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Clever Workaround: Visual Cryptography On Austrian Postage Stamps

Posted by timothy on from the stamp-everything-with-tlldr dept.

An anonymous reader writes Have you heard of personalized postage stamps? You pay the value of the stamps plus a fee and the post office prints official stamps usable for postage which show (almost) anything you can put into a jpeg file. An Austrian Tibet supporter found out what 'almost' means. He submitted a picture of the Dalai Lama with the text 'His Holiness the Dalai Lama,' but the Austrian post office refused to produce these stamps. Stampnews and the Neue Zuercher Zeitung (autotranslation) reported that this had been due to pressure from the Chinese embassy in Vienna. Now there is a video showing how visual cryptography has been used to get around this attempt at censorship [caution: organ music] .

11 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Looks like a magic eye picture by charronia · · Score: 2

    I had to squint really hard to see anything at all.

    1. Re:Looks like a magic eye picture by TapeCutter · · Score: 2

      Damned organ music, I missed it because I was waiting for something dramatic to happen!

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    2. Re:Looks like a magic eye picture by davester666 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      why the fuck did the austrian post office ask the chinese embassy if it was OK to print these stamps?

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  2. China by ultranova · · Score: 2, Interesting

    He submitted a picture of the Dalai Lama with the text 'His Holiness the Dalai Lama,' but the Austrian post office refused to produce these stamps. Stampnews and the Neue Zuercher Zeitung (autotranslation) reported that this had been due to pressure from the Chinese embassy in Vienna.

    And this is why we should refuse to do any business with dictatorships. Not only do we help fund the oppression of the Chinese by their government, but that oppression also spreads like a disease and infects our countries as well. And all for the sake of corporate profits, yet even those who reap them ultimately risk reaping Chinese-style political trials and subsequent executions as well.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    1. Re:China by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 2

      Try asking the US Post Office to print stamps with the flag of jihad and see what happens.

    2. Re:China by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      And this is why we should refuse to do any business with dictatorships.

      That might backfire if other governments decide to do the same thing.

      Anyway, if you look at the past 70 years, America just loves dictators. Most of them have luxury condos in Manhattan, anyway.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:China by lgw · · Score: 2

      Well, I have no idea what protections are in the Ozstitution, but you'd have to be nuts to see it as endorsement of a specific religion. As long as anyone can put the religious icon of their choice on the stamp, the government's clean IMO. At least in the US, there's no constitutional protection from ever being exposed to religion.

      Now, I could see an objection to putting a foreign head of state on a stamp, but the Dalai Lama, cool guy that he is, declared himself no longer the ruler of Tibet years ago, and permanently dissociated the religious leadership from the secular government-in-exile of Tibet.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  3. Censorship not avoided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It says

    HH THE
    DALAI
    LAMA

    when you overlap the two stamps (and it's pretty difficult to see that). That's neat and all, but you would have to know to remove the stamps, remove them cleanly, overlay them, and shine a light through them to even see it. And there's no message at all if you have only one stamp. I think the censorship was still basically achieved.

    1. Re:Censorship not avoided by Megane · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think it would have been simpler to just make a QR code to the DL's wikipedia page. And probably as successful.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  4. Erm okay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is it a slow news day? The two linked articles are from years ago and don't actually mention anything about this design your own stamp attempt.

    Most places won't allow you to generate products like these stamps with pictures of famous people on them as they don't want to get sued by said person. Royal Mail definitely won't as they've got two explicit rules that cover it so should be start screaming about censorship there also? "2.2 you have obtained the permission of any person (or their parent or legal guardian) who appears in the material, for their image to be reproduced." and "4.5 it promotes any particular religious beliefs or may offend against any person’s religious beliefs;"

    Anyway, does it even count as getting around censorship when you need to do something obscure to see the result? Just writing under the stamp would have been easier and much easier to read than the final result. This is like a schoolkid method of trying to get one up on somebody else. "Tee hee. They don't know that if you combine my two stamps then you get something that they don't like!"

  5. Re:Look at me! Look at me! by sumdumass · · Score: 2

    I doubt they would bother. Stamps are not translucent and you need at least one of them to be if you ever hope to recombine them to see the message.

    They would have probably been better of just having fhe letters printed in pairs and the end user just stack a few together in the right sequence. With this, you need to know what to look for, scan it into something with the ability to manipulate images to combine them and see the nessage.