It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it isn't. The pages
coming out of your color printer may contain hidden
information that could be used to track you down if you ever
cross the U.S. government.
Yesterday it would have been a conspiracy theory. Today it's
true. C'est la vie a le Matrix.
"It's strictly a countermeasure to prevent illegal activity
specific to counterfeiting," agency spokesman Eric Zahren
said. "It's to protect our currency and to protect people's
hard-earned money."
If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.
rkm
--------------------------------------------------------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101801663.html
washingtonpost.com
Sleuths Crack Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers
By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 19, 2005; D01
It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it isn't. The pages
coming out of your color printer may contain hidden
information that could be used to track you down if you ever
cross the U.S. government.
Last year, an article in PC World magazine pointed out that
printouts from many color laser printers contained yellow dots
scattered across the page, viewable only with a special kind
of flashlight. The article quoted a senior researcher at Xerox
Corp. as saying the dots contain information useful to
law-enforcement authorities, a secret digital "license tag"
for tracking down criminals.
The content of the coded information was supposed to be a
secret, available only to agencies looking for counterfeiters
who use color printers.
Now, the secret is out.
Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco
consumer privacy group, said it had cracked the code used in a
widely used line of Xerox printers, an invisible bar code of
sorts that contains the serial number of the printer as well
as the date and time a document was printed.
With the Xerox printers, the information appears as a pattern
of yellow dots, each only a millimeter wide and visible only
with a magnifying glass and a blue light.
The EFF said it has identified similar coding on pages printed
from nearly every major printer manufacturer, including
Hewlett-Packard Co., though its team has so far cracked the
codes for only one type of Xerox printer.
The U.S. Secret Service acknowledged yesterday that the
markings, which are not visible to the human eye, are there,
but it played down the use for invading privacy.
"It's strictly a countermeasure to prevent illegal activity
specific to counterfeiting," agency spokesman Eric Zahren
said. "It's to protect our currency and to protect people's
hard-earned money."
It's unclear whether the yellow-dot codes have ever been used
to make an arrest. And no one would say how long the codes
have been in use. But Seth Schoen, the EFF technologist who
led the organization's research, said he had seen the coding
on documents produced by printers that were at least 10 years
old.
"It seems like someone in the government has managed to have a
lot of influence in printing technology," he said.
Xerox spokesman Bill McKee confirmed the existence of the
hidden codes, but he said the company was simply assisting an
agency that asked for help. McKee said the program was part of
a cooperation with government agencies, competing
manufacturers and a "consortium of banks," but would not
provide further details. HP said in a statement that it is
involved in anti-counterfeiting measures and supports the
cooperation between the printer industry and those who are
working to reduce counterfeiting.
Schoen said that the existence of the encoded information
could be a threat to people who live in repressive governments
or those who have a legitimate need for privacy. It reminds
him, he said, of a program the Soviet Union once had in place
to record sample typewriter printouts in hopes of tracking the
origins of underground, self-published literature.
"It's disturbing that something on this scale, with so many
privacy implications, happened with such a tiny amount of
publicity," Schoen said.
And it's not as if the information is encrypted in a highly
secure fashion, Schoen said. The EFF spent months collecting
samples from printers around the world and then handed them
off to an intern, who came back with the results in about a
week.
"We were able to break this code very rapidly," Schoen said.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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