Slashdot Mirror
IDs in Color Copies
Slashdot received a lot of submissions of this Privacy Forum article about ID numbers being "watermarked" (just like digital watermarks) into copies made by any color copy machine. Go ahead and read it; the rest of this story assumes that you've read the link.
This not a secret; I remember a case a few years ago where a Columbia University copier was being used to create counterfeit currency, and the imprinted copies were traced straight back to the machine used to create them (amazingly, Altavista turned up an article about this case). Basically, when color copiers first started getting good, the Treasury started leaning on manufacturers to make their products less useful for counterfeiting. AFAIK, there's no law in effect saying that manufacturers MUST include an anti-counterfeiting features in their devices; but on the other hand, there aren't very many equipment manufacturers, so they're easy to lean on.
So today, any copy you make with any color copier will include a unique serial number. Make sure you don't copy anything that someone might want to trace back to you on a color copier. Maybe this isn't that big a deal; color copiers aren't home appliances.
But now home scanners and inkjets make up a nice copying system for as little $200-300. The Treasury Department has a big program devoted to preventing digital copying, and it looks like one of their main concerns is consumer-grade equipment. The Bureau of Printing and Engraving is even soliciting proposals from vendors which have a system suitable for embedding these watermarks in all output produced by color inkjet printers.
Fighting counterfeiting is fine with me. Thus the systems which "recognize" currency and refuse to scan or print it don't seem like too much of an infringement. But embedding serial numbers in all printer output? Maybe I just have a cynical mind, but I can think of about a hundred reasons this is a bad idea.
:-)g
-- My Weblog.
What they're talking about is a watermark embedded using steganography -- placed into the noise of the image, much like copy protection of digital images can be done by Photoshop (and other programs) now.
pooptruck
We just disable this part of the printer/copier/scanner. Time and time again we learn the collegtive intelligence of people who believe in freedom and "fair use" is much higher than the companies trying to stop us.
Perhaps someday, someone other than ourselves will realize this.
Finkployd
..just crop the watermark out..
..it would be interesting to watch the black market..
This is encoded in 'background noise' in the image, and is not visable. The algorithm for decoding the watermark is known only to the manufacturers and a few government agencies.
Wrong. This has been around for at least five years. It is not a new thing. It's been an open secret for years, many people even assuming it was an urban legend, and the media ignoring it.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Canon color lasers (800, 1000, 2400, ect.) all have a board that recognizes things like money and postage stamps. If you try and copy any of these it will spit out all black copies, and will continue to do so until a Canon tech is called. (They usualy call the Secret Service)
Paper and print is a whole different story. I would be wary of buying anything that watermarked everything I printed. I use a (granddaddy) AppleWriter II laser printer, and am reluctant to upgrade to a new printer if I am aware of this sort of thing. My big concern is who can read these watermarks, and why would they ever want to. (Other than for legal reasons, but I can't see myself printing threats off my printer.)
I can see newer laser printers being able to do this sort of thing, but I cannot see why a printer company would risk the public relations disaster that would ensue after someone found it producing a watermark, and any possible corporate backlash from including such a "feature".
I really don't think that much about my privacy, I'd like to think I'm pretty good to get along with in that way, but I (personally -- someone will hopefully point out valid reasons, but I guess valid reasons depend on who can read the watermark ...) can't see any justifiable reason for said watermarks except for perhaps malicious purposes.
Again, food for thought.
-"S"HM
Much Love,
"S"HM
*****
(I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
From the article:
While there is currently no U.S. legislative requirement that manufacturers of copier technology include IDs on color copies, it is also the case that these manufacturers have the clear impression that if they do not include such IDs, legislation to require them would be immediately forthcoming.
Hmmm. OK. So cooperation is used to forestall regulation. What with the proliferation and strange application of various laws, I'm actually more comfortable with manufacturer cooperation than regulation.
From Michael:
But embedding serial numbers in all printer output? Maybe I just have a cynical mind, but I can think of about a hundred reasons this is a bad idea.
The only threat I'm able to think of at the moment is to anonymous free speech. So if someone prints a newsletter with ideas someone doesn't like, the newslettter is branded "subversive", and can be tracked back to the printer. But then what? Can they really be shut down? And how many such "subversisves" really are anonymous anyway?
Tweet, tweet.
Is this really serial numbers? Or is it just detection of the 'flaws'. My understanding was that all photo copiers have scratches on their glass or elsewhere that make them identifiable. Similar to how guns are scratched and therefore identifiable. Or typewritters. I would imagine that anything that has mechanical parts and outputs physical media would have some identifiable marks. Merely by the scartchs marks etc on any mechanical device.
-cpd
The article says that we may see this sort of thing implemented in ink jets soon; I'm hanging onto mine.
Ink jets have come a long way in the last few years, and they've reached the stage where, with the right paper, they can print photographic-quality pictures.
What does this mean? Well, everyone who's planning on doing something nasty-and-traceable will do it on an older printer. Some stupid people won't, and they'll get caught, justifying in the minds of the Man and the public that such watermarking is worthwhile. But, like drug smuggling, the vast majority will slip by unnoticed.
Freedoms will be curtailed, money will be wasted, and it'll all be for nothing. Have a nice day.
On a news segment, it showed one brand of copiers that messed up a dollar bill being copied on the printout. THEN they showed you how to circumvent it(gotta love those news people). You also put on a color photo when you're copying the dollar bill, and boom, instant copy defeat.
If I use my color printer to print counterfeit money, and the printer embeds some kind of serial number in the printout, how do they know it's *my* printer? I mean, I don't have to register the software or anything. And even if, I probably wouldn't give them the printer's serial number (or my real name, for that matter) if I was planning to use it to counterfeit money.
On a separate note, watermarking software has proven to be useless, since just loading and saving a jpg gets rid of it (and if that is not enough, just change the brightness slightly, or apply a "weak" filter). I don't know if any method exists yet, that really survives printing out and rescanning (I can't imagine that's possible. It's hard enough to get even close to the original colors with most current scanners and printers).
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
to identify "original" impressions? I'm thinking of the case of digital cameras/camcorders where you need to use the results as evidence in say a court and you wish to verify that any resulting image is the true and faithful record rather than a digital marked up version. The abuse of technology to fake evidence, influence a constitutent or pervert the course of justice, either deliberately or by chance) can be a danger to a society which increasingly requires a informed evaluation of rather complex issues. Already artists think nothingabout touching up their works. Given the increasingly use of synthetic imagery, how much further will it go before we trust anything we see or hear? Perhaps this will follow the case of rubies where the artificial ones are so perfect, the real collectors items are those with natural flaws which are difficult to fake. But with digital media which is infinitely malleable, how can one tell the difference between reality and augmented? Think of the increasing use of artificial substitutes for money (book tokens, phone cards, gift vouchers, etc) .... how easily can these be faked, especially in digital form? As a fiat money, the dollar bill represents nothing except a promise backed by the trust and faith of the people for a future claim on some resource, good or service. Laws and technology may be fine, but they are no substitute for personal trust and eyeballing the system to make sure there are no hidden gotchas.
LL
Privacy concerns aside, the only thing about placing an identification number on a color print that would bother me would be if I could see it. If the ID was scattered about the page as "noise", and unobservable by me, it wouldn't bother me much.
As for the privacy issue... wouldn't such a encoding method be proprietary to the manufacturer? So what happens if I first copy the color image on a Xerox machine, and then take the copy over to a different machine, and copy that. Assuming the quality was not lost, the hidden ID code would not be decipherable by any (one) decryption algorythm.
Mike Eckardt meckardt@spam.yahoo.com
The United States constitution does not specically grant a right to privacy. However, the supreme court has on many occasions upheld this as a basic American right. Many states constitutions specifically include such a right. California is one example.
/. nick. =(
Technology that identifies copies and printer output infringes this right. If every print out and every copy identifies the machine from which it came, private communications from these media are impossible.
Your employer will have to begin a policy where documents that are not lawyer approved will have to be shredded, lest something you printed in jest make it into the 'wrong hands' and the person or company sueing for libel gets a court order to identify the documents origin.
Aside from possible government abuse of this technology it is also possible that the 'propriety algorithms' used to ID machines could be broken or stolen. Given the history of these types of secrets, I would say it is inevitable.
The worst harm I see here is more fuel for the fire of tort cases. With everyone sueing everyone else I can see this technology adding fuel to the fire.
I can not think of any specific scenarios where the average law abiding citizen would be harmed by this unless the government were to abuse thier power to identify documents. However the less power the Government has to infringe, the less they will be tempted.
-AC cause I can't remember my
ISTR reading that in the old Soviet Union, anyone who bought a typewriter was required to register a sample of their type with the state. (For you young pups out there, old mechanical typewriters used to have enough variations in the print heads that you could supposedly identify a typewriter from a print sample. I doubt that survived the invention of replacable daisy wheels, IBM "ball" print heads, etc. Modern manufacturing techniques may well have started producing identical print heads well before that.) The CCCP supposdly wanted to be able to identify the source of any subversive propaganda. I suspect this may have been an urband legend; it has a sort of "too good to be true" feel.
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My understanding is that it's microscopic - the arrangement of the dots on the paper. To the naked eye, the copy is perfect, but under a microscope things are very different (same with plain B&W photocopiers.. ever looked at copies vs. originals under a microscope?)
What good is a serial number that's not registered? None at all. It doesn't make sense in any context EXCEPT that we will be forced in the future to register our serial numbers. Creeping incrementalism at its finest.
There are techniques for hiding information into pictures. For example, some pgp 2.6.1 rpm's distribution comes with some stuff for this. If this was done, I don't know how you could remove it. Perhaps changing the image format a few times would remove it (and picture quality) from the conversions.
This is technology that Adobe licensed from Digimarc.. One of Digimarc's services they offer is you pay them some money and they report any use of your image they found on the web. By keeping an eye on my logs, I've noticed their crawlers perusing my server several times. Though all of the images on my site are mine (MINE MINE MINE!), I still don't like this idea.
I wonder what sorts of transformations these technologys are impervious to.. Since they're looking for on the web for watermarked graphics, presumably colour reduction (gif) and/or jpeg compression artifacts don't disrupt things. Will a slight blur or rotation? Can you embed an extractable watermark on white noise?
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
What is the most effective way to fight this? I suppose we need to let the printer companies know that we have no intrest in purchasing watermarking printers.
Also, the whenever a printer company releases a new printer someone needs to find out if they have included watermarking.. and post it to slashdot if they have.. one would hope that we could make enough commotion regarding the printer to cost the company money.
Do any printers corrently on the market support these features? It seems to me we need to send a message to the companies that going allong with the Gov. will cost them money.
It is also a good idea to get out information on how to preform the hardware modifications to change the serial number as quickly as possible. It seems to me giving the script-kiddies the ability to get someone falsly convicted of counter fitting just by examining a page the someone printed out will go a long way towards killing these things.. and will force people to only purchase printers which do not use watermarks.
Any more suggestions?
Jeff
BTW> Actually, the false convictions thing is an excellent way to fight many of the `ID the public' government programs.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
This all sounds kind of suspect to me. AFAIK, there is a certain amount of noise involved in any existing method of digitally scanning an analog image. (In fact, SGI's LavaRand random-number system is based on this principle.) I find it hard to believe that any "watermark" as well hidden within the image as the article suggests wouldn't be lost in the process of scanning it back into digital form.
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I saw some earlier concerns about the tracability of a particular printer... The watermark contains the serial number of the printer. Previous techniques of forensic science already allow us to identify printer makes and models, so the change in watermarking will not assist law enforcment at all (aside from possibly knowing which store the device was sold at), as long as you just don't fill out that product registration card...
Which no counterfeiter would do anyways.
So why bother at all? It will make printers more expensive, and the government thinks that they get a tool to assist them in enforcing the law, but doesn't really - other coroberative evidence will have to be collected to get near enough to the printer with the watermark to check, and then traditional forensic science techniques could be used.
Don't like my sig? I don't either.
I really don't understand the point of getting excited about this. The police can probably already match paper and ink, and minute impressions in the paper from handling to identify a specific printer.
All this would do is make the job slightly easier.
Dead tree copies aren't the big thing copyright holders would be afraid of, either. They are lossy copies.
The only major reason I could see this being worth anything would be to catch people printing kiddie porn or money.
...for some reason, like a record of who it was sent too. Then your fscked up.
There will be a thousand ways to circumvent such technology. The image, remember, has to eventually make it to paper.
So, then, let's assume that the watermark is inserted into the document at the hardware level; i.e., you can't send the printer any specific data to disable said watermark.
The first issue is old printers. I have an HP DeskJet 812C on my machine. Very nice resolution-- in fact, I could probably do counterfeit with it quite easily (if I had the patience to watch my printer run for hours on end). Strike one against the gov't-- it's too late to stop the old printers; criminals can just buy 'em second-hand.
The second issue is how fine a resolution the watermark will use. Will we wind up with watermarks on documents at 150 dpi? It'd be pretty pointless-- a counterfeit bill printed at that resolution would be pretty easily detected. But what if I can get a *very* precisely aligned printer that runs at 150 dpi, and print the same image (or layers of the same image, as it were) on the exact same location? It'd take some doing, but it could be done. If this proposal is to stop a "casual" counterfeit, then it may be useful, but I really doubt it-- it's going to be too easy to find out how to beat the watermarks.
Now, though, let's get to the real meat of the issue-- what if I have bad print heads? No, seriously! If I let the heads on my printer get clogged or whatever, it can result in a noticable reduction in print quality. So, if I can do it just right, I can print out my counterfeit bill at twice the needed resolution (i.e., the resolution needed to make it look real). Because the ink is running and bleeding and such, any watermark would most likely be destroyed. But the dollar bill might not look all that bad-- especially after I run it through the washing machine in my pants pocket once or twice (which many counterfeiters do, partially to make the dinginess seem more like regular wear and tear, and partially to give the bill a better texture).
I really doubt this proposal will go far. Even if it does, there will be ways around it. Don't worry yourself too much-- I know I won't...
Well, when I last bought an HP 612C (a printer that's a few years old model), the store recorded the serial number off the box on the receipt (and in their computer system).
Check the newer designs. They've been in use for several years now, but because of the way the Treasury decided to do it they haven't made their way into the smaller bills yet. So far $20 bills and higher have been converted; $10 is due in 2000 (with $5 in 2001, and finally $1 in 2002). Security threads, watermarks, moire-inducing patterns, and my personal favorite, the color-shifting ink. This, along with the red and blue fibers, hidden pictures (like the spider on the current $1 bill), the paper itself (yes, the paper itself is considered a security feature; many counterfieters have been caught when cashiers realized that the paper didn't feel right), and the other stuff from the current bills.
I don't like the look of the new bills as much (except for the aforementioned color-shifting ink, which is simply too damn cool for words). But they should work a lot better for this sort of thing.
Yeah, the US bills were certainly due for an update (no changes at all since the mid-70's, and no major changes since the 1920's). But they're getting it, finally. I think it would have been cooler to print the whole bill with the color-shifting ink, though.
I agree that this is ridiculous. But as far as the any company who did do it, how would the average person know? I had no idea that some companies already did something like this until I read this. As for a reason to vigorously fight this type of thing, let me pose a hypothetical situation. For example say person X had serious moral objections to Scientology (just for the sake of argument, no disparagement implied) and waged an anonymous campaign against what he perceived to be wrong. Some people could agree with him others maybe not. But the Scientologist's having a lot of money and power use the watermark etc on his copied fliers to track him down and either sue him or whatever. Is the fact that they located person X and possibly shut him down a breach of free speech? I think that this sort of thing has very serious implications much wider than what it appears to be on the surface.
I've seen this first hand. Feds have long been able to detect watermarks from colour laser printers.
Not quite as simple as that... (Sorry for all you patenters :-) ). The signature is embedded in the image itself, through 'random' noise. Definately fun stuff, untill some big co's heard of it.
If the "duplication device" is deliberately modifying the output without any control by the operator - then the machine is not a "copier", and the producers should be liable under whatever "accurate advertising" legislation is prevalent in their markets.
Yeah, like that would actually happen...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
This is a gross privacy violation. However, it's not too difficult to circumvent.
:)
Consider: the serial numbers can only be traced back to the printer, not the printer's owner (at least, not without records). Also, consider that the serial number has to be stored someplace where it can be modified easily, so that the printers can still be mass-produced. This means that it's still theoretically possible to modify the serial number.
Hehehe... my guess is that they'll use letters in serial numbers too, to allow for a greater number of numbers. This means that, once we figure out how to hack these, it'll be possible to put little messages into the watermarks.
I can see it now... Big Brother tries to read the watermark, all they get is strings of swear words
Sounds like a great way to make the lives of the people at Kinkos a living hell. Find a print sample that sets off the board and incorporate it into your letter head... Then just lurk in at odd times and leave a trail of black-copying color copiers in your wake...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Canada recently (well, 10 years ago) changed it's paper money so that bills over $10 have a foil "hologram" on them..
And about 5 years before that, they changed it from looking like American money, to looking like Monopoly money...
It was interesting that when the new money was introduced, there were a few reports of couterfeiting, by (and I'm being serious here) photocopying the bills onto consruction paper and coloring it in with a wax crayon. (They showed some of the bills on the evening news - they were so bad that a child should have known - the coloring didn't even stay inside the lines!).. I guess it's amazing what a convenience store worker will believe..
Are there any effort going on at reverse-engineering/removing this 'feature'? I assume that since it's been known for years, and simply not publicized, that somebody has been working on this.
Well, if you notice your printer or scanner is doing some funny identification stuff on your work, let me know.
Imagine a scanner as an optical sensor that scans a page. The sensor will output this raw information to a processor, bit by bit for the image. If you have a patterned image, the stream will reflect that image. You can make your own test equipment from a number of programmable microprocessors out there and recreate this image. From there, compare it to what the scanner puts out.
Same with printers, except there is lots of math involved to optimize the the non-linear ink jets and static attractions on laser jets. It all depends on how much time you want to spend tracing the process.
A second alternative is based on the premise that such an image is necessarily going to be faint, to prevent it obscuring what you're printing. If this is to scale with your print-out, then simply print your image much fainter (making the watermark effectively invisible), before reprinting the image upside-down on the same page, with the paper also inverted. This'll put a second copy on the paper, making it normal-strength, but the watermarks will only overlap in places (one being 180' to the other), so rendering most of it invisible.
Finally, switch back to a daisy-wheel. I don't care =HOW= good a manufacturer is, they can't make a daisy-wheel print watermarks, come hell or high water. Besides, daisy-wheels are great for listing print-outs. That is, if you want to turn the recipient into a gibbering idiot. :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
There is always a knee-jerk reaction to things like this, but think about it. All this allows is for somebody, (presumably) in authority, to find out what machine printed/photocopied a page which they already have in their possesion. It is not sending copies to bigbrother@everygovernment.com.
What kind of intrusions may be present here?
Let's see...
More importantly, they can track counterfeiters, blackmailers, child-pornographers, stalkers, and abusers of copyright, among other things.
Remember: Before any tracing can begin, the page be in the tracers possesion. And at this point, they have already served a warrant, or invaded your privacy. Next thing they'll start uniquely identifying the car I drive...
More interestingly, how difficult is it to forge these anyway? Can I register a personal 'Pretty Good Paper' signature based on the
watermark my printer produces?
Do they include timestamps? If so, I'm buying the best there is next time I want to copyright something...
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
So one of my co-workers attempted to copy a dollar bill off the photocopier. It really did start printing out all black sheets of paper so he clocked and went home. (He had used a supervisors ID to use the machine).
Bemused I watched as the next day (showing off to his friends) he brought in some bleached single dollar bills and managed to scan in a twenty dollar bill. He conned our graphics guru into performing the necessary touch-ups (removing the seethrough portions for instance) and divided the image into the front and back.
Next he removed the little metal strips from 10 5'ers (he later just passed them out for change and no one noticed the missing strips). Somehow he managed to drag the strips through the 10 bleached dollar bills in the appropo spots.
After printing off 10 of them he promptly went to the bank to attempt to get larger bills. Which he successfully did.
Unfortunately for his stupid ass the bank later performed full tests on them, and reported the counterfeits to the FBI and National treasury. (The latter who confiscated the bills to go into counterfeit research). The FBI actually managed to lift an ID from the bills, and tracked the machine to the office.
I noticed we had a new employee outside our normal hiring schedule one day, and promptly had my friends evacuate the area and dissavow all knowledge. To make a long story short, he's in the pen, and I have a new cubicle =).
If anyone has ever encountered a digital watermark of the Digimarc kind, (Photoshop users know what I'm talking about) there's an easy way to remove it. Resize your image to 95% of the size then resize back to 100% - minimal loss of quality (especially at high resolutions) and no watermark.
This is just an example but Digimarc underlines two serious problems with watermarks:
a) No watermark is invisible. No matter what anyone tells you adding watermark is a lossy process. The harder the watermark is to remove the more visible it is.
b) Watermarks will always be removable. If you have physical access to the machine creating the watermark (scanner, printer, whatever) you'll be able to edit/disable the watermark. Unless you embed the watermark in the paper fiber or something (but then you're tracking the media, not the data) it'll probably be enough to cut off part of the image or something similar to disable the watermark.
jay
well, if you want to look at wierd money, check out australian money. the aussie gov. hated counterfeiters so much that now we all have plastic money, no, not credit cards, I mean *plastic* money, chock full of holographs, hidden pictures, everything. and if you fold the 5 dollar note in a special way it looks like the queen is giving someone a blowjob. heh.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ross Anderson and a team of other researchers wrote a white paper entitled "On The Limits of Steganography" published in the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications Special Issue on Copyright & Privacy Protection, vol. 16 no. 4, pp 474-481, May 1998 (it's available online at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/ ) that deals with the issue of robustness of watermarks and other forms of information hiding. The overall conclusions are that:
-Robustness decreases proportionally with the square of the information contained
-Watermarks can almost always be either distorted beyond recognition (if the information content is high) or removed (if the information content is lwo) using a simple sequence of transformations, ranging from smearing spectral power peaks to scaling the image
-It's almost always possible to determine that watermarks or steganography was used because the entropy of the bits affected is most probably higher than that of the surrounding message.
--
Flames? Think I'm a karma whore?
... and this is something we've known about for years. Most color copiers do embed a serial number and many--particularly canons--will shutdown if you try to copy currency.
While the owner of the copier may not be officially required to register with the manufacturer, most non-consumer grade equipment needs to be serviced at least once a month. For example, each color copy generates a small amount of excess toner which is scraped off into a waste toner bottle; Xerox decided not to make this a user serviceable part on the Docucolor 40's (which are in almost every Kinko's in the world).
Kinko's, however, is generally more interested in making money and avoiding lawsuits than invading anyone's privacy. Every Kinko's Co-Worker is trained in the copy guidelines generated by our pack or ravenous lawyers about what we can copy and how. For example, the kid in the article should of been told that we can copy his driver's license but only in black and white and only at 129 percent.
Anyhow, for your extra dose of paranoia today consider this: even most of the new black and white copiers (from the Docutech to the Xerox 265) actually digitize and and store the images rather than flashing them to an analog transfer belt. All these copiers are equiped with a modem.
In Indiana it is illegal to make a monkey smoke a cigarette.
I'm not liking the sounds of this plan. And initially I was thinking that hey, as long as I have my current printer that does fine, no worries. However, all it would seem to take is a driver upgrade, and zap, your currently private printer is now id'ing you.
Jason
If you want to determine what the watermark is, just:
1) Scan your image.
2) Scan it again, only shift it down y inches, and over x inches.
3) Compare the two scans, allowing for x and y and the DPI of your scanner. The difference will include the watermark.
4) If the images compare identical, use different values of x and y, or try rotating the image.
5) Repeat the process with a number of varied images.
There's always a hardware solution for compromising software.
Just use mirrors, lenses, and perhaps filters to change the aspect ratio. Do you really think typical DSP software is engineered to a high degree to prevent crafty circumvention?
Say, on a scanner, have it scan an image that is shown to the sensor as twice its size with a color filter for multiple passes. Then have a software script clean it up. The final scanned image will look better this way anyway...
Now, if you wish to print that stamp collection out on your compromised printer, you have a few options through hardware. A simple way to fool the software, like the green of money, is to shift the colors, say green to red, red to blue, and blue to green, and do this to the print head connections after your software conversion of the image. If its pattern based, say those grovy lines on certificates that is being detected, why not invert *everything* and put inverters on the printhead? Now, for that, you will need to filter your image so the dots shoot out at the right contrast.
Hey there's a black van outside, let me check to see who it is...
NO CARRIER
A quick search of IBM's patent database has uncovered the following:
Anti-counterfeit pattern detector and method
Digital watermarking using conjugate halftone screens
Methods and means for embedding machine readable digital data in halftone images
For most consumer level inkjets, it seems most imagine processing (print description language processing, rasterization, etc.) is actually done on the host computer with the printer just basically being told put a dot here with this much color.
Thus, it could be possible for this tracing technology to be retrofitted to an existing printer via a driver upgrade. (Oh you're having print problems? May we suggest the new driver...)
If the serial number were still tied to the printer it would require some bi-directional communication. But that already exists in most printers host based UI functions.
But then if you think about it, this type of computer based processing opens up all sorts of other serial number sources. How about Pentium III serial numbers, ethernet MAC addresses, etc? (And haven't we seen these things already happen before, but only with digital documents?)
Thankfully, if somebody would probably do a software hack if this really happened.
How's that for paranoia? =)
Just time in milliseconds the ammount of time it takes on something you know that dosn't have the watermark to something that does...
Yes, and this can be measured down mighty close to individual clock cycles directly from the image passes. If a greater precision of software analysis is needed and the extra hardware at hand, just feed the sensor data from a previous pass. From there, a single branch of excecution would yield a detectable delay of output on the changed image.
Paper. Someone needs to tell the spooks and manufacturers to leave my scanners and printers alone so my artwork will not be compromised.
Whatever happened to gold and silver currency anyway? Nothing beats the fascination with gold. Paper just don't cut it. It can be copied, cut, shit on, etc. Gold can always be given as a gift, reworked, melted, but it will always retain its lust. There are many metals that can be compared to gold. I work at a copper power cable and wire manufacturing plant and if I stare at the product long enough, I feel like I have walked through Fort Knox. If 1,000,000 pounds of copper could be made into gold...
So, it's ok if government representatives kill those unimportant people.
Unimportant people:
I'm sure there are many more, but I think the point is made.
I hope you're certain that you are important to the government.
Yes, you can still print your own money. For now.
Ahem...
Be sure to buy your scanners and printers with cash.
However, your family pictures will bear the mark of mathmatical noise. This is what its all about. Do you want your baby's picture to be tainted?
If the Secret Service thinks you've counterfeited something, they can try and obtain a warrant to get your printer's serial number. If it matches the watermark, they have another piece of evidence.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Unless, of course you want to get in to the argument of the person killing themself by putting themself in the position in the first place. (Which I don't)
As for the importance issue, obviously these people are important to someone. Additionally, anyone in this situation is important to the system of laws in this country by establishing further precedent for the death penalty.
>>Well, actually, they did kill Patrick Henry. Actually, they didn't. He went on to become governor of Virginia, and proceeded to do his very best to dispose of the the liberty of the inhabitants of that state. (and was cordially hated for it by Madison, Jefferson, et al)
Here's a link to a company that deals exactly with this kind of technology.
Does anyone know if CDR drives contain logic to apply "watermarks" to burned discs (thus associating the disc with a particular drive)? Does anyone know if there are any plans to introduce such a "feature"? (And what kind of programmer would agree to write such software?)
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I hope this helps anyone who likes reading research.
Stephen
Second, consider this problem from the point of view of the imaging equipment manufacturers. They clearly do not want to have some ill-conceived legislation rammed down their throats, that mandates some expensive technology be put into every device built. Even worse would be if every nation they sold too had different regulation that needed to be complied with.
So, the manufacturers with foresight are cooperating with the government to try to come up with inexpensive solutions that make the government happy.
Now, keep in mind that anticounterfeiting is distinct from encoding distinct marks into documents. I'm going to talk about the former first, and will come back to the latter.
As the original article pointed out, there are already both anti-counterfeiting and source indentification features built into current color copiers. However, these solutions are not necessarily extendable to consumer imaging, because they take place in a closed architecture as opposed to an open one.
Consider the path that a counterfeit note would take in a consumer based imaging system. It would travel from a scanner, to some image processing software, to the printer. At any point along the way it could be stored, manipulated, or transmitted via the internet. Each step may or may not be carried out by the same individuals. Becasue of this, the most logical place to put counterfeit prevention is in the printing step. The reason for this is that if the protection in the scanning or processing step is broken by any individual, then a print-ready file could be distributed to many others. However, putting the prevention within the printer makes it both less accessable to crackers, and requires that each potential counterfeiter break the protection again.
Let us focus then on the problem of the printing of counterfeit currency. Three ways of helping to solve this problem quickly present themselves.
1: Add currency-detecting logic to printers.
2: Add features to currency that printers cannot reproduce.
3: Add printer-specific watermarking to printers.
The trend in ink-jet printers is to make them cheaper and cheaper. Given this trend, it is not feasible to add much computational power to the printer without increasing their cost. For this reason, attempting to do general-purpose detection within the printer is not feasible at this time. This does not preclude, however, doing some quick and dirty detection that is computationally very simple. (For example, is the document being printed approximately 6" by 2.5").
The design of US currency is unsophisticated, especially when compared to that of other nations. Personally, I appreciate the simplicity and history of our design, but from an anti-counterfeiting point of view it is a nightmare. The latest iteration of our currency was a stopgap effort to try to make it somewhat more difficult to be digitally copied, but most of the new features (except perhaps for the watermark) are not well understood by the public at large.
Some simple features that could be implemented, easily recognized by the public, and impossible to duplicate on a consumer printer could include:
1: Printing on a transparant substrate.
2: (1) with areas that require perfect front-to-back registration.
3: Printing with reflective (foil)inks.
But as long as we are creating a new currency, we could consider hybrid solutions. That is, embedding some special patterns in the currency that are trivial for a scanner/printer to recognize, yet do not occur in other document types. This could be some specific geometric pattern, or a specific use of colors.
So, finally, we come to embedding a watermark in all images printed by an consumer printer. First, be aware that some office printers already do this, mostly color laser printers. But beyond that fact, this is really a separate issue from anticounterfeiting. Printer manufacturers are not going to volunteer to do this unless they are compelled to do so by governments.
But if a manufacturer were forced to implement this, the most obvious place to do so would be in the driver. This is because (as mentioned earlier) the ink-jet printer itself has little computational resources. The driver has the full resources of the system CPU and is traditionally where the dithering takes place. As far as making the patterns unique, one could either query the printer for a serial number, or simply use the Pentium III serial number, or perhaps the MAC address from the LAN card.
One closing lesson here, if you were feeling cocky by saying "no problem, I'll hang onto my old printer", then make sure you never upgrade the driver, as that is where this would most likely be implemented.
Well, in closing, I would love to sign this with my account name. I can't however, so just call me...
Anonymous Coward
The fundamental problem is that US currency is so easy to copy. I have easily enough stuff lying around my office to produce reasonably realistic copies.
Software aimed at specifically recognising currency and stamps is foolish: it will only recognise certain kinds of currency and stamps; it won't reconise foreign stamps; and it won't recognise other paper instruments which we would rather not see forged (certificates, etc.)
Software aimed at making forgeries trackable is more thoughtful; but it has obvious privacy implications, and is potentially technically defeatable (as many readers have mentioned).
The fundamental solution is to make currency harder to forge. Australian currency notes, for example, are printed on a thin papery plastic instead of on paper; they have a piece of artwork partly printed on each side, so it is obvious if the artwork on the two sides is misaligned; and they have a transparent section, so it is obvious if it is printed on the wrong "paper". In a similar vein, the new US $20 note has a "color change" section that looks different when viewed from different angles.
Trying to fix the problem by limiting the technology in a thousand different scanners, printers and copiers is a bad approach: it's analogous to trying to cover for your lousy encryption by crippling everybody else's computer. The Right Thing is improve the technology in the money itself.
As a former Kinkos employee, what the Kinkos co-worker said about the legallity of making color copies of official photo id is true. They make you go through several courses in order to teach you stuff about copyright and such. They also don't take chances on stuff, a lot of what can be disputed as "fair use" is not left up to the employee. This is mostly done for Kinkos' finacial safety. This was implimented shortly after Kinkos lost a lot of money from a law suit about how Kinkos made copies of and sold college text books.
The machines that Kinkos use for color copies are, usually, either Cannon or Xerox. Apparently from the article it is confirmed that the Xerox machines use this serial number id trick, as for Cannon, I have never heard of anything like that from any of the techs that sold and maintained the copiers for us. I do know that Ricoh color copiers only use yellow toner if the item being copied is detected to be money, food stamps, postage, ss cards, passports, etc. I never was able to try it on the Xerox or the Cannon but I'm sure that they have simular features. I was also told, but had it confirmed to be untrue later, that the Ricoh shut down if it thought is was making a copy of one of the later items. The FBI would then have to come in and investigate why it shut down, and once they were done enter a special code to unlock the machine. Like I said this was confirmed to be UNTRUE.
All of those restricted items that color copiers look for have some sort of clause that allows some sort copy. Money has to be done one sided, B&W and either at 75% of normal size or 25% larger. Most of the others only have to be one sided and B&W. For the gentleman's photo id in the article, a B&W copier would have done fine, I have had to many of them for people using them for things like id for phone companys and such. Never had any problems except from the customer that refused to belive that what he originally asked was illegal.
The problem with this system of ids on color copies is not a problem for most people. With all the paper flying around the world, no agency or company with an unlimited supply of cash and resources would be able to check the ids on color or b&w copies and keep track of what everyone in a nation, let alone the world, is up to. That right there get rid of the big brother worries that everyone gets when they see the a story about tracking systems. The only people that should have a problem with this system are those who want to and/or do illegal things with digital color and b&w output. Besides the only time Xerox gets requests for id translation would be for something a judge would find worth it, such as counterfiting, fraud, or as a last resort in a difficult investigation. I would like counterfiters to be caught, they only help to raise prices and inflation. Really, there is no other outcome for us do to counterfiters doing their stuff. People who commit fraud only hurt us and some crimminal investigation need all the help they can get and they usually benifit us. I also think that they should get legislation on this soon, that way we can make sure this system is only used for good, like now, and can't evolve to some thing evil. If you are scared, don't be. If you are mad, stop commiting illegal acts. Pretty simple.
Well thats what I think, it was a long post and it is possibly badly worded/spelled, I apologize for that but I hope you found it informative.
According to one of my "Publication design" textbooks (the exact title escapes me), US Currency can be copied legally if it's black-and-white and reduced to smaller than 75% or enlarged to more than 125% of its actual size.
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
2nd: Watermarking is a benefit to individuals and freeware/copyleft/whatever. A number of free graphics (backgrounds, icons, etc.), including mine are deliberately watermarked. (In my case by hand). Almost every graphic has a small area that is a single color. For these areas, make a unique id in a different unused color and then change that color to have the same rgb as the surrounding areas. This way, if someone is using your work in a method you don't permit (aka, selling a quake mod using your graphics) you have a method of proving what was done. The same technique can be used with multiple colors if necessary. (The 1st 16 colors are only used in a "glider" [from the old game of life] pattern. (16 colors allows you to repeat the pattern a LOT)
There are ways to completely bollux the watermark. A simple soultion should be to laminate the copies. I doubt that the watermark could be properly read through the lamination and removing the lamination should ruin the copy effectively enough.
Here's my question to slashdot: Do we find it offensive when companies copy the works of individuals and do we want methods to prevent this (for example Sun's actions with Blackdown's code)? If so, do we believe that corporations have the same rights to try to protect their works from individuals (recent articles on MP3 and DVD)? I almost wonder if we believe that the rights of "us" are more important than the rights of "them". - bonsai -
No Zen is good zen
You know what? I am really beginning to see where the f1r5t p05t3rs are coming from. The moderation system is meant to keep people in line and contribute positively to the subject, but when a second post is marked redundant and a score of 1 is marked overated as has happened to my post you really begin to lose all respect for this thing called Karma. Mark me -5 if you want to I don't give a damn from now on I'm gonna say what the hell I want when the hell I want until the moderation system here improves. This past week I have been wrongly moderated a to a lose of over 10 karma, that is ridiculous I never intentially troll or insult anyone......until now.
Worse than that, unless you're only using the copier for "nefarious" purposes you'd probably have to solder in a socket instead so that you could alternate between the original chip (or a copy of it) and your hacked chip. After all, at some point there's a chance that an identifiable document from that machine will be scanned and the numbers correlated; if that happens at most company locations, when they ask "Well, who might know how to do this?" everyone will immediately think of one person. Even worse, some of these copiers may have a connector that techs use during maintenance to pull information - things like the ID, number of copies, error logs, all sorts of interesting* stats.
So, the old chip has to be removed and read, a socket has to be mounted (using surface-mount tools that most people don't have available), new chips have to be burned, and it all has to be done without attracting attention by having the copier down for a significant amount of time so nobody calls in the techs. Oh, and that socket? Best make sure that board isn't something that gets looked at when the service guys are in, they might just notice something odd...
Overall while it's probably possible to remove the serial number or corrupt it into unusability, it's probably not feasible to do so.
* Well, to some people.
fencepost
just a little off
I have just found water marks on my toilet paper, should I be concerned?
Do not wright in this space.
You're missing the point. This is a copier serial number imbedded in the printed image. You can't filter it without rescanning it.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Come on moderate me down, I want ya too!
Unfortunately, even with all these cool features, Australia still has a problem with counterfieted money. There is an extremely large number of very high quality $100 notes in circulation. I work in the cash office of a supermarket in West. Aust. and we pick up a counterfeit *polymer* $100 about once a month. The quality of these fakes is amazing. About the only way to pick them out is a slightly misaligned print and a slightly different serial number font. Even then, we still wait for confirmation from the Australian Federal Police before turning them over as evidence.
:)
And if anyone's interested in what our notes look like, I have a page up at http://www.theducks.org/old/notes/ with scans of all of them except the old paper $100. Enjoy
In Canada, all currency $20 and above comes with a small square, about 1 cm x 1 cm, that is yellow or greenish-yellow depending on the angle with respect to a light. In the center, a number, i.e. 20, is printed out of the foil (i.e. the foil is missing).
Of course, copying money wouldn't be a problem if the US actually used some of the methods available this side of the pond. For example, English currency has a distinct feel to the paper it and as well as the usual metal strip and watermark has "raised" ink that rubs off slighly. (Try rubbing the "Bank of England" on the queens head side of a newish note on some light coloured trousers) Higher value notes even have holigrams. The Germans go even further - they have UV ink, perforations in the notes and other features. Even official documents like the V5 (Vechicle Registration Document) have anti-copy features. I recently photocopied mine in case I lost the original (Which I usually carry on me) and was quite surprised to find that the patterned background of the document had "COPY" quite clearly all over it. Close examination revealed thay you can just make out the "COPY" watermark on the original.
Yet another case of attacking the problem from the wrong end - the US are trying to limit the technology instead of staying one step ahead of the game.
. If 1,000,000 pounds of copper could be made into gold... Then I would imagine it would have something of an effect on the price. We like paper currency because it means that the money supply doesn't depend on technological advances in dentistry. We can lower the interest rate when there's a recession, or raise it when there's inflation, by altering the money supply rather than trying to manipulate the price of gold. Paper currency not backed by gold is my tip for the greatest invention of the twentieth century. jsm
You can see some published ones here. The 25 guilder note (about USD 12.50) includes most security features according to these pages, but not all features are published. Also the 10 guilder note (USD 5) includes some additional features, also found in 100 and 1000 guilder notes(!)
Features include :
- Shaded Watermark
- Intaglio printing (tangible raised ink)
- Register gauge (patterns on back and frontside match up)
- 0.3 mm micro lettering (hard to read
:) - Fluoresent fibres (light up under a blacklight)
- 0.2 mm micro lettering (even harder to read or print)
- and finally: Shiny Parts! foil that turns black when copied, and "holographic" planchettes that copiers don't produce.
The Dutch National Bank distributes leaflets at banks whenever a new note is introduced, but also lists these features on its website.Another feature, not yet mentioned, is the type of paper used, which is easily distinguished from photocopier paper. And is washer-resistent ;-) However, unlike old US banknotes, the type of paper and ink aren't the chief anti-counterfeiting measures.
Also note that Intaglio printing also makes it easy for the blind to identify banknotes!
IMNSHO Dutch banknotes are the prettiest and best-designed banknotesy in the world, and I rather lament the fact that they will be replaced by the ugly, bad, Euro, in 2002..
--
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
The Secret Service *has* to be serious about this.
Someone also asked about why the US doesn't invalidate old bills. It's true. Most countries, when they introduce redesigned currency, set a date in the future when the old currency is no longer valid legal tender (except to collectors of course).
The U.S. would never do this because the world views the dollar as "safe" and face it, there are a lot of people in foreign countries with trunks of hundred dollar bills (the old kind) stored. If they get an inkling that their stash will become worthless or greatly devalued, they'll be converting it to something else in short order.
Yup, subversives and criminals are also important to the US economy. When they lose faith in the dollar, they'll sell dollars and buy currency from some other country leading to a weaker dollar.
The dollar is the currency of the world, and I'm not just saying that because I am a US citizen. I grew up in the UK and generally hate US-centric attitudes, but this one is the truth.
I'm impressed. I'm surprised you could identify the original image after an ordeal like that.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
You are an asshole. I can think of a million reasons why.
But since I don't want to insult your intelligence, I'm not going to spoonfeed them to you. I'm sure you should be about to think up several hundred thousand without breaking a sweat.
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If they are more likely to implement it in drivers then it is one more reason to make Free Sftware drivers, where they can't put such troyan horses (because this basically is a sort of troyan horse).
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,