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Xerox Develops New Way to Print Invisible Ink
scott3778 writes "Xerox said on Wednesday that its scientists have perfected a new method for printing hidden fluorescent wording using standard digital printing equipment.
According to the company, the discovery paves the way for customers and businesses alike to add an additional layer of security to commonly printed materials such as checks, tickets, coupons, and other high-value documents.
The hidden fluorescent words and letters show up only under ultraviolet light, said Reiner Eschbach, a research fellow in the Xerox Innovation Group, and the co-inventor of the patented process. What's more, the method for printing them doesn't require the use of special fluorescent inks."
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_10.php#00406 3
Xerox (and the rest) have been hiding identifying marks in *our* printouts for ages now. It's a good job there's nothing to fear from our democratically elected governments who fight evil and oppression around the world.
Step 1. Develop a simple document security measure that can be detected using UV light.
Step 2. Invent a way so that anybody can reproduce the same security measure using readily-available equipment, without special inks.
Step 3. ???
Step 4. Profit!
Oh wait. I guess step 3 would be "start counterfeiting things."
Breakfast served all day!
Counterfeiting Canadian money just got a whole lot easier.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
FTA:
Xerox expects that over time, the technology will be used in personalized checks that will have the account holder's signature printed in a fluorescent stripe.
"A merchant could easily compare the fluorescent signature with the actual one to validate the check," said Eschbach.
Yeah, so someone gets one of these, what then?
That's even worse, cause normally someone doesn't have the signature of the account holder if they were to steal/find a check. This will actually give them that, and make the check appear that much more authentic when used ("What do you mean, check fraud? That's your signature, isn't it?").
You are still innocent until proven guilty. What's changed is what they do to innocent people. - notnAP, #26891325
Ok, if they are really printing UV with a standard CMYK color laser printer then they deserve a patent. That's real innovation at work and not some lame ass '...on the Internet' patent.
Democrat delenda est
Of course, a thief with a flourescent lamp could easily determine what your signature should look like, and so how does that provide any kind of security? I suppose it provides the same degree of security as the signature on a credit card receipt (which also provides no real security), but that kind of "security", clearly, doesn't require "invisible" ink in the first place.
Here's a pic of it in action:
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
According to the article, what they're doing is exploiting the fact that most paper has been washed with fluorescent agents to enhance its whiteness, and so will tend to fluoresce somewhat anyway. (It's the same way they make "color safe bleach": It's not bleach. It's fluorescent dye.)
What they may be doing is using the matte properties of printer toner to dull the fluorescent sheen of most of the paper by applying a difficult-to-detect stochastic pattern over the ostensibly white areas of the printout. The areas that are still completely white will seem to fluoresce compared to the areas that have been colored "eggshell white" by the printer. But that's just a guess.
Breakfast served all day!
You ask the Goth chick at the coffee counter to whip out her portable UV light to view it.
"Yeah, I'm afraid your Lemon Juice Cartridge was out, so I replaced that. The total bill will be just under $6,000."
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Printing invisible ink is pretty nifty, but what they don't tell you is that their standard toner will need to switch from CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) to CMYKL (cyan, magenta, yellow, black, lemon juice).
How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?
As long as they accept my invisible credit card, I'm fine.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Stuff starts showing up on your printouts!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Xerox expects that over time, the technology will be used in personalized checks that will have the account holder's signature printed in a fluorescent stripe.
So they want to print my signature, right on the check, in a form that anyone with a UV light can read (even suggesting it is so the mrechant can verify "my" signature that way). How idiotic! First of all, the last thing that I want is my signature printed on the check so that any thief who gets hold of the checkbook can have a sample of what to practice signing my name like (it would be far better to use computer technology to show authorized bank tellers my segnature seperate from the check, easy enough to do with current computer technology). And worse, in an age where anyone can order checks with any account number on them (or even print them themselves), I hardly want the identity theives to be able to print their version of "my signature" on the checks they print so that they can convince someone accepting the check that it's valid because the signature matches.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I know its not being a proper member of Slashdot if you RTFA, but the idea of a method of printing invisible markings without ink was quite something. Only when reading TFA did I come across this little gem:
He and the group realized that most paper manufacturers already inject fluorescent brightening agents in paper to enchance its "whiteness," so they worked to create certain combinations of toner that would allow the paper's fluorescence to shine through when exposed to ultraviolet light, Eschbach said.Very very clever, but it relies on the presence of fluorescent brightening agents in the paper (these are those "ultra bright/white" paper brands that they charge a premium for). This means that those of you of a tin-foilish predisposition can make use of paper which does not contain these agents in order to prevent your printer making any invisible markings using this technique. Unfortunately this makes counterfeiting not that much easier, as the process that banknotes use to add invisible markings are different to this.
It also means that most company paper will not work (I don't know about other people, but where I worked, the paper was usually the cheapest economy stuff you could find, primarily because they used so much of it).
I can assume that either the premium paper companies are in for a surge in sales from this or all the other brands of paper will start adding these agents and it will become standard. We shall see.
P.S I think the article meant "enhance", not "enchance".
As I read it, they're working with the difference in contrast between the ink and the paper background. You throw a UV light on a paper that's fluorescing blue with shiny yellow dots on it that are primarily reflecting the same color (and adding a little bit of their own fluorescence) and the two components have approximately the same luminosity, and they'll look pretty much invisible - the eye can only do just so much detecting colors in this situation. And the overwhelming blue from the paper will effectively hide the dots.
BUT, if you have a long-pass filter in front of your camera (use a filter with a cutoff somewhere between the blue of the paper and the yellow of the dots - you can buy pretty sharp filters from Edmund - and a greyscale camera) then those dots will show up decently against the apparent 'darkness' of the paper.
(I do a bit of UV photography at work using tracer powders and indicators on plastic, metal, paper, and skin, and filters with monochrome cameras work great.)
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
...but you've been Snoped:
Cash Cow