Secret Printer ID Codes May Be Illegal In the EU

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "In response to a query from a member of the EU Parliament, an EU commissioner issued an official statement (.DOC) saying that, while they do not violate any laws, secret printer tracking dot codes may violate the human right to privacy guaranteed by the EU's Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. If you don't remember what these are, Slashdot has discussed the issue before. In short, most color printers print small yellow dots on every sheet in a code that identifies the printer and, potentially, its owner. The EFF is running an awareness campaign, and a couple of years back made a start on deciphering the yellow dot code."

Comments

Simple enough fix

[KublaiKhan]

So to stay private, then, one should print sensitive documents on yellow paper?

Re:Simple enough fix

[corsec67]

My color laser printer (Konica-Minolta 2530DL) only prints the yellow dots in color mode.

But that printer is a bit different in that it rotates the toner cartridges into place for every color that is going to go on each page, so a color page has to wait for all 4(CMYK) cartridges to rotate into place, but in black-only mode doesn't rotate anything to be about 5-6x faster.

The reason I chose that printer? Konica-Minolta supplies open-source printer drivers that compiled on my AMD64-Ubuntu box.

Re:Simple enough fix

[gEvil (beta)]

My color laser printer (Konica-Minolta 2530DL) only prints the yellow dots in color mode.

Oh yeah, well my printer can print yellow even when it's in grayscale mode! *rolls eyes*

Re:Simple enough fix

[pclminion]

Just because your human eye can't see yellow dots on a yellow background doesn't mean a chemical analysis couldn't spot it. Hell, for all we know, they might glow bright green under blacklight.

Re:Simple enough fix

[corsec67]

Oh yeah, well my printer can print yellow even when it's in grayscale mode! *rolls eyes*

Hmm, yeah, I did phrase that badly. But, color/grayscale mode is relevant to the page printed, and the printer could put the yellow dots down on an otherwise grayscale page, just that for that specific model it would be much slower.

Re:Simple enough fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you try any harder to karma whore?

Everyone on here better know what CMYK is. I hope you feel better about yourself now that you have told the world you run open source, AMD powered Ubuntu.

Re:Simple enough fix

[gEvil (beta)]

I know what you meant. I was just playing around...

Re:Simple enough fix

[KublaiKhan]

It's the same yellow ink as anything else yellow, so if you're that concerned, print out a page with yellow on it and determine the properties thereof.

Or slap some whiteout over the dots, or scribble over 'em with a black marker. Or cut off that corner.

Re:Simple enough fix

[MagicBox]

The reason I chose that printer? Konica-Minolta supplies open-source printer drivers that compiled on my AMD64-Ubuntu box. Maybe you should chose an OS that doesn't force you to spend your money on garbage peripherals just because it has limited support for everything

sorry I couldn't resist.......

Re:Simple enough fix

[SethJohnson]

So I guess the yellow dots get inserted at the hardware level.. Could you do us a favor and check those open source printer drivers to see if the yellow dots are inserted at the software level? If so, you might be able to recruit more Ubuntu users if you could offer yellow-dot-free drivers....

Seth

Re:Simple enough fix

[Anonymous Coward]

I can has postscript?

Re:Simple enough fix

[nurb432]

Or just steal your printers and supplies.

Re:Simple enough fix

[MrMacman2u]

No, it's definetly a hardware level process, you get them even with internal printer status/info pages (assuming they are color).

On the bright side, most color lasers do not insert the yellow dots on black and white pages, though a few models from various manufactures DO tag every single page.

Re:Simple enough fix

[vux984]

Or better still, figure out where the yellow dots are being printed, and then add a whole lot more right where the code is.

Re:Simple enough fix

[Maxo-Texas]

I'm thinking more that you can print single yellow dots and false serial codes. I assume the serial codes are repeated many times over the page but are in fixed locations.

If they are only there once, you could remove them.

If they are there once or multiple times, you can over print select dots and mess up the validity of the codes.

Re:Simple enough fix

[KublaiKhan]

Could be useful in other ways, if you could incriminate someone else's printer by printing the right code...

Re:Simple enough fix

[arthurpaliden]

It is called a dot matrix printer.

Re:Simple enough fix

[sricetx]

Well, couldn't the open source driver be modified to add additional random yellow dots, thereby obfuscating the dot code from the hardware?

Re:Simple enough fix

[Belial6]

The next question would be... Can you put a black or cyan cartridge in the yellow slot to make the dots show up bright and clear for easier identification? If so, it would make it easier to see what these printers do. Perticularly when yellow lines are drawn through the codes.

Re:Simple enough fix

[spuke4000]

Even if the dots are inserted at the hardware layer, if you have source for the driver couldn't you have it add more dots, in random locations? You wouldn't be able to tell which dots identified the printer and which were part of the random noise.

Re:Simple enough fix

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer, probably not, I think his Minolta is the same engine as my Lexmark which detects which toner cartridge is in which slot and refuses to print if you swap them about, besides which, the black cartridge is physically a bit bigger. However, you could refill a yellow cartridge with black toner. I wouldn't recommend this unless you're going to buy a new yellow cartridge to replace it.

Re:Simple enough fix

[ehud42]

It will still print dots.

I would use a Daisy wheel printer.

Re:Simple enough fix

[ultranova]

Or perhaps you could simply use colored paper ? You could also print a dither pattern of some kind.

Or simply print a document which otherwise doesn't use any yellow, scan it, and use the coloring tools of a photo editor to pick yellow pixels. Gimp, for example, can turn the desired color to transparency.

Re:Simple enough fix

[The_mad_linguist]

No, don't make them random. Decode the dot pattern, then add yellow dots on all the points of the grid the printer won't add them.

Re:Simple enough fix

[MrMacman2u]

Minolta is actually using the same engine as the low end Xerox series color laser... or the other way around... hard to tell many times. Good advice for the cartridges, refilling the yellow with black is most viable.

Re:Simple enough fix

[RobertM1968]

Hey Seth,

Your question and others' are great - but I am not sure why people haven't sued the manufacturers for both the wasted ink/toner AND the privacy issues...

It might not seem like a lot of toner or ink, but it does add up... looking at the horrendously high color page count on my color laser would indicate I should be owed something back from them - both for toner and for invasion of my privacy without my consent...

As for your question, I am curious just how much of it is in hardware... I think your question should have been given more thought from this snippet in the summary:

In short, most color printers print small yellow dots on every sheet in a code that identifies the printer and, potentially, its owner.

If the part I bolded is potentially accurate, that would mean that some software level work is being done as well... I really don't care if my printer puts yellow dots saying its a __________ (well other than toner wastage)... but it shouldn't be printing what it thinks my name is.

Re:Simple enough fix

[SeaFox]

So to stay private, then, one should print sensitive documents on yellow paper?

No, but I would argue you should not use the online registration option for your printer's warranty thats offered by the driver installer, or maybe not register at all.

Re:Simple enough fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern printers have cartridges with computer chips in them. Those chips contain information regarding the maker, type, color, etc. I think they might all have individual ID codes, too, but that would be more for the printer to know when you change a cartridge (so it can re-align them) rather than tracking cartridges.

Re:Simple enough fix

[ArsenneLupin]

Or perhaps you could simply use colored paper Yes, bingo! Print an empty page on blue paper. The yellow dots should stick out like sore thumbs.

Re:Simple enough fix

[ArsenneLupin]

Just because your human eye can't see yellow dots on a yellow background I'm sure you meant yellow dots on a white background here... see below.

doesn't mean a chemical analysis couldn't spot it. Hell, for all we know, they might glow bright green under blacklight. Nope, not really. The same toner, with the same chemical/fluorescent properties would have been used both for the dots and the background. Unless you were speaking about printing on yellow paper...

Now, back to yellow-on-white situation:

This is indeed an artifact of the human eye. White will excite all 3 kinds of cones (red+green+blue), whereas yellow will only excite red+green. The difference is in the blue. However, as the maximum sensitivity wavelengths for red and green lie relatively close together whereas blue lies more far out, the eye will focus on red/green, rather than blue. Hence, any image where all information is in the difference of blue will be blurred. Any small artifacts (such as dots...) will just disappear...

But no need to use chemical analysis or blacklights: using another optical device which doesn't have that quirk (such as a digital camera...) should be enough...

Re:Simple enough fix

[jonaskoelker]

using another optical device which doesn't have that quirk (such as a digital camera...) should be enough...

And look at the result with... an eye? ;-) (SCNR)

Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

... secret printer tracking dot codes may violate the human right to privacy guaranteed by the EU's Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. I'm thinking that I would like to see a meeting between the EU's Convention of Human Rights & the EU's European Commission.

First topic on the agenda: biometrics for visitors.

Or was privacy only guaranteed to European Citizens?

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[CSMatt]

Apparently not, what with all of the cameras in the UK (some of which talk back).

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[owlnation]

Sigh...

No-one ever gets this right. Including the summary of this article.

The Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, is a document of The Council of Europe.

It has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the European Union. This is not the same organization, despite having SIMILAR membership, and the word Europe in the title. In fact, not all Council of Europe members are actually European -- Turkey for example.

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[Cal Paterson]

Apparently not, what with all of the cameras in the UK (some of which talk back).

I does seem the that police are going out of their way to invoke as many 1984 clichés as they possibly can.

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

Turkey is partly in Europe, partly in Asia (mostly Asia).

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh...

"No-one ever gets this right"

Including YOU.

YOU ARE WRONG.

"It has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the European Union."

No. That is wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Fundamental_Rights_of_the_European_Union

"(Article 53) 'Nothing in this Charter shall be interpreted as restricting or adversely affecting human rights and fundamental freedoms as recognised, in their respective fields of application, by Union law and international law and by international agreements to which the Union, the Community or all the Member States are party, including the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and by the Member States' constitutions."

See why you're wrong? It DOES have something to do with the European Union. It was used as a basis for the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EUROPEAN UNION.

Sigh at your own ignorance, but not at someone else, especially when you're totally wrong like you were.

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[flyingsquid]

Apparently not, what with all of the cameras in the UK (some of which talk back).

Quit your complaining. Didn't the government just raise the chocolate ration by 20 grams?

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

I fail to see how this is different from the USA, where just about every supposedly inalienable right is only recognised for US-American citizens (and maybe Canadians, if you're lucky), too.

Seriously. Concerned about warrantless spying on US-American citizens? Funny, I never saw any outrage from any US-American over the warrantless spying on just about everyone else on the entire damn planet.

So don't act as if you're somehow special.

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not? The US only guarantees human rights for US Citizens, the rest can rot in Gitmo indefinitely.

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

and America (ok, they're an observer nation, but I like the shock value)

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all where did you get that the biometrics are only for non-european citizens? That's BS as far as i can tell. It's for travellers period. Wherever they are from.

Second, when you travel (outside of the schengen-area) you have to show your passport and be identified ANYWAY. The idea of the biometrics is to do a thorough job at it.

Third, don't you think there is a slight difference between checking who you are when you cross an international border which you can expect since that's been the norm for a good x100 years vs. _secretly_ watermarking your every document you print in your own home for your own _private_ use?

Relax dude... and get some perspective hm?

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[fondacio]

That's a a very good and important point. However, the original document also refers to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which obviously is an EU document, albeit without any formal status (the Convention is a treaty). The Charter will become legally binding if the current Reform Treaty enters into force though, although the UK has opted out of it. It also has a provision on privacy. Furthermore, the European Commission does have to ensure that anything it does complies with the Convention, since all member states of the EU are party to it. This means that any biometric ID checks and other things they have in store for the future need to comply to the Convention and the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. This basically means that any measures need to be necessary and proportional to their aim, i.e. not infringe on people's right to privacy more than strictly necessary.

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[zoney_ie]

They both use the same flag, thus adding to the confusion. The Council of Europe created it though.

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the ??!!

That convention isn't worth the paper it's printed on if it has Turkey as a signatory.

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

Turkey is European

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, not all Council of Europe members are actually European -- Turkey for example.

I know this is a minor point, but in what way is Turkey not European? I think that on both cultural and geographical levels. A fairly important part of the country is on the European mainland (just like Russia). If it is because a major part of the country is not on the European mainland, would you consider countries like Cyprus a part of Europe? How about the UK? If it is because of a muslim background, would you consider the soon-to-be-formed state of Kosovo non-European?

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[dajak]

However, the original document also refers to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which obviously is an EU document, albeit without any formal status (the Convention is a treaty).

Some EU member states do accept EU treaties as formal law with direct vertical application (i.e. government-citizen relations), and besides that, the European Court of Justice, the highest court in the European Union, has competence to rule on the application of EU treaties by member states. My Dutch law collection contains it in the constitutional law section.

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[fondacio]

True, but the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights has not achieved the status of a treaty yet and will only do so once the current reform treaty has been ratified, since it incorporates the Charter. See here for more information. By the way, ALL EU member states have to accept EU treaties as formal law with direct vertical application, even if they don't normally do so with treaties (like the Netherlands does). At the European Court of Justice stated back in the sixties, this is inherent to the European legal order which was created by the establishment of what later became the EU.

Re:Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[jonaskoelker]

Didn't the government just raise the chocolate ration to 20 grams?

Fixed. Please hand in your geek card on the way out.

So, print color as shades of gray

[justthinkit]

and remove the color cartridge. It sucks to waste color ink printing some order confirmation thingy anyway.

Re:So, print color as shades of gray

[corsec67]

None of the printers that print the codes use any ink.

They are all color laser printers. In my color laser printer, even the "freebie" toner cartridges that came with the printer last for 1,500 pages, and then I replaced them after 2,000 pages with high-capacity cartridges that last for 4,500 pages each.

Also, I am pretty sure all of them use 4 colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, so that your "order confirmation" printing would only use the color toner that was needed.

Prevent your printer from being registered

[wwphx]

1. Do not buy from the manufacturer.
2. Maybe pay cash when buying printer.
3. Do not send in warranty card.
4. Don't let a factory rep or facility service it.

If you can prevent the printer's serial # from being tied to your identity, you should be OK. Of course, some of the very high-end printers can only be bought from the manufacturer or a registered VAR, so don't use those types of printers for nefarious deeds.

I don't know about printers, but apparently with Canon digital cameras they will register the camera serial number with your name if you send it in to Canon for service.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[corsec67]

And you need to make sure you never print anything that can be tied to to if you send it to the government, like a tax return.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[wkk2]

5. Make sure your firewall blocks all external packets to or from your printers.

This may also eliminate potential security problems.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot 5. Don't ever connect the printer to a computer that will ever be connected to the internet.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[Jafafa Hots]

Buy a used printer.

Or print your final documents at a Kinkos. Pay in cash.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[milsoRgen]

I don't know about printers, but apparently with Canon digital cameras they will register the camera serial number with your name if you send it in to Canon for service. That may be the case, but it's my understanding every camera is uniquely identifiable by the pictures it has taken. Serial number or not, you take some pictures of some fucked up shit it and the cops get a hold of your camera, they can tie the pics to you.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[Guinness2702]

"If you can prevent the printer's serial # from being tied to your identity"

It won't help if they track you down for some crime (I dunno, sending a ransom note, or printing up a series of Hex characters), and find the printer in your home!

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[wkk2]

6. Use a print server so the client (and their drivers) can't talk directly to the printer.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't canon trying to patent some sort of Iris-scan copyright tech for photos taken with their cams. It's mean for "your" protection, but me thinks there is an underlying potential for dirty tricks.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[MrMacman2u]

I am a printer technician for Canon, Xerox, HP, Lexmark, etc... I deal with thousands of printers, both color and black and white.

1. Every color laser printer made in the last 10 years from every manufacturer that I have ever encountered uses the "yellow dots" tagging.

2. You have 300-12k hanging around in cash? Go for it.

3. You're not going to take advantage of the "get out of jail free" card the absolves you from a 300-1000 dollar repair for one year. Other than that, this may prevent your identiy from being tied to your shiney new printer.

4. Goooooood luck. When it breaks, you need someone to fix it or you will be dumping a ton of cash out fairly often for new machines.

I'd like to know why this is such a big deal to individual people first off. This system has been in place for more than a decade in most machines and no one has ever said anything before, nor, I believe, has it ever been used to screw someone over OR catch a criminal...

Am I saying I agree with the practice of tagging every page? Heck NO! I've never liked the idea since they introduced it originally, I believe, to prevent people from using high end laser printers to counterfiet money and if they did, to trace it back to the one(s) responsible.

To my knowledge, it's never been used as such. I implore someone to prove me wrong if I am.

The only ones that should be even overly concerned (aside from wasted toner and unneeded wear and tear on printing components) is large companies or government institutions.

This whole issue is not a major one. It's more of an annoyance that would be nice if it was removed.

P.S. - If you can get some, print a color page on black paper (preferably semi-gloss), the dots stand out really well... failing that if you have a large high volume printer available with a transfer belt easily veiwable, start a 4 page print job and pop the cover halfway through to force it to jam, the dots are sometimes (depends on the model and stage of the imaging process) very visible on the belt.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[zippthorne]

How about, 5) don't get a color printer. Get a nice, crisp, inexpensive black laser or led printer. Do all your color printing at CVS on their glossy/matte photopaper. It's less costly per page just on consumables, at least if 200 pages @ 5% coverage for $29.98 means what I think it means.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if I bought it used.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[ntk]

You're not likely to hear how who was affected by this, for the same reason that it's been almost unknown to the consumers buying your printers for the last decade: it's been convenient to keep this "feature" of their purchases secret. Or do you think that if the US government and manufacturers had publicly announced their agreement, there would have been a calm acceptance by Americans of the importance of paying for a system to invisibly watermark their own printouts?

I'm glad that your primary concern is large companies and government institutions. As I wrote in the EFF Deeplink, our concern includes dissidents working in authoritarian regimes who remain ignorant about this feature of the technology they use to spread their work, and the authoritarian governments intent on tracing and suppressing their citizen's literature and information sources -- who are not so ignorant.

Do you think the printer companies would proudly mention if their tracking technology was used to catch these undesirables?

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[ray-auch]

Or better still, offer to print someone else's tax return (or other document)...

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[corsec67]

I know you are (kind of) joking, but there is one small flaw with that idea:

If your printer's serial # gets registered with the address on that tax return, and then you print some "illegal" stuff, it would come back to that person, but all they have to say is "I had ray-auch print my tax return", and then a single test-page from your printer would reveal that you printed both documents.

But, if the police don't care that much, then yeah, your plan would work.

At any rate, it would cause problems for the other person.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[operagost]

Every color laser printer made in the last 10 years from every manufacturer that I have ever encountered uses the "yellow dots" tagging.

Not according to the EFF; for example, Oki is clean. Do you service those? What method did you use to detect the dots?

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[dwye]

Too much work. Better suggestion: use one of the local Kinko's, rotating between them. The printer equivalent of the street corner payphone.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[zzsmirkzz]

I've never liked the idea since they introduced it originally, I believe, to prevent people from using high end laser printers to counterfiet money and if they did, to trace it back to the one(s) responsible. To my knowledge, it's never been used as such. I implore someone to prove me wrong if I am. Well, I know one thing, at my brother's work (my cousin's business), some brain-dead employee decided to make a color-copy of money on the office's color copier and somehow got caught with it in their pocket. Whether they confessed which printer they used to print it to cops or not I don't know, but I do know the Secret Service showed up to confiscate the printer and the computer as evidence, which, if my cousin's husband wasn't a local cop, they would of done and effectively shut down her whole company. So, for all those who don't know why it's a good idea to lock-down your office equipment, imagine losing all the computer equipment in your office because some low-life decided to copy some money.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[Fireshadow]

"To my knowledge, it's never been used as such. I implore someone to prove me wrong if I am"

Two cases I'm aware of. A PC World article in Autstrailia dated 2004 says the Dutch cops used it in investigating a gang counterfeiting rail tickets. Look in the below first article, third paragraph under sub-heading "success". Second, China busted 3 for selling counterfeit rail tickets yesterday that used a high end printer to make them.

1. http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;1002274598
2. http://english.cri.cn/2946/2008/02/14/195@323079.htm

One argument is that If the tracking technology was not there, would the cops have such an easy time picking up the dumb criminals? The other is that some governments would use this to track down those printing dissident materials.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[Anonymous Coward]

To my knowledge, it's never been used as such. I implore someone to prove me wrong if I am.

I also work as a laser printer technician, only on the larger copy machines. I've heard stories about a technician in our office that was dismissed for attempting to go on a spending spree with copied money. The secret service did come and get him. I didn't know him personally but I believe the people who told me about it, who did know him.

Also, as to the people calling the parent a traitor, please get some perspective, this stuff has been rumor for years. Also, no technician gets training on the super secret dot pattern. Do you think Xerox is going to send a company-wide email announcing this? This is the kind of stuff you hear about from stories from co-workers. The EFF stuff is just the first credible source that I've seen comment on it, not that I've really been looking very hard (or at all).

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[SuiteSisterMary]

Don't the high-end printers/copiers freak out when they recognized that you're trying to print currency, anyway?

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[Anonymous Coward]

How about, 5) don't get a color printer. Get a nice, crisp, inexpensive black laser or led printer. Do all your color printing at CVS on their glossy/matte photopaper. It's less costly per page just on consumables, at least if 200 pages @ 5% coverage for $29.98 means what I think it means.

With smaller color printers, yes your cost per page may very well exceed the CVS price of 29.98 for 200 pages. However, if you lease a larger color machine from a manufacturer you can arrange the lease to include toner, and to bill you per click, with a minimum click count per month. I've seen these leases as low as 5 cents per color click. If you contact a manufacturer that sells office size printers, they should be able to send out a salesman who will break down the total cost per page and show you exactly how much it costs.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[Anonymous Coward]

MrMacman2u (831102) wrote in article #22436314:

I'd like to know why this is such a big deal to individual people first off. This system has been in place for more than a decade in most machines and no one has ever said anything before, nor, I believe, has it ever been used to screw someone over OR catch a criminal...

It is a big deal to individuals and small organizations (think human-rights groups) because:

1. This has, for the most part, been kept secret from consumers of these products. Those desiring accountability and openness in the U.S. government are denied. Were the manufacturers coerced into designing that into their systems? Were there kick-backs? We, the people, don't know. Democracy dies behind closed doors.
2. Unless the yellow dot system was listed among the printer's features, the manufacturer is keeping us from being informed consumers. This subverts a free & open market where consumers can purchase the product they think is best for them.
3. When I buy something, it is mine. I am the one responsible for it, so it should not behave in any fashion in which I have not consented. I will not tolerate corporations attempting to monitor, control or subvert my use of my property -- no matter what `good cause` the believe they are serving.
4. Although you do not believe that this particular system has been used to "screw someone over", the truth of the matter is that it could be used for that. Please reference "slippery slope", "unintended consequences", and "scope/feature creep". Sure, it is only intended to catch those mean, nasty counterfeiters... now. Can you promise everybody working in peaceful political groups that it always only be used that way?

In sort, please refer to this EFF article explaining why.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[dgatwood]

Where did the GP get that price from CVS? The cheapest price I could find was 19 cents per photo, and I suspect that's for 4x5 size.

In any case, that's not a particularly good price. $30 for 200 pages at 5% coverage comes to $0.15 per color page, but only at 5% coverage... I hope that's 5% per color. The standard coverage for a color page used by all the printer manufacturers is 20% coverage per page. 5% total coverage is pretty much black text printing with maybe a color logo in the corner.... Normally, black and white printing is based on 5% coverage per page. Therefore, I strongly suspect that CVS price is for black-and-white printing, not color, but again, since I can't find any reference to such pricing, I can't confirm that.

Even if it is color, though, and even if they really meant 20% coverage per color page, that's still just barely cheaper than the cheapest color lasers out there. The cheapest Xerox color printers only cost 15.5 cents for all consumables---just half a cent more per page than the CVS price quoted above---and they go down from there rather rapidly. And, of course, then you have the solid ink printers which cost fairly dramatically less still per page.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[Mister Whirly]

That is why I fill all of my warranty cards out with Karl Rove's name and address. (It is amazing the kind of information you can find just floating around out there on the net)

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[zippthorne]

No, the CVS price isn't $30/200 pages. That's the price of just the ink on certain HP printers that are really designed for home use. For a company with a lot of printing, you'd certainly want to do everything in-house on machines designed to actually print stuff, rather than machines designed to be able to print stuff occasionally.

The needs are different. My point, and it's a little orthogonal since it mostly applies to inkjet color printers, is that the local drugstore can give you photo print which are both better quality and lower price than printing at home ("up to 200 pages" at 5% ink coverage, which is.. graphs? photos would be closer to 50% ink coverage). And since they're drugstores, they're convenient enough that they're a real option. So, what else are you printing from home that really needs color? And are you doing it frequently enough that it's worth it to sacrifice black-quality, cost per page, wasted ink, the ability to print circuit traces for PCB etching, and when the ink-dots finally trickle down to inkjets, security?

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[trueg]

Sure if you are simply reposting raw images from your camera. But if your camera is like mine, it will automatically convert all images to jpeg's. Hopefully the compression will wash out any unique flaws in your camera. If you are still worried, Resize all your dirty images in gimp to a fifth of their original size and then compress it down to 100kb. Strip the EXIF data and your pictures should be pretty much untraceable under all the compression.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[Original Replica]

do you think that if the US government and manufacturers had publicly announced their agreement, there would have been a calm acceptance by Americans of the importance of paying for a system to invisibly watermark their own printouts?

Yes. I do think everyone would have just accepted it. Sure there may have been some grumbling, but no politician or CEO was going to lose their job over it. No one would have done anything about it. At least not anything that had any negative effects on the people responsible for instituting this in the first place.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[jonwil]

If you do need to print something that could be traced back to you, print it in greyscale with the yellow toner cartridge removed.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[cicho]

"I'd like to know why this is such a big deal to individual people first off. "

For the very same reasons it was a big deal (to some) and not such a big deal (to others) that the communist government here in Poland, up until late 1980s, had every single typewriter registered, with a typed page on file. I imagine the same went on in other countries of the Soviet bloc.

You said yourself the dot patterns were not being used to fight crime, I guess that's your answer right there.

I guess the rule of the thumb is simple. When the government mandates such a thing, it is not for your good.

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[Anonymous Coward]

For more fun - on some models of printer, you can swap cartridges physically between slots as long as you switch the chips around. Put the black where the yellow should go and print some graphic that doesn't use black in the color mix - then the dots show up starkly in relief, unless printers have started checking the color of toner before they print. (Probably not a good thing to do if you're worried about color calibration.)

Re:Prevent your printer from being registered

[jonaskoelker]

If you can get some, print a color page on black paper

If I could get some, why would I fiddle about with my printer instead?

find the dots

[gEvil (beta)]

If any of you have a blue LED (like those found on keychain or pen lights), you can fairly easily see the pattern of dots on a color laser printout (like anything printed in color from Kinkos).

Re:find the dots

[themushroom]

Two words, once you've located them: white-out

Printing the Frosty Piss

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet it totally prints yellow dots when you want a picture of the Frosty Piss!

"human right to privacy"

[TheGratefulNet]

I love the sound of that.

however, in today's terror-terrorized (is that a new expression?) world, there IS no more 'right to privacy'.

I wish there was! but even in europe, there really is not a right to privacy.

even in the US constitution, is there ANY real clauses that talk about right to privacy? other than illegal search and seizure (which has been bastardized into 'we can invade your house and do a sneek-and-peek anytime we SAY so') - there is no right to privacy.

it should be added as a fundamental right, but I don't expect it anytime soon. too much power is gotton by violating your privacy. power is addicting and so the gov won't ever give THAT one back. horse has long left the barn..

Re:"human right to privacy"

[sconeu]

even in the US constitution, is there ANY real clauses that talk about right to privacy?

Please see Amendment 4, Amendment 5, Amendment 9 and Amendment 10.

Re:"human right to privacy"

[TheGratefulNet]

if we have a right to privacy, as you assert, then WHY is there widespread wiretapping, sneak-and-peeks, secret courts, DMCA takedowns and so on?

how about having to open our suitcases at airports? that, to me, fully violates my right to privacy.

what about cops insisting that they see our photos if they 'suspect' us of doing some 'bad' photography, even while out on public streets?

sorry - but all I see in this country convinces me that any 'paper rights' have long since been invalided IN PRACTICE.

Re:"human right to privacy"

[drooling-dog]

other than illegal search and seizure (which has been bastardized into 'we can invade your house and do a sneek-and-peek anytime we SAY so') - there is no right to privacy. Well, the 4th Amendment does specifically cite "papers and effects" as things that can't be seized without a proper warrant. I don't know what would motivate that if not a right to privacy. Back then, "papers and effects" encompassed just about all forms of nonvolatile communication. Strict constructionists may point to the failure of the framers to explicitly cite electronic signals and magnetic storage, but in my experience that degree of literal-mindedness is usually a sign of idiocy or worse.

Re:"human right to privacy"

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

sorry - but all I see in this country convinces me that any 'paper rights' have long since been invalided IN PRACTICE.

I agree. The "why" is because the Constitution is "just a goddamned piece of paper" in the minds of our elected representatives^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hleaders for quite some time now.

Re:"human right to privacy"

[Anonymous Coward]

All I see is:

redacted, redacted, redacted, redacted

respectively

Re:"human right to privacy"

[Qzukk]

if we have a right to privacy, as you assert, then WHY is there widespread wiretapping, sneak-and-peeks, secret courts, DMCA takedowns and so on?

The fact that the government ignores these rights doesn't mean you don't have them, it just means the government is infringing on them while making it harder and harder for you to enforce your rights.

Re:"human right to privacy"

[kraut]

UN Declaration on human rights: Article 12.
            No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks

Hasn't been repealed yet.

Re:"human right to privacy"

[TriggerFin]

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy...

Is the word "arbitrary" just there for legalistic flavor, or does it mean something? It could mean that as long as everyone gets the same treatment, there's no problem. Alternatively, it could mean an arbiter cannot order interference with your privacy (issue a warrant, for example).

Tag badsummary.

[CSMatt]

In short, most color printers print small yellow dots on every sheet in a code that identifies the printer and, potentially, its owner. Every instance I've heard of this involves color laser printers. AFAIK color inkjet printers don't do this.

Re:Tag badsummary.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

AFAIK, it has to do with the DPI of the printer. I think only laser printers have those resolutions, however. The idea is to prevent someone from printing $100 bills/IDs/etc on their printer.

Re:Tag badsummary.

[ddrichardson]

The idea is to prevent someone from printing $100 bills/IDs/etc on their printer.

Yes but that doesn't mean that it could not be used by, say an agency that wishes to monitor who is distributing political leaflets for example. Looking at the US from the outside, freedom of speech and the press are wonderful - it seems that your government is accessing more and more ways to check how you are using those freedoms.

Re:Tag badsummary.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Yes but that doesn't mean that it could not be used by, say an agency that wishes to monitor who is distributing political leaflets for example. Looking at the US from the outside, freedom of speech and the press are wonderful - it seems that your government is accessing more and more ways to check how you are using those freedoms

That's true.. I just was trying to explain the laser printer/inkjet divide, not justify whether the tracking is reasonable. There is a legitimate anti-forgery concern, but that seems solved by making the official versions more complicated/use holograms or foil/etc.

Re:Tag badsummary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever tried to print or photocopy money?

What printers/copiers do in that case is much more visible than yellow dots...

The yellow dots would in no way prevent casual counterfeiting, since they're not visible under normal circumstances.

only laser printers do this

[petes_PoV]

... part of a deal struck with selected color laser printer manufacturers, ostensibly to identify counterfeiters ...

The article suggests it's only a problem with laser printers, so no ink, only toner

Or connect to a network...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or install the driver...

Come on, if you use a grocery loyalty card and cash every single time, there is no tie to your spending habits. Until you accidentally use a credit card once. And then your entire history can be backfilled.

Better option? Old printer or black ink/toner only printer.

I'd like to see somebody sue the printer companies for prematurely drawing down the yellow ink.

Re:Or connect to a network...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about your loyalty cards, but I've never seen one where you didn't have to register your name to get it.

Re:Or connect to a network...

[plague3106]

Except for the name and address form you fill out to get the loyalty card?

Re:Or connect to a network...

[socsoc]

My experiences have been that they give you the card and a postcard type of form to fill out your info and then mail in. I've never mailed it in out of laziness and sometimes get new ones when I've been caught at the store without a card. Perhaps we shop at different places, only 2 grocers in my area use those.

Ha! Suckers!

[Anonymous Coward]

My ... printer .- never -- prints ..- such . silly .-.. codes; -- In --- fact .-. I ... have . never .-.. seen .. such ...- a . thing! ...

Re:Ha! Suckers!

[wgoodman]

There are easier codes now adays, what with the advent of the intertubes and input devices that allow more than a binary entry method. Pretty sure he's still dead. (but i did get a chuckle)

Re:Ha! Suckers!

[Anonymous Coward]

samuel
morse
lives

ROFL

Re:Ha! Suckers!

[irenaeous]

My ... printer .- never -- prints ..- such . silly .-.. codes; -- In --- fact .-. I ... have . never .-.. seen .. such ...- a . thing! ...

Cute.

The embedded morse Code says:

SAMUEL MORSE LIVES

Confusing the code

[s31523]

I wonder what would happen if you printed a blank sheet of paper, would the dots come out, or if you wanted to confuse the code, maybe print the same item twice on two different printers... Hmmmm, I wonder if that would work.

Re:Confusing the code

[corsec67]

Even worse, what if you took a printer that doesn't print the codes, and got someone else's printer code, and printed that on the page?
Good way to frame someone?

"This must have come from your printer, the serial number is embedded in the page"

regardless...

[owlnation]

while they do not violate any laws, secret printer tracking dot codes may violate the human right to privacy guaranteed by the EU's Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

Nevertheless, in the UK it's probable that such codes will become not only permissible, but compulsory. After all, how might terrorist propaganda be traced to its source otherwise?

I'd like to think the above paragraph is a joke. But it's not. Night is falling on the UK.

Re:regardless...

[BlueParrot]

At which point one of you guys ought to push it to the European Court of human rights. It has struck down bad laws in England (and other countries ) before and it can do so again. Violating the spirit of human rights is one thing, ignoring an actual judgment by the European court of human rights is quite another.

Re:regardless...

[Anonymous Coward]

Violating the spirit of human rights is one thing, ignoring an actual judgment by the European court of human rights is quite another.

Yeah. You absolutely DO NOT want to get on the wrong side of the European Court of Human Rights. If they were upset enough they might write you a strongly worded letter. If you were foolish enough to ignore the strongly worded letter they might start to sulk or even hold their breath until they passed out. You wouldn't want them to sulk or pass out now would you? I didn't think so.

sorry what privacy?

[ILongForDarkness]

How is it a privacy invasion? People can figure out who sent that printed paper, so? If you hand wrote it they could figure it out too. Either way they have to have a comparision to identify you, ie. they have to suspect you run a test sheet and compare.

Re:sorry what privacy?

[Bloodoflethe]

That's jut the point of this thing. They don't have to compare anything. They just look at the code that identifies the printer. They then call up the manufacturer and say, "To whom is this printer registered?" And then they know. Simple as that. They don't have to suspect you. Your printer was the source of this propaganda, whether or not you were the one using it.

Re:sorry what privacy?

[Maxo-Texas]

It removes your ability to put up anonymous flyers and handbills.

But I suppose you could silkscreen it after printing it.

Re:sorry what privacy?

[ILongForDarkness]

Oh no, you can't do business without letting people know which business their dealing with. I can't see printer manufactures releasing that information to anyone that calls in, and I don't see where law enforcement being able to call up a printer manufacture and find out who registered a printer is a privacy infringement. Presumably something illegal has been done otherwise the police wouldn't be involved. It just aids in the investigation. In this day and age corps know enough to get a supeona before releasing info or risk bad press/law suites so what is the problem?

Re:sorry what privacy?

[AJWM]

Presumably something illegal has been done otherwise the police wouldn't be involved.

That's a mighty big presumption.

It could be a jealous cop tracking down a note sent to his girlfriend.

Or it could be some politician pushing willing cops to track down the source of some otherwise anonymous flyers opposing that politician or his policies.

No doubt the telcos that are currently desperately seeking immunity from certain lawsuits just presumed something illegal was going on or the feds wouldn't be involved in asking for wiretaps. (Well, there was -- the wiretaps themselves.) If there's a legitimate reason for asking -- either for printer codes or wiretaps -- then the authorities should have no problem getting a warrant for that.

Re:sorry what privacy?

[ILongForDarkness]

Yes and that warrant/supeona should be presented to the company before they release info. The info existing isn't a problem in itself. With proper protections in place to make sure that it is a "legitimate request" I don't see what the problem is.

Re:sorry what privacy?

[cicho]

A what?

Telcos didn't need no stinkin' warrant to welcome illegal wiretapping equipment, and you expect a printer manufacturer to ask for a warrant? Seriously?

Re:sorry what privacy?

[Maxo-Texas]

heheh.

I do not think anyone else read your sarcasm.

lol. Very droll.

Re:sorry what privacy?

[ILongForDarkness]

Glad I could be of assistance. Hopefully the blow over from the telco stuff will actually make companies paranoid enough to demand a supeona first, but who knows?

Kind of sad

[Filter]

We think our human rights stem from what someone has written down? Do we attribute our freedom to what no one else has taken from us? "even in the US constitution" wtf man, live free or die!

EFF Code Cracking Guide

[milsoRgen]

The EFF has some handy dandy info on this very subject, http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/

Re:EFF Code Cracking Guide

[gardyloo]

It IS handy, but I checked those EFF pages earlier. The test sheets for one to test one's own color printer are redirecting to an EFF frontpage, and the files seem to be unavailable.

I was printing this story out

[LM741N]

but all I got was yellow dots

Re:I was printing this story out

[CortoMaltese]

but all I got was yellow dots You might want to try switching back to IPv4, and shorter host and user names. Sometimes just enlarging the margins will do the job. Of course, YMMV. HTH.

Is this Slashdot.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Or is it "IDon'tBelieveInImaginaryProperty.org? Does this guy ever get a submission rejected?

Re:inkjets might

[Migraineman]

Last week, my brother-in-law was having trouble printing with a brand-new Brother inkjet. He was trying to print a B/W document, but the printer refused to print because the yellow ink cart was depleted. Granted, this is second hand info (to me; third-hand to you,) but it makes me puspicious.

With an inkjet, it'd be pretty obvious if it was "phantom" printing all over a page that was just supposed to have B/W text up top. Something linear at the beginning of a page wouldn't draw as much attention. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the printer in question, otherwise I would've already confirmed that it does or does not print the dots. Our corporate Brother HL-4040CN color laser definitely prints the dots. We tested it last week.

Rather have safety than that degree of privacy.

[GarryFre]

If this breaks privacy laws than so do licence plates. How would you feel if you started finding threatening notes on your car and around your home and the perp could not be caught because of privacy laws and you suffered great harm? How would you feel if they caught the perp when that first note showed up? Freedom is fine, but not when it becomes freedom to harm others with impunity. I would rather not sacrifice my safety on the altar of privacy.

Re:Rather have safety than that degree of privacy.

[corsec67]

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin

Re:Rather have safety than that degree of privacy.

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference here is that a license plate is plainly visible, while the markings on paper are nearly invisible and probably not documented in any user-manuals. The privacy is implied for your printed documents, not so much for your obviously-marked motor vehicle.

Nobody noticed...

[Poodleboy]

Doesn't anyone notice that the EU's "official statement" was released as a .DOC file? So, if I'm a citizen of the EU, I have to pay money to Microsoft to participate in my government?

What's worse is that we're so inured to this sort of thing, nobody even noticed!

Fenestrae delendae sunt.

Re:Nobody noticed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh fuck off and go live in some cave ... after all you would have to pay money to someone anyway , even if they released this as using radio,tv,newspaper as a medium.

Re:Nobody noticed...

[Vegeta99]

Did you try calling them and asking for it on paper?

Well, then you'd have had to pay the damn phone company. And those teachers that taught you to read.

How about you mail them a letter? Then you have to pay them directly for access to it!

Re:Nobody noticed...

[teslar]

So, if I'm a citizen of the EU, I have to pay money to Microsoft to participate in my government?

Naw, you can just look at it in Openoffice or whatever. Hell, even Microsoft has free Word viewers floating around. And if you really object that much to even touching a .doc, you can mail it to one of those fancy document-converters and have it turned into a pdf...

Hate Microsoft (or the EU) all you want, but this is rather stupid as a reason.

Re:Nobody noticed...

[Loconut1389]

OpenOffice saves and loads DOC files just fine.

Re:Nobody noticed...

[ray-auch]

Why on earth would you have to pay money to Microsoft to read .doc ?

Microsoft themselves have free (as in no money) viewers available for download, and dozens of other packages (both free and not free, in either money or libre sense) will view .doc files.

If you don't want to install software, there are also dozens of online conversion services (some of which are free) that support .doc files as input.

Re:Nobody noticed...

[Agent.Nihilist]

Of course There is no possible way that you may be able download a free document viewer that lets you read these types of files is there?
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=95E24C87-8732-48D5-8689-AB826E7B8FDF&displaylang=en
That would be unheard of.

Re:Nobody noticed...

[base3]

You still have to have an MS operating system to run the viewer, so it still requires paying MS for a license to participate in government.

Re:Nobody noticed...

[Agent.Nihilist]

Then use Open Office, it also supports the .doc filetype. Look, the point is that while you protest about the unfairness off it all there are easily accessed free alternatives. Microsoft themselves provide one just as the Open Source community does.

Re:Nobody noticed...

[base3]

I wasn't protesting anything, just pointing out that the Word Viewer isn't free, as it requires having paid for Windows. Now you've tried to change your statement by waving your hands about "free alternatives," which are only free in the sense of being without cost, as opposed to being free as in open, as public documents must be to be truly public.

Re:Nobody noticed...

[Macthorpe]

The OP was talking about free in the sense of being without cost, so it's actually you who has turned the conversation to a different definition of 'free'.

Re:Nobody noticed...

[Agent.Nihilist]

My statement was to begin with that you can easily get a freely access able reader for that type of document. The purpose of my initial link was to highlight that fact that Microsoft provides a free reader for the file. now if you are running a non-Microsoft OS then you can use freely available software like Open Office that even comes standard in several distros.

Re:Nobody noticed...

[base3]

Fair enough--in any case, though, government documents should be readable without proprietary software or even "free" software required to work around proprietary formats.

Re:Nobody noticed...

[base3]

But Microsoft doesn't provide that free version--rather, it required the community to reverse engineer the DOC format to provide it, and still thus had a cost. The use of a vendor-specific document format is unnecessary and should not be allowed for public government documents.

Re:Nobody noticed...

[Agent.Nihilist]

This will probably not be read but:

"For the last 10 years Microsoft has also made available freeware viewer programs, but only for Windows, that can read Word documents without a full version of the MS Word software.[8] Microsoft has also provided converters that enable different versions of Word to import and export to older Word versions and other formats and converters for older Word versions to read documents created in newer Word formats.[9] The whole Office product range is covered by the Office Converter Pack for Office 97-2003 and Office Compatibility Pack for Office 2000-2007 since the release of Office 2007.[10]"

An excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word
Which is what my original link points to. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=95E24C87-8732-48D5-8689-AB826E7B8FDF&displaylang=en
A free viewer provided by microsoft

Re:Nobody noticed...

[base3]

"Only for Windows" != free, that was the point of my original post.

What about digital cameras?

[MoxFulder]

Are there any digital cameras that watermark photos with identifying information? So that if you take a photo and post it on the internet, the manufacturer/government could track it, even if you strip out the EXIF data?

I'm curious...

Re:What about digital cameras?

[element-o.p.]

Hmmmm...interesting idea, but I'm not sure it would work, since the (arguably) most common format for such pictures is JPEG, which is a lossy format. Obvious watermarks (like those you see on many web pages) will work, of course, but isn't there a risk that a watermark that was sufficiently slight to prevent a human from noticing also be sufficiently slight to be erased by the JPEG compression algorithm? I don't know that it wouldn't work; just askin' :)

Re:What about digital cameras?

[Bandman]

I don't remember which models were supposed to start it, but Canon has a couple that are going to scan your eye and "encode" that information into the photo. They claim it's so you can protect yourself from IP infringement.

Re:What about digital cameras?

[brunascle]

the watermarking could be built into the compression algorithm, or added after the algorithm runs.

i imagine it might even be easier to watermark lossy formats, since imperfections (and anomalies) in the final product wouldn't arouse suspicion.

Re:What about digital cameras?

[ColdWetDog]

You're looking in the wrong place. Said data wouldn't be in the image portion of the file for the abovementioned reasons. You would store it in the metadata section (see, for example the EXIF section of wikipedia. In fact, camera makers typically place serial number and actual shutter actuations in the EXIF section which could make it trivial to figure out if a particular camera took a particular shot.

Of course, EXIF is a pretty open standard and there exist numerous utilities to strip the data out when desired. You very well might not want everyone on Flikr to know the serial number of your camera. There is also a "Maker's section" where the camera manufacturers can place non standard, obfuscated and / or encrypted data.

Both Canon and Nikon use these features to create a system to prove that a given camera actually took a given picture. So it can go both ways depending on how you have your tin foil situated.

Re:What about digital cameras?

[Applekid]

There has been some research done in this area. It's not really intentional, but the nature of the CCD sensors. When they're made, they have a target count on how many megapixels it has and not all of them (at least short of research labs) are functional.

Sometimes you can see specifications like "12 Megapixels, 11.1 effective".

These defects are scattered among the surface of the CCD and are statistically unique from one camera to another, even among the same model. While the photos often aren't saved in raw formats, I'd wager if they find a picture of something illegal and wanted to prove your camera took the picture, it'd be trivial to take some pictures with it and match the output files' flaws even with the JPEG encoding by using a control camera of the same shot.

Like how they do ballistic analysis by finding a suspect's gun and fire off a few rounds and compare with rounds found at the scene of a crime.

Re:What about digital cameras?

[MoxFulder]

These defects are scattered among the surface of the CCD and are statistically unique from one camera to another, even among the same model. While the photos often aren't saved in raw formats, I'd wager if they find a picture of something illegal and wanted to prove your camera took the picture, it'd be trivial to take some pictures with it and match the output files' flaws even with the JPEG encoding by using a control camera of the same shot.

Like how they do ballistic analysis by finding a suspect's gun and fire off a few rounds and compare with rounds found at the scene of a crime. Hey Applekid, that's a really interesting point... the pattern of hot/cold pixels on an image sensor is almost certainly unique to that camera.

That, however, is not so troubling to me. Tying a "weapon" to a "crime" after the fact is a pretty standard and legitimate technique. What I'm more troubled by is the idea that camera makers would *pre-emptively* record a unique fingerprint of each camera, *in case* it ever gets used to do something illegal, or just to snoop and follow a trail of photographs on the web or elsewhere. I don't have any evidence of this being done, but since printer makers are doing this, and scanner makers are doing something similar (blocking scans of currency and official-looking documents), I wouldn't put it past camera/sensor manufacturers...

Re:What about digital cameras?

[moosesocks]

I believe that Canon has explicitly stated that the feature has to be manually turned on, and that there is a non-trivial setup process to get it working. In other words, the privacy implications of the feature are essentially nonexistant.

Watermarking technology for copyright-protection already exists. Canon is simply one of the first to be building it into their cameras.

Given that image plagiarism is a legitimate problem for professional photographers, the feature does make a good bit of sense.

Re:What about digital cameras?

[Creepy Crawler]

True, but isn't that defeated by application of a dark field mask (or at least crippled)?

Dark field definition: Take a photo with lens cap on, then observe the image file of what should be black. One will see spots of colors in which the CCD triggers at defective locations. One can apply as a negative filter to all images proceeding the dark-field image so have better appropriate colors.

Re:What about digital cameras?

[element-o.p.]

Very cool...I wrote a one-liner script** on my linux box to look at some JPEGs I recently took with my Canon Powershot. It looks like it is definitely recording make and model of the camera, and a time/date stamp, but I don't see any thing in the Exif data that is *obviously* a serial number. However, that could just be a limitation of my script, since I'm throwing away all of the binary data. Now I'm gonna have to go look for an Exif reader program to see for sure

**Here's my one-liner for anyone who's interested in parsing your own Exif data:
cat | sed "s/[^a-zA-Z0-9\!\@\#\$\%\^\&\*\(\)\:\;\'\"\,\<\.\>\/\?]//g" | grep Exif

Re:What about digital cameras?

[Pirulo]

think about less significant bit, it can be embedded in the picture as well,

Re:What about digital cameras?

[bsims]

That, however, is not so troubling to me. Tying a "weapon" to a "crime" after the fact is a pretty standard and legitimate technique. What I'm more troubled by is the idea that camera makers would *pre-emptively* record a unique fingerprint of each camera, *in case* it ever gets used to do something illegal, or just to snoop and follow a trail of photographs on the web or elsewhere.

And yet when laws were passed required doing exactly that to sell a legal product in California, it was lauded as a wonderful idea.

But firearms don't count, I guess. I am glad in some ways that other's hobbies are now being treated with as much disdain as mine. Maybe in addition to the National Rifle Association we need the National Photography Association.

Re:What about digital cameras?

[joostje]

aptitude install exif
exif pict7801.jpg

There you have the non-binary exif information.

Re:What about digital cameras?

[Butterspoon]

I believe that Canon has explicitly stated that the feature has to be manually turned on, and that there is a non-trivial setup process to get it working. In other words, the privacy implications of the feature are essentially nonexistant.

Not true. I can "spy" on you by secretly turning on the feature on your camera. Because the setup is nontrivial, you're unlikely to spot that it's suddenly become active. I leave it as an exercise to come up with a scenario where this would be useful.

Also could be the thin end of the wedge...

Re:What about digital cameras?

[Stanistani]

Hey, I respect gun owners, but that's a spurious comparison.

I can't pull out my Nikon and hold up a liquor store.

Not unless the clerk is REALLY vain.

Re:What about digital cameras?

[element-o.p.]

emerge exiftool did the trick -- it returns lot's more info than my script above. BTW, forgot to escape a couple of special characters in the one-liner I posted. It should have been "cat ...

I've got a perl script on my linux box that uses Image::Magick to convert the images to other sizes (for example, for creating thumbnails for web pages), and I was surprised to see the Exif data even in my thumbnails as well as the original. Good to know just in case you don't want an image being possibly tracked back to your camera...

Re:What about digital cameras?

[LM741N]

How the hell does a Canon camera without a macro lens focus on your eye. I'm lucky if I can get a shot a foot away.

Re:What about digital cameras?

[TheLink]

Exactly.

You don't even need to use the owner's eye to register when secretly turning that feature on. You could use a unique fake "eye" instead. I don't think the camera will care that much.

If the owner doesn't remove the "sig", then maybe one day you'll know who posted that photo scoop...

Re:What about digital cameras?

[Mxyzptlk]

Actually, the reason that the number of effective pixels are lower is that the CCD is slightly larger than the area of light that gets through the lens. This means that there is a (thin) frame around the edges of the CCD that is not used for taking the picture; this area is used as a baseline to calibrate light levels.

No big deal

[PPH]

All of the documents produced in our office have a large brown ring stamped on them that can be traced back to the coffee mug of the engineer that produced them.

Re:Privacy is over-rated.

[BlueParrot]

There are a couple of differences between license plates and this.

a)The license plates are clearly visible, while the printer code is intended to be unnoticeable by the user. I.e, most users don't even know they are being tracked.

b)When you drive your car you are using public infrastructure, such as the roads. In many countries there is no obligation to have license plates on a car you only use in a private space.

c) The license plate identifies one particular car, not [necessarily] the factory that made it. The printer code identifies the printer, not the paper it is on.

I'm sure there is more, but clearly the parent post is just another example that car analogies suck.

Re:inkjets might

[Itninja]

it makes me puspicious

Yuck! And also, most inkjet printers won't print (even in B/W) when any cartridge is empty. The newer inkjets have the printhead in the carriage, and not on each cartridge as wass the case with early inkjets. So, if there is a dry cartridge (or no cartridge), and printing is allowed anyway, it can ruin the printhead.

Re:Privacy is over-rated.

[db32]

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Not very hard to understand. If you are going to let your fear control you, please move away and stop supporting making my country worse.

Go read about the horrific things the intelligence community did during the Cold War even here in the US. Then tell me privacy is overrated when you make it to a government watch list for a "crime" that is only defined in secret laws.

Re:Privacy is over-rated.

[atchius]

License plates allow you to be identified driving a registered vehicle in public. It's mere convenience that keeps us from wanting to unscrew them every time we drive onto private property (e.g., a parking lot or driveway). The government is saying, "You drive on our roads, you follow our rules". Fair enough, right? It's the government requirement of these laser printer codes that's an invasion of privacy. Maybe a fair (albeit insane) requirement would be that any documents posted in public be encoded with the dots. What's that quote by Ben Franklin or David Hume or Richard Jackson or somebody? "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

TRAITOR

[DrSkwid]

If you've known about this since 1997 why didn't you tell anybody ? The EFF only started working on it in 2005

> I'd like to know why this is such a big deal to individual people first off.

Because some of us actually organise against the machinations of the state, perhaps you've heard of extraordinary rendition the US govt. has been doing or the 30,000 Argentines who were disappeared between 1976 and 1978 for opposing their govt.

It is extraordinarily naive of you to think that having previously secret (thanks in part to YOU) invisible identifying marks on every document printed from your printer isn't a cause for concern.

Re:TRAITOR

[LelandWitter]

Just because YOU didn't know about this, doesn't mean it is a secret. I have nothing to do with the printer industry and I've known about it for many years. It seems to be pretty common knowledge, at least around moderately technical types. I wouldn't doubt that it's been used in a CSI episode or similar.

Re:TRAITOR

[Mnemen]

Just so you know it was for sure in an episode of CSI. Off track from the main conversation I know, but just reassuring your assesment.

Re:TRAITOR

[DrSkwid]

So you knew in 1997 ?

Re:TRAITOR

[LelandWitter]

I have no idea - all I know is that I've known this fact for so long I can't remember when or where I heard about it. It's on the wikipedia page for "computer printers" for pete's sake - maybe you can search the change logs to see who added it and when. There's even a page called "printer steganography" that references a PC World article from 2004. Actually, I can remember where I was working at one point when I had a discussion of this trivia, so that would have been between April-December 2001.

Re:TRAITOR

[DrSkwid]

The EFF started to highlight the matter in 2005.
The poster says he's known about it for over a decade, that's at least '97.
I'm surprised you consider it trivia, perhaps you're a traitor / collaborator too.

Re:Privacy is over-rated.

[mh1997]

It's the government requirement of these laser printer codes that's an invasion of privacy.

Privacy isn't the only problem, it affects business and profits too. We were counterfeiting $20 bills and had to switch our whole operation over to engraved plates and old printing presses. Overhead has gone through the roof.

Now with Clinton and Obama talking about mandatory health insurance and unionization, we could be out of business next January.

I wish the government would just leave me alone and quit watching every move I make.

Threatening note, call in the cyber-squad!

[Comboman]

How would you feel if you started finding threatening notes on your car and around your home and the perp could not be caught because of privacy laws and you suffered great harm?

I'd feel that the police must be idiots if the only way they can think of to catch the perp is by using secret printer codes. It's a good thing people never use handwriting for threatening notes (or the letters cut out of magazines that always seem to be used for ransom notes on TV).

NDA

[tepples]

If you've known about this since 1997 why didn't you tell anybody ? I'm guessing it's a confidentiality agreement. Employees can't talk about the code unless and until someone else publishes the existence of the code.

Re:NDA

[PCM2]

Unless they're a socially conscious whistle-blower. Then they can talk about any goddamn thing they want.

Re:NDA

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've known about this since 1997 why didn't you tell anybody ? I'm guessing it's a confidentiality agreement. Employees can't talk about the code unless and until someone else publishes the existence of the code. Anonymous Coward + spare time + desire to release everything = much fun for everyone

Re:inkjets might

[tepples]

And also, most inkjet printers won't print (even in B/W) when any cartridge is empty. The newer inkjets have the printhead in the carriage, and not on each cartridge as wass the case with early inkjets. So, if there is a dry cartridge (or no cartridge), and printing is allowed anyway, it can ruin the printhead. When the printhead is parked, the nozzles are capped. Why can't it just uncap the black when printing in grayscale?

Is your PC's BIOS free?

[tepples]

Doesn't anyone notice that the EU's "official statement" was released as a .DOC file? So, if I'm a citizen of the EU, I have to pay money to Microsoft to participate in my government? Did you try running strings on it? What about wvWare? OpenOffice.org? Do you regularly complain that you have to pay money to your PC's BIOS developer, which is just as foreign as Microsoft?

wait a second...

[nguy]

This is the same EU where there are cameras on every corner in the UK? The same EU where cameras track, record, and transmit license plate numbers to central servers nationwide in Germany? The same EU where you register where you live with the government? Where many personal records are available and shared by government offices?

And they are concerned whether printed paper contains a code that is not even tied to a person but merely a print engine? Don't make me laugh.

Similar technology in scanners/copiers...

[Muad'Dave]

...to prevent counterfeiting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

Re:Similar technology in scanners/copiers...

[Muad'Dave]

And another fascinating one: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/projects/currency/

Re:Similar technology in scanners/copiers...

[Blue_Wombat]

Does someone have a file of the Eurion Constellation that can be downloaded. I have always fancied putting this on a t-shirt or a tie so that people mysteriously suddenly can't scan or print out photos with me in them. It would be a hoot to wear one of these to a school or work function where photos are being taken.

Plates to VINs

[tepples]

c) The license plate identifies one particular car, not [necessarily] the factory that made it.

Citation needed. Agencies that issue license plates keep records associating each plate with a unique identifier of a motor vehicle. This VIN includes a "World Manufacturer Identifier" code and a code identifying the plant where the vehicle was made.

Or do English pronouns need more persons?

Trackable Printers

[GHynson]

If I was a terrorist,.. I'd just go back to old school "movable type" printing presses.

Check your atlas

[Anonymous Coward]

The largest city in Turkey is on the European side of the Bosphorus. (In fact, it's also the most populous city in all of Europe, and 4th in the world.) Geographically, Turkey is considered part of Southern Europe.

Turkey is most accurately described as transcontinental. To say it's not European is simply untrue.

Re:Privacy is over-rated.

[MrMacman2u]

c) The license plate identifies one particular car, not [necessarily] the factory that made it. The printer code identifies the printer, not the paper it is on.

The printer code (usually) most certainly DOES identify the paper it is on, it contains the unique page count of that page, and sometimes even the DATE AND TIME of the printout.

For example, a typical dot code will allow you, if deciphered, to say that "This was document 379,125 and was printed from a Lexmark C912 with the serial number '3fg4f2gh31111111oneone'"

Strange... that's a LOT like a car... I.E. "That guy was driving a 1997 Ford Feista with the plate number '8myrust'"

Canada?

[Jason1729]

Wouldn't they be illegal in Canada too then? Maybe under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

virtual MOD points.

[JonTurner]

Best suggestion yet.
Yes, in theory adding random dots would introduce noise into the signal and potentially degrade it to the points it's no longer useful, but only if you can interfere with the pattern. Put another way, unless you know the location of the dot codes, to reach the level of noise necessary to obscure you'd have to cover the page; there would be so many random yellow dots so as to be perceptible.

Re:virtual MOD points.

[Anonymous Coward]

A good way to locate the yellow patterns is to swap the color cartridge with a black cartridge, if the printer allows that. Even in black, they're still small, but more visible.

Re:virtual MOD points.

[MrMacman2u]

Ruddy brilliant idea! Introducing "noise" is a great idea, but there is a catch....

The dot codes are a small "matrix" squares ranging from 1"x1" to 2"x2" depending on make and manufacture, sort of like those new style "barcodes" that look like a jumble of black squares... only more spaced out, the actual dot density is very low in the matrix (most laser printers you can fit 600-1200 dots in an inch) and generally there is only around a few dozen dots in the entire matrix.

That in and of itself is not bad... but that matrices are in a repeating tiled pattern.... across the entire page.

If I'm understanding the concept well enough (I'm a hardware guy, and SO not a programmer lol) due to the large number of repeating samples, to truely mask the code well enough you'd either need to introduce a TON of noise across the entire page and still stand the risk that there are enough partial codes left to build back from, as well as turning the entire page slightly yellow ^_^

Or, overlay a noise "pattern" directly on top of the dot codes, which would require needing to know the size of the matrix patterns...

IMHO, adding noise to interfere with the dot codes sounds pretty difficult and at worst, wasteful of yellow toner...

Still a really great idea! I'd love to see your work if you do dive into this!

Re:virtual MOD points.

[MrMacman2u]

Small kink in your plan, all laser printers have some kind of protection against putting the wrong toner cartridge in the wrong slot, ranging from a small circuit to physical differences of the cartridges... It's probably be far easier to take an empty yellow cartridge and refill it with black toner** assuming your cartridges are not UID tagged by the company that sells them and once they are flagged as "empty" you can not reuse them come heck or high water... **HUGE MESS WARNING!

Re:virtual MOD points.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most machines use a chip mounted on the cartridge to identify themselves to the printer - that's generally all you need to change (there are aftermarket chips out there if you don't want to swap your originals, although I don't know about individual sales). Different physical molds on different color cartridges is relatively unusual - the costs are high enough without making, keeping track of, and shipping worldwide for assembly slightly different parts for different colors.

Just like the US constitution

[aepervius]

Apparently it only apply to US citizen. (if you don't think so, I have a hint for you : gitmo).

Re:Just like the US constitution

[Mister Whirly]

However, being a US citizen doesn't automatically protect you. (if you don't think so, I have a hint for you: Jose Padilla).

Easy solution

[aepervius]

1) plan to counterfeit money with a nice color printer
2) steal one. Social engineering at a firm to get a copy of printer order. Or just plain pay somebody to give you a copy.
3) watch the wrong guy land in prison and laugh all the way to your money laundering place of choice


Alternatively : 1) plan to counterfeit money with a nice color printer
2) Pay an underpaid tech to switch this off (if possible)

3) watch the wrong guy land in prison and laugh all the way to your money laundering place of choice


This can only catch the average idiot. Not a real criminal.

Every inkjet I've owned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Every inkjet I've owned striped the image badly unless you dumped out half a cartridge cleaning it, so I doubt a single dot pattern would ever be discernable.

WRONG! My inkjet does this!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've printed many blank pages on my HP DeskJet 6540. This is an inkjet printer.

It prints the dots.

It's NOT just lasers or high-end printers!

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

Blue Light Special

[AJWM]

P.S. - If you can get some, print a color page on black paper (preferably semi-gloss), the dots stand out really well

They stand out just fine on white paper under blue light, as one of the EFF pages illustrates.

1. Every color laser printer made in the last 10 years from every manufacturer that I have ever encountered uses the "yellow dots" tagging.

Then I guess you haven't encountered HP 4500 or HP 8500 series printers (maybe they don't need to be repaired as much?). One of the other EFF pages lists a number of other printer models that don't use yellow dots (which isn't to say that they don't use some other kind of tagging).

Re:Privacy is over-rated.

[TheSkyIsPurple]

> just another example that car analogies suck

Car analogies are like cars.

If you take them too far, they stop working

Re:Simple enough fix... To add to that...

[davidsyes]

Even B&W could have some slight embedded peculiarities invisible to the naked eye. A scaled steganographic identifier/pattern could be there, waiting for law enforcement to decode. So, I'd say, if you're worried about COLOR, then worry, too, about B&W...

What if yellow doesn't print?

[Clomer]

I've been having an issue with my Dell A920 printer recently where it refuses to print yellow at all. Blues and Reds print fine, but yellows don't get printed. No error message or anything, it just doesn't print. So my printer may well be trying to print the yellow dots, but is failing without knowing it.

I am now wondering if this is a result of the yellow print head getting worn out by all the excess yellow printing in the past. Oh well. I mostly only print in black and white anyway. The printer prints much faster that way.

From the summary..

[Repton]

..Convention on fundamental human rights and freedoms. If you don't remember what these are.. Ho. Ho. Ho.

Re:inkjets might

[Itninja]

I dunno. Probably for the same reason you don't buy a color printer for color and a separate mono laser for b/w - it's costs money and it's inefficient. And remember greyscale is not the same as monochrome. Printing in greyscale usually uses all the colors to provide a broader gamut of 'grey'. Otherwise, you would just get fax-machine quality greyscale.

Prepared to be overturned

[hey!]

While we should all shout huzzah at the sentiment of your post, the legal status of the argument that the Bill of rights protects privacy is very shaky indeed. Truth be told, the Bill of Rights is a hasty patch on some specific abuses that eighteenth century people were concerned about; it doesn't explicitly recognize or define the underlying problem of privacy.

Now, you might think that Bill of Rights' amendments don't make much sense if there isn't a right to privacy, and liberal justices such as William O. Douglas would agree with you. In Griswold v. Connecticut, the power of the state to take part in (or interfere if you prefer) private decisions about contraception was curbed using precisely this logic. Justice Douglas, writing for the majority discerned a right to privacy in the "penumbra" of the amendments you mention. The choice of words, while metaphorically apt, was unfortunate. It's a red flag advertising that the court is engaging in creative exegesis, rather than dealing in the plain language of the law.

Now consider this: the idea established in the Griswold decision, that the Bill of Rights logically implies a right to privacy, is the fundamental basis of Roe v. Wade. In order to overturn Roe v. Wade, the court would very likely have to throw out the notion of a Constitutional right to privacy. This is why "strict construction" is so important to social conservatives. It's a conservative kind of idea, but really it's not very tenable when you consider the entire range of issues it could be applied to. Where does it say in the Constitution that states have to recognize the personhood of corporations? That's not a strict construction. Really, the prospect under strict construction is more of what we have now: selective literalism. The only difference is ideological.

Basically, one more conservative justice and a Constitutional right to privacy is out the window, in the name of strict construction, and to the end of outlawing abortion. Logically speaking, failing to see a right to privacy in the Bill of Rights is certainly no more of a hurdle than failing to see an unlimited copyright term in continual and routine copyright extension. Common sense tells us the privacy is one of the things the Bill of Rights is supposed to protect. But in fact it does not literally do so, just as it does not literally prevent a copyright term of ten thousand years.

Should the government be able to snoop on your computer? Well, the information on your hard drive is not literally your "person, house, papers, or effects," so it's not literally covered under the Fourth Amendment. It's clearly covered under the intent of the amendment, but that's just another way of saying the Fourth Amendment has a penumbra.

Turkey is not European

[Anonymous Coward]

Geographically, Turkey is considered part of Southern Europe.

I notice you only claimed Turkey was geographically slightly European, because culturally it is NOT European. Turkey will never be allowed into the EU for a number of reasons - chiefly that it's not European in culture, socially and lacks a real democracy.

Why no response to the FOIA request?

[Deton8]

Almost three years ago EFF sent a detailed and thoughtful FOIA request to the Secret Service on this topic. Surely if they had responded EFF would have posted the information, so one must assume the SS is sandbagging on this one. Sucks when a law enforcement agency decides to ignore the law.

Re:inkjets might

[CSMatt]

Really? Every inkjet printer (mostly HPs and Lexmarks) I've ever used will print just fine if the color cartridge is empty or even nonexistent.

consistency ... Latin!

[pbhj]

>>> "Fenestrae delendae sunt."

So you're so bothered about people being able to read documents that you wrote your sig in Latin so noone could read it.

Presumably it's something like "windows sucks"?

Re:consistency ... Latin!

[jdschulteis]

>>> "Fenestrae delendae sunt."

So you're so bothered about people being able to read documents that you wrote your sig in Latin so noone could read it.

Presumably it's something like "windows sucks"? "Windows must be destroyed"

Not So Fast!

[Xenographic]

My printer is an inkjet and it DOES print them!

Don't write it off as lasers only so quickly.

BWAHAHAH

[furbearntrout]

Customer:"Can I fill this out and turn it in later?"
Cashier:(^_^)"Sure, anytime. Just go to the customer service desk."

The standard method is to encourage the customer to fill out the form without causing a Bad Customer Experience.

Tenth Amendment - powers reserved to the people

[vinn01]

Tenth Amendment - powers reserved to the people:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

Let's shorten that since the states are not involved in this:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the people."

The whole point of the Constitution is limited government. Everything else under the sun is reserved to the people.

HUMAN right to privacy??

[Evil Kerek]

When did human rights start involving privacy? Maybe we should concentrate on getting the 'right to life' one straight before we start worrying about whether you can surf porn privately. How many countries in the world still simply kill people with different opinions (that blow hard chevez comes to mind, for instance...)?

fyi

[Anonymous Coward]

scie-ent-iol-gistas

have already done this, trying to frame a critical (to them) journalist for bomb threats and other criminal activities. like every other religion, they have their share of fanatics, which for some reason are in high abundance during nascent or turbulent times.

the crap about counter fitters is pure baloney. firstly money is printed on special paper, in almost every country, and this is a closely guarded secret. this is why money feels different. it is usually a high silk fiber content. this is also done to enhance durability, to replace metal coins, which if you see ancient examples, or even some modern ones, shows that currency goes through a lot.

most couterfitting is done on a very high level. it involves very skilled individuals, vastly experienced in all sorts of ink, dyes, presses, and many other processes. it is a constant battle of arcane methods. the majority of counterfitting is done by hostile governments, the major one against the USA was the USSR for several reasons. One was to undermine us currency, another was profit, yet another was to offset the impact a us supported black market had on the USSR regime.

the second source of such bills would be highly organized crime. typically millions of dollars are needed to start such an operation, then there are the logistics of keeping it secret, safe etc.

the idea of some bozo with a laser printer and a pirated copy of photoshop is ridiculous. the biggest purchaser of laser printers worldwide would probably be corporate patronization. this invalidates the claim that only the secret service can read the codes on the paper. no company in their right mind would allow such a backdoor, without it benefiting them as well.

lastly the code is usually generated at the last hardware point, usually an ic on the printhead, to make it as difficult as pssible to eradicate or tamper with. sure you could inject code to generate noise as other posters mentioned, but a random attempt at this would have low chances of success as it is more than likely a system like this would be fault tolerant, and would require a serious compromise before anything like this could be attempted.

this type of tracking is very much in spirit with the USA's lust for tracking every known form of communication by its ctizens. look at project echelon and others, and you will get a rough idea of the scope of this lust. a poignant phrase in the tv series "Gotti" sums it up pretty well "assume they have everything"... "They got satelltes now that can hear a snake fart in Egypt."

Locating the yellow dots

[Anonymous Coward]

The best way to locate the yellow dots is to print on black paper.

Fascism pure and simple

[buck19]

I think defective ccds couldn't possibly be that statistically unique and besides couldn't they become defective overtime randomly?? What about the idea of open source hardware?? Demanding manufacturers comply with groups like EFF playing watchdog. This is a terrible infringement on our civil liberties. I mean we are beginning to have a full blown fascist state when we find things like this. Without any democratic component at all we have private companies adding essentially privacy invading police-state devices and features to the products we buy without telling us even.

When can I get reimbursed?

[Anonymous Coward]

When can I get reimbursed for all those damn yellow ink cartridges that run out so fast? A dot here or there might not seem like much, but added up over multiple pages - that might explain things. If I'm not using a particular color for a document, then why should I pay for someone else to?

probably mostly in hardware

[SethJohnson]

Robert, I did read the article and caught that snippet. The author is vague about how the 'owner' is identified. I doubt the printer's drivers search your disk drive looking for identifying info. More likely, the 'potentially its owner' comes from warranty registration cards the manufacturer can cross-reference against serial number data gathered by the 'identifies the printer' part. The other way it could identify the owner would be for the government to cross reference its own database of citizen-printed documents it has within its archives. Mostly that would be tax forms people ignorantly printed in color instead of B/W.

My assumption about whether it prints user-identifying (name, address, etc.) info could be tested by comparing the pattern of dots when the printer is connected to separate computers.

Seth