27 Central Banks Push Anti-Counterfeit Software 400
securitas writes "GlobeTechnology reports that the 27-member Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group is behind the anti-counterfeit software in Adobe Photoshop CS, Ulead PhotoImpact, Jasc Paint Shop Pro and others. Consortium members of the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group include the USA, Canada, Germany, Japan, Australia and many more. Law enforcement agencies and banknote-issuing authorities say that it is a response to the rapid growth of digital counterfeiting. The software is distributed free of charge to hardware and software manufacturers and is voluntary to use. But the European Union is drafting legislation to force manufacturers to include anti-counterfeit measures in all systems, scanners or printers sold in Europe. Counterfeiting and anti-counterfeiting with Adobe Photoshop and other products like inkjet printers have been the subject of recent discussion on Slashdot."
gimp and sane illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
What happens to open source image software? (Score:5, Interesting)
Therefore, I wonder how the central banks of the world are going to implement this in OSS image editors. Afterall, something commented as "//This is where we put the part that stops people trying to open images of money." is gonna be rather easy bypass, and would also require them to define all of the tricks they're using to identify bills in other software too or let some of those checks slide.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
Heh (Score:5, Interesting)
Heh, not that the Photoshop effort was effective--all you need to do is search the applications section of suprnova.org [213.158.116.15] to find "banknote patch Photoshop CS." [213.158.116.18]
Re:What happens to open source image software? (Score:3, Interesting)
Therefore, I wonder how the central banks of the world are going to implement this in OSS image editors.
They won't have to. They're incorporating the technology directly in the printers. It may be a while before we see opensource firmware for printers.
Trimming the edges (Score:5, Interesting)
This won't prevent professional criminals from counterfeiting. At least they stated it correctly by saying "would-be counterfeiters". Still, someone with enough ambition and the resources and/or knowledge will still find a way. I'm simply stating the obvious here though.
I am curious though as to how the software prevents counterfeiting. I thought maybe one possibility was comparing a picture with data of an actual bill, but that would mean having data in the software that contained information of the real bill which presents a problem. If anyone has any ideas or information, please share.
Personally, I see major shifts in this area within the next few decades. Improved bills? Increase in amount of counterfeiting equipment? Some sort of digital verification system? Just some ideas.
Also, what about open source software?
I've seen software add watermarks to images (Score:5, Interesting)
I kept trying to change the pixels back and re-save the image, and whenever I saved the image, the mysterious watermark pixels would re-appear.
I think I switched to something more primitive like MS Paint (eep) to workaround the problem.
--LP
Why this is a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Can't we just go cashless? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, the question is - don't you all think it will come down to point where the Government issues cash cards?
It saves them money (vs printing money) AND It (should) be harder to conterfeit than paper money (e.g. cryptologically secure).
It will piss off the credit card companies, but wouldn't it be a solution?
Along these lines - would coins be any harder to fake? I wouldn't mind carrying more change, if, say $20 coins were the size of dimes...
It goes without saying, that I wouldn't buy such a card if it weren't anonymous...
here's the funny thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Face it, maybe
Now, the scary thing is, what do you wanna be that these "image recognition" techniques are being patented, marketed, and sold. Imagine not being able to scan in somethign from a magazine or book because it has a code on it marking it as copyrighted. After all, if you were going to scan it in, you were *obviously* going to do something bad, like make an illegal copy! That's where I see this going: sort of a drm thats built into scanners, printers, and image software!
Can't We Do Better Than Franklin? (Score:3, Interesting)
This mentality of "kick the people" has gone on for way to long. Are we not capable of outdoing Benjimam Franklin [about.com]? He is the one who invented paper currency to begin with.
Funny that all he did was put to use the printing press, an invention which has been around since 1440 [about.com] to make these bank notes with. Sort of ironic that he made the money hmself with a press he owned... whooda thunk that people could counterfeit money with printing presses and printers?!?!? So now that printing capabilities a mere 200 years later are more advanced, do you think it's time we look for new ways to produce paper currency? Or should we just start walking backwards down the path of personal empowerment because the tech has gotten too powerful?
Re:Dare I suggest... (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh my God, you're speaking the truth! There's a reason why the U.S. dollar is so favorable to people outside of the country.. well two reasons, actually. 1. The currency value is (relatively) stable. 2. The bill is SO easy to counterfeit compared to even the currency of third world countries. I'd just love to see someone try to print out a convincing counterfeit Thai note on their top-of-the-line inkjet printer. It's just not going to happen.
I know - make money out of real gold! (Score:2, Interesting)
I suppose you could still fool the clerks with gold plated tungsten, but hey, you wouldn't have to alter software to protect against conterfeiting.
Side [OT] question - how much do you spend in cash? I am sure I am less than 10%, judging by ATM withdrawls vs my tax filings... [credit cards and checks, then automatic debits, and finally cash is "where it all goes" in my house].
Re:Trimming the edges (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
Especially if they 'enhance' the current method.
As I understand it, there is a pattern of circles on the currency, and the software checks for this.
If the bill is scanned or printed slightly offset from straight up and down (I've heard that just 1 degree can do the trick) then the pattern matching doesn't work and the bill is scanned/printed.
For them to fix this, they would need to check each increment of rotation for those circles.
I can see that taking quite some time...
(Better luck next time, guys!)
Well ... local to my area ... (Score:3, Interesting)
You know ... I'm really suprised that people still try to make counterfeit money since the penalties are so stiff, and usually are crappy copies.
I think that a credit/debit cards are the future, and that physical money is on the way out. However, that smacks against my privacy ... since it would be tracable.
The problem is that there is no good ANONYMOUS way to purchase things without currency.
Re:Can't we just go cashless? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmmm. I buy my cards in cash... but if there were no cash... I am starting to think of some problems here.
Irony (Score:2, Interesting)
Ugh. But the Eurion technology is nifty on its own..
Old Measures (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually saw these devices as marketshare protection devices. My company and its handful of competitors were rapidly having the marketshare for high quality printing eaten away by good commercial printers. The marketing department may have made all sorts of blather about "finer attention to detail" and "knowing the banking industry" but the process of MICR printing on 2400dpi presses from Macs using Adobe Illustrator could honestly have been done by anyone willing to follow standards.
But it would have been a bit of a problem if this low-end competition were trying to output a check prototype with a watermark, color wash, and elaborate border that continuously set off their anti-counterfieting software. The high end check and document printing business wasn't a monopoly, but I strongly suspect that these were devices strongly desired by every player in the market to keep the sellers from expanding.
Are these measures the same way? They surely sound motivated by similar private market interests.
Re:gimp and sane illegal (Score:3, Interesting)
Reproducing coins (Score:1, Interesting)
The funny thing is, the coin was designed to be difficult to counterfeit. It consists of a silver ring around a golden center.
And the payoff? HK$10 = US$1.30. I really wonder how the hell the counterfeiters are making money. They seem to be mostly passing them off to tollbooths and occasionally exchanging them en masse at banks.
The real counterfeiters are using printing presses (Score:5, Interesting)
Simple process, photograph the bill, do your color separations in an older version of photoshop, etc; then burn plates from the color seperated negatives. Better yet, bypass photoshop completely and take several photographs of the bill using different filters over the lens to directly produce your color seperated negatives.
The fact of the matter is that the "big boys" in counterfeiting are NOT using a $50.00 scanner and a $19.99 inkjet printer.
Re:Can't we just go cashless? (Score:1, Interesting)
If the $20 coins had $20 worth of metal in them, counterfitting wouldn't be that much of a problem. That is why dimes were once made of silver. Not even the government could fake them. (which was the point BTW!)
Does someone have a good image of the key pattern? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What happens to open source image software? (Score:2, Interesting)
1984 approaching (Score:4, Interesting)
Btw did any of these fuckwit DRM mandating freaks think about how they are possibly going to make this work with currency accross the world and how it will work when a country needs to change a note for whatever reason??
Re:Genuine question. (Score:3, Interesting)
My friend (who had no financial need to produce currency) decided on a mission, to knock off a bill. He shopped the paper, practiced justification time after time. The rejects hit the trash.
Forward 2 months and there's a knock on the door. The secret service is here to ask questions. Primary question, "do you have any kids".. he drops his pants (rightfully).. "I'm the kid"
Someone at the landfill saw the rejects and made the call. The SS sees my friend is just an idiot. The tell him they don't know what they will do, possibly take his computer/printer, possibly nothing. They tell him if they ever see the serial number in circulation, they'll be back.
He calls me in a panic and asks if I can talk. I ask about what, he's not willing to talk.
He destroys the joke he gave me and that's the last we ever heard.
10 years ago! Bet it's much easier today.
Doesn't seem to be implemented on OS X.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Solution: purely electronic money (Score:1, Interesting)
Over time, that's more or less the idea. Not so much to get rid of cash - there will always be a place for cash, among folks who want a certain amount of privacy and anonymity - but to get rid of paper checks. US consumers stubbornly hang on to paper checks for whatever reason, but US banks would dearly love to get rid of them. Paper checks are a a major source of fraud, and check processing is far more expensive than electronic payments are - not just because of the fraud, but because it's so much more labor-intensive, with the printer who makes the checks, the teller who takes the check, the encoder who translates the check so the MICR reader can turn it into electronic data, the sorter whose job it is to load checks by the shovelful into a crufty old IBM mainframe, the clearinghouses who make sure that the checks get from the depositing bank to the bank they're properly drawn on, and so forth and so on. It takes a lot of people for even a medium-sized bank to handle paper checks, all of whom are costing the bank - and by extension, the customers - large amounts of money.
And that's without even getting into the cost of fraud, because check forgery is far more common than currency forgery - we have tools to catch fraud, but ultimately, we don't pay for it, the customers do. All of that is why US banks are pushing things like electronic payments and debit cards so hard - everyone would desperately love to get rid of paper checks once and for all. Cash will always be around, I think, because as I said, some people will tend to prefer cash for a variety of reasons - privacy and anonymity for one, convenience for another. But barring that, it's much easier nowadays to live a cashless life than it used to be.
Re:If I've learned nothing else in 20+ years of le (Score:1, Interesting)
1 Euro is around 800 Chilean pesos, so you get an 8 for 1 deal on your Euro.
I believe that Chile is actually under pressure from europe to change the coin.
Download some (Score:3, Interesting)