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

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.

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.

EFF Code Cracking Guide

[milsoRgen]

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

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: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: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:"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.