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Hidden Codes in Printers Cracked
r84x writes "A research team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently broke the code behind tiny tracking dots that some color laser printers secretly hide in every document.
The U.S. Secret Service admitted that the tracking information is part of a deal struck with selected color laser printer manufacturers, ostensibly to identify counterfeiters. However, the nature of the private information encoded in each document was not previously known.
"We've found that the dots from at least one line of printers encode the date and time your document was printed, as well as the serial number of the printer," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth David Schoen."
Before anyone has a conniption, consider this: do you really think that "they" have a database they could reference to find out what printer serial number goes to what citizen? I don't. I know they could, but I choose to believe (most likely for good reason) that they don't.
Just realize that 99.9% of the world doesn't give a shit about anything you do, and all that paranoia just slips away. That's what I did.
I love conspiracy math: Lets see, conservative estimate of 400 million printers in North America alone, and no method of tracking serial number to location or owner past the original purchase, assuming cash was not used. So, hmmmm a data base with 400 million records, tied to dubious information... yeah, that's useful, but on second thought, it would allow police to figure out if the printer that counterfit documents were created with was in North America or Europe... that would be helpful, but not really worth putting on the tin foil hats.
:)
Anyway, so the government requires each printer manufacturer to maintain a database of all printers sold, so that if needed, they can subpeona the records? No wonder printer ink costs so much
I'm thinking that this would only go so far, and not be much more useful than a database of gun rifling marks?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
That's pretty disgustingly low behaviour. Makes you wonder what other identifying information might be written into seemingly random data.
Improve, or something else....? TCP timestamps too. Just use the LSB, and by making it a 1, or a 0, and you can transmit infomation hiddenly..
Get your own free personal location tracker
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Tracking to the home would be difficult but tracking to an area is more realistic. If there is a serial # embedded in to the code, the manufacturer can track that # to a particular store or warehouse. While this isn't enough to catch anyone alone, it could be used as supporting evidence in an ongoing case. Ofcourse, if a conterfeiter is stupid enough to actually register the printer (like the other 1% of the population) then they deserve to be cought in the first place.
Yes but that's because Digg has self (so: no) moderation, which lowers the quality of the overal articles displayed. So, shut your mouth fanboi and stay on topic.
The EFF != The Government
In fact, you may be surprised to learn that the two are usually at odds with one another.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
That is true in an uncorrupted system. The question remains what would happen if someone did use their power like J. Edgar Hoover did, and others in history that have got away with abuse of power in such a manner.
And there is the case of just because something is illegal, that doesn't mean that something is a wrong thing to do.
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
Repeat after me, "Cost does not equal value". No one is forcing you to buy inkjet cartridges. The value of something is what the market will bear. These companies are watching their revenue go up as they raise prices. that's their job, maximize revenue. If there is collusion among printer manufacturers, which I doubt, then it is illeagal. Otherwise, buy a laser.
Spencer Ogden
Hell, it's not like anyone actually cares what you print unless you're doing something illegal that would warrent them spending a lot of time and money to try and find you.
The people that do not want their houses randomly searched must be hiding something, after all, why would they not want searched? I know, point taken to the extreme but where do you draw the line?
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
The companies don't have the time or money, but the government definately does. Any company I've worked for, if asked by a semi-anonymous "federal" agency for information, rolls over like a scared puppy. The government has (like Spiegel) nothing but time to spy on its citizens. They are the paranoid ones that we need to be watching out for, they are the crazed mumbling guy on the streetcorner that everybody goes out of their way to avoid. Handing them technology like this is like handing the aforementioned freak an automatic weapon. Sooner or later he'll figure out how to use it to fight off the voices that keep pestering him. Sooner or later, the government will figure out how to use this technology to oppress its citizenry.
This stuff is almost exactly how they caught the BTK killer
I think it's great that finally, we will be able to frame people we don't like with the greatest of ease. Just user their printer to print something illegal, or burn a CD on their PC!
A new crime, anyone? "Breaking And Entering With Intent To Print"
'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.
Of course, this might actually prove useful in the future for historians analyzing our garbage for dating our documents. Assuming, of course, that these tiny dots can survive for a useful amount of time.
To me that's perhaps the biggest issue. At one point this was supposed to be a democracy, now it seems we're sliding into acceptance of secret laws and practices, and a general acceptance that "they" are watching (without even knowing who "they" are). We used to deride "conspiracy theorists" for thinking this kind of stuff was happening. Now we know it is happening, so we just deride the conspiracy theorists for caring.
Do you realize what cops do every day? They deal with people who are abusing their kids; or acting indignent because they got pulled over for speeding; or drunk and screaming obscenities in public places; or involved in horrible accidents and shootings. When they're not doing these things, they sit around WAITING FOR THESE THINGS TO HAPPEN. It's too bad that you had a run in with a cop. Lord knows, I have too. They're human. They aren't criminal lawyers and they don't necessarily know that it is or isn't illegal for you to photograph buses at an intersection. All they know is that it's suspicious looking and they're told to be on the lookout for suspicious looking people. Fortunately, there's a nice legal system in place to keep things from getting out of control and you winding up in jail for taking pictures. And yes, sometimes that system fails, too, because it was set up and is run by humans or messed with by politicians. But don't go telling me that cops are all out to abuse their power. They're just normal people doing an unpleasant job who want to go home at the end of the day and drink a beer. WRT the printer thing: I think it's highly unlikely that your boss or spouse is going to go analyze some dots on a printout and cross reference them with the manufacturer's serial number. It's even more unlikely that the government is going to use this against you, unless you do something to draw the attention of say, the FBI. If that's the case, you've got much bigger things to worry about than having a piece of paper traced back to you.
very one of the 5,000 or so pieces of computer equipment I have unpacked over the last 10 years has had the serial number barcoded on the outside of the shipping carton.
Tak eoff your tinfoil hat. That is *not* the barcode scanned when you check out the item at your local PC superstore. They scan the UPC code, not the serial number code.
And yes, stores can be required to scan those S/Ns if the feds so desire, and it can be made to stick.
Sure, the feds can do anything they want... *if* they can get it through the lobbiests. Big retal has deep pockets, and they would push back hard against this sort of thing...
And *YES* I have worked in big retail, and I know for a fact that they do not track this kind of stuff currently. In an industry where they lose whole crates of merchandise daily during shipments, you think they can actually correlate a given serial number to a given consumer? Give me a break. They can't even keep track of what is on the shelf vs. what is in the warehouse. (Oh, the website says it is in stock, but we are actually sold out. Sorry, it must not have been updated).
Don't you think that a company that had such an advanced product tracking system would be using it to drive more business?
Conspiracy buts have way too much confidence in big business and the govenment. They aren't as bright and all-powerful as you think they are. Just like any other enterprise, the overwhelming majority of the people running thw show are idiots.
>point taken to the extreme but where do you draw the line
I don't know but after thinking about it for half a second a good place to start might be that this printer system causes no inconvenience to the user (AFAIK) whereas a house search would.
They have since changed that practice, I believe. (there was an enhancement request logged almost 5 years ago to take care of it)
The more robust CRM/Order Management systems that have serialization tracking would allow you to associate a customer number (and consequently all customer data) with a product serial, but the CC# should be next to impossible to retrieve.
Best practices, and all that.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
For what it's worth, AOL maintains extensive logs and readily cooperates with law enforcement. I suspect that MSN does as well. I briefly assisted in a fraud investigation (purchasing stuff via our website with stolen credit cards) and the perpetuator was dialing in from an AOL account. AOL was able to take the source IP address and a timestamp and provide his account and billing information, as well as the telephone number he called from.
The "if you have nothing to hide" apologists for elimination of freedoms is a slippery slope to totalitarianism. Orwell would snicker!
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
In the UK the immediate assumption would be that the quid pro quo for the printer manufacturers would be the contracts to supply to government agencies, so the next time an inconvenient government document was leaked to the press they could be straight on to where it leaked from.
Jerry
Is there potential to sue the printer mfgs (esp. outside the US) because the printer is not doing its best to produce a faithful printout (i.e. adding extra information to the page not intended by the user, irrespective of the fact that it's hard to make out). I mean, people who wear blue Beatles specs must be driven nuts :)
That being said, if all the printer problems I had were a few yellow dots I'd be doing well...
Actually, most intelligent people know that the Democrats and Republicans are all cut from the same pile of shit, and have been for ages. They're not there to help out any regular American citizen. They're out to represent and aide their various business interests, be them the entertainment industry or the petroleum industry.
Indeed, that's one of the reasons that most sane people are so fearful of technology such as this. Your system itself is flawed, in that nobody is truly representing you, as a citizen. Companies can get away with this, and then others can get away with abusing such information. Were true conservatives or liberals in power, then this would never be allowed to happen, and the companies that did participate in this activity would be punished. Why is that? Because true conservatives and true liberals care about individual rights.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Afraid I don't share your optimism.
First of all: there is an intrusion, a loss of freedom, even when the power is not abused. In the 60s, your average hippy could pretty much buy a car using cash and drive to San Franciscoi - now you need a ton of paperwork, legal docs, and so on. You can no longer buy a car using cash - not a new car anyway. Another example: in the 1960s the government did not know what I spent my money on. Now it does. That represents a serious loss of freedom even if the government does not curremtly abuse that new power. These losses of freedom may or may not be necessary, but they need robust discussion and debate before they happen.
The second point: these powers DO get abused. An example. During German occupation in WW2, the Dutch sent more Jews to the concentration camps, as a percentage of the population, than any other nation save Germany. Why? They had a very efficient tracking system that from birth to grave tracked everyone's address, race, relatives' addresses, and so on. Guess what - at the first opportunity, the new people in power abused that power and traced all Jews and sent them to their deaths. Interestingly, in the years leading up to WW2, the Dutch had a debate much like this one, and the consensus was that "if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear".
Examples abound: when you give away your freedoms you (a) lose those freedoms (and the freedom to buy a printer anomymously may not seem such a big deal to you - but it IS a freedom!), and (b) over time, they sometimes get abused: you can count on a certain percentage of this happening.
Michael
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
They deal with people who are abusing their kids;
...Or take that job upon themselves with creative use of the
ever-popular "resisting arrest" claim. Clumsy kids, always
going around breaking their own ribs while locked alone in a
jail cell.
or acting indignent because they got pulled over for speeding;
Or driving while black. Or a personal favorite, driving on the wrong side of the road - On a lineless back road barely wide enough for a single car (the sort where you literally stop and one car pulls totally off the road if you meet another car coming the opposite way).
or drunk and screaming obscenities in public places;
Or ordered to step outside a bar, given a sobriety test, and charged with public drunkenness.
or involved in horrible accidents and shootings.
You mean like when a cop panics over a 2YO kid with a cap gun, and ventilates him? Or when they zealously chase a gas station drive-off at 110mph leading to three deaths over $30 in fuel?
It's even more unlikely that the government is going to use this against you, unless you do something to draw the attention of say, the FBI.
You mean like anonymously distributing a (legal) pamphlet critical of the wrong politician, who wants revenge and has convenient connections?
I appreciate what police do. They keep a bunch of unruly domesticated primates from killing one another.
But don't glorify them - They chose that job because they get to act the most like unruly domesticated primates, and justify it as part of the job. Politicians chose their job because they like power (or money, or both). WE all need to do our part to keep the police, and the government in general, in check.
> Is it legal to do what the EEF did
I'm sure the EFF would *love* for the US Gov't to make a stink over this.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
There seem to be a lot of people who confuse *freedom* with *freedom to do antisocial stuff and remain anonymous*. These are not the same things.
Free speech is not free *anonymous* speech.
We all want cheap color printers. Fine. We don't want the world flooded with forged documents -- so we take some barely perceptable measures to curb that. Deal with it.
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/list.php/
Right, because the authorities always take the suspect at their word. They never just want to throw any old person they can put together a threadbare case in jail for years.
Never happen, right?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
"Even if you should be able to carry box cutters on to a flight, what reaction do you think other passengers will have?"
I don't care. It's none of their business.
"I certainly would be very suspicious of someone carrying one on to a flight. In fact, I would be sleeping with one eye open."
You sleep however you want. Your sleep habits are none of my business.
"remotely linked to something that people are paranoid about at the time"
I shouldn't have to keep track of the things that you're paranoid about. You, on the other hand, have a handy list of things that I have a right to do. (That is, loosely speaking, almost anything that doesn't cause direct harm to my fellow humans.).
"but how far are you willing to go to ignore behaviour like that?"
Very far. I am not afraid of terrorists. I am very concerned about police states. Historically, police states are much more dangerous than wackos with box cutters/sticks of dynamite/RPG's.
"How do you filter those people out at check in?"
You can't. You also can't be sure you won't get run over by a crazyperson on your way to work. Your odds of being killed by a terrorist are vanishingly small wrt the odds of you being killed by a distracted motorist.
You don't have an inalienable right to safety.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I guess you would be ok with the government installing cameras in your home, just to protect you from criminals that might break into your house.
How about if they install them secretly without your knowledge?
How about if they do it to make sure you arn't breaking any laws?
That's basicly what they have done here. They put in a way to monitor who prints any document, secretly, to make sure they can catch you if you break a law.
That's not Freedom. Anyone that can't see why that is wrong is stupid and naive.