
I understand the marking is done with yellow ink. It seems one would be able to expose a lot of these printers by replacing (or contaminating) the yellow ink with black.
Dude, I think you got lost on that last inter-dimensional jump. This is the dimension where the earth is round, the sky is blue and Greenpeace is a charity that saves Whales & Dolphins. I think you want the one where they blew up the twin towers and Al Quaeda run a Gorilla sanctuary. I think it's the third on the left.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
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
The only time when I can see this being useful to the Government is if I'm doing something wrong. You know, harassing my ex, threatening the President, and that junk.
So, in your view, privacy is unimportant unless you have something to hide? In that same vein, if you want privacy, are you automatically a criminal?
Let's say the government wants to put a chip in your car that tracks your movements ("to fight terrrorism"), Do you have anything to hide then? Perhaps you're going to terrorist school... shouldn't the cops know about that? Why not place the chip directly in your arm just to be safe? Why not, then have everyone get permission from the government to move around the country? If they have nothing to hide, why should it be trouble to ask for permission? Why should people protest the actions of the government if they love their country? Perhaps they are criminals too.
The invasion of privacy is something we must always fight, because it's a slippery slope, and we will never get back what we once had. The loss of privacy means the death of democracy.
...ok, so the EFF wants eight PDFs printed on my printer. Fine.
When opening the PDFs, I find that they are made to be printed on a sheet of paper roughly 71 by 92 inches in size...?
What kind of printer do they think I have, anyway?
(and when scaling down to about 11% of original size, the detail of the original document was partly lost in printout... Somebody there obviously hasn't tested these PDFs...)
I know this is old news which I didn't pay much attention to until I got an inexpensive laser printer 2 weeks ago. Does anyone know if the "tracking dots" are also printed on B&W laser printers? I have the Samsung ML-1740 buy.com had for $30 after rebates, I think it's up to 50 after rebated, but it's still a good deal. I remember over hearing the evening news covering this a few weeks ago, yes the common folks news has mentioned this.
Used to convict, used to prove innocents?
these dots could be used to discredit someone claiming to have incriminating documents from you, but only if all the papers they have from you but the documents in question match pages you know are from your printer. Then the counter arguement of you know docs can be traced back to printers and you printer that one somewhere else.
It would be nice if printers that did this were clearly labeled as doing so and the manual contained instructions for the end user to find and verify them.
If someone gave me an old document they claim I gave to them, I'd like to be able to confirm that it was from me. In the unlikely event someone claimed to have a document from you, you could confirm it was from you or at least your printer. Just's just as easy to fake email headers as it is to put someone else's name in the from part of a letter and hit print.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Each dot can uniquely identify the device by it's serial number
I can see the extra dot added, between the "t" and "s" of "its".
I thought they were meant to be yellow?
Ydco co
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.
Won't it be priceless when the EFF's lawsuit is dismissed in the name of homeland security, and the next day they're told to hand over all of their collected "evidence", also in the name of homeland security? And of course if they ever reveal that they've been told to hand over the information, they'll all be tossed in jail without charges other than violating some classified measure in the so-called "patriot act".
At least they're not photographing train stations, public parks, or doing something else equally dangerous to national security, but just think of the intelligence goldmine present in all those test pages being sent to the EFF. A goon...er...security agent could get a promotion out of this!
The US will not make the same mistake the USSR did. If another Bulgakov surfaces in Dubya's America, this printer-ID technology will rat him out before that freedom-hating Nobel Prize Committee has a chance to work its evil. Why does the EFF hate America?
OK, so let me be sure I understand this.
You're telling me that your printers always include a dot, printed with yellow toner, visible only with an 8x magnifying glass, in which is encoded enough information for you to identify exactly which printer that you made was responsible for printing that page?
Sorry, but if that's all you've got, I call bullshit. Too much doesn't add up.
Printer manufacturers have high enough resolution to do this, yet only put out 600dpi/1200dpi boxes, where you can easily enough see jaggies with the naked eye?
If the dots are really that small, they could be messed up just by bleed in average quality printer paper.
Alternatively, this isn't a microdot in the classic meaning of the term, but rather the system is supposed to rely on the relative positions of the dots on the page, with dots spaced inches apart? How is that going to help fight conterfeiting? I don't know many bank notes that come in handy US letter or A4 size for counterfeiting convenience.
You say your department has never had to look up a serial number for the authorities, yet strangely according to TFA, the authorities seem to do this all the time with other makers?
Only a tiny number of people in your department know how to do this, it's all so secret that other printer manufacturers cited in TFA wouldn't even comment and you can't tell us how to find the things, yet you're prepared to identify your employer, thus practically waving a flag about who you are and the fact that you're willing to disclose this sort of information?
There's no obligation to register where you buy your printer, nor to notify anyone of selling it on, so there's nothing to connect to the serial number unless someone bothers transferring warranty information (even after the usually pretty naff warranty has expired).
And here's the kicker: governments all over the world use these things. If there were security marks being printed on their documents, they would know about it, not least because they all do it routinely with confidential documents themselves. How am I supposed to believe that government departments are allowed to use these things when anything they print could be traced back to exactly where it comes from by someone who isn't cleared by that government's security people, and works in another country?
Sorry, but this just doesn't ring true. There is absolutely no factual information in either TFA or all your posts to this thread that's good enough to reproduce this effect reliably, and what's more I'm looking at full-page print-outs from two colour printers, following the directions given in TFA, and unable to see anything even remotely resembling what's described.
I'm happy to change my view on this if more information is provided, but I'm very sceptical about this whole story right now.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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
Imagine being the poor bastard that had the misfortune to have registered his printer for warranty coverage but threw it out or sold it to someone who 'misused' it later on.
What now, we need to put all our electronic devices through a chipper/shredder too?
Sure maybe you wouldn't be charged per se, but I don't find much difference from being 'arrested' and serving a day in jail and being questioned or harrassed (more accurately) for an equivalent amount of time.
If you don't think investigators are brutally relentless...good for you to be so blissfully ignorant and may you never find out the truth. Your life can be trashed without any charges, merely because you were a suspect.
Just another reason why the EFF is right on this one.
Hmmm, you'll probably find one of your workmates had an affinity for printing documents with large areas of skin tone ;)
The thought that immediately comes to mind is that the USSR used to catalog the typefaces of every typewriter sold so that they could trace any document back to the original author.
Of course, I suspect that any sufficiently advanced forensic analysis of a document could probably tie it to a printer. However, the fact that these are documented is what bothers me. I.e. the FBI need only ask Xerox which printer produced a specific document and they can tell them.
The USSR used this sort of scheme to censor writers and ensure that if someone spoke out they could be easily traced. What is to prevent any government from making the same requirements of any company?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Have you seen what color ink is going for lately? Be lucky to break even if you printed anything smaller than 20s.
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