Color Laser Printers Tracking Everything You Print 795
It's not new, but it's getting noticed: Jordan writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that several printer manufacturers are now and have been for some time embedding (nearly) invisible serial numbers in every document you print with their color laser printers, allowing law enforcement to track any such document back to the printer which printed it. The technology, ostensibly created to track down money counterfeiters, was created by Xerox about 20 years ago. A Xerox researcher says that the number-embedding chip lies 'way in the machine, right near the laser' and that 'standard mischief won't get you around it.'"
Although... (Score:4, Insightful)
Although I hear not buying a Xerox printer will.
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just another reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, seriously. How else would they know who bought it and how to get a name from that serial number? I guess maybe if the store kept your credit card info on file or something and associated it with the serial number, but how often would that happen?
Lesson learned, if you want to print hundreds of forged checks or counterfeit bills, pay for the printer in cash!
Actually, if you're going to do anything illegal, cash is king. Just print some up and, well,
Anyway, police officer friend of mine once who said that if you're going to do something illegal, do it big, do it once and don't tell anybody.
That "once" part of it is key, you could print up a bunch of cash one afternoon, enough to pay for the next printer (with cash, of course), then dispose of the printer.
Greed will get you in the end.
Alan.
Re:odd (Score:2, Insightful)
John Galt where the hell are you?
$
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:2, Insightful)
Think about it: if counterfeiters wanted to pay some less-than-moral geek to fix this, wouldn't they be doing it already?
And (to the tinfoil hat club), why is this so bad?
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two more words: Pay cash
Old News (Score:5, Insightful)
This is old news.
There have been news stories about serial numbers being embedded in printing for years. The first I read of it, at least 7 or 8 years ago was the same yellow microprint from color inkjet printers, which was mandated by the U.S. Gov't, to prevent counterfit bills from being printed.
All I've ever done myself is scan in bills at the highest resolution, to show people the microprint (note the double lines around the portrait, one is really text).
It actually doesn't stop anything, people still print them. I remember back in high school there was a story in the local paper about some kids getting dragged away by the Secret Service for photocopying $1 bills and putting them in soda machines. They only had to do one side, and it didn't care about the color, so easy drinks. Our school had a better 'hack'. If you took a water pistol and sprayed water into the bill slot, it'd short out the electronics of it, and you could push buttons all day to get free drinks. I saw it done a few times.
But hey, just assume that anything you print is being tracked. Chances are pretty good that nothing you print is going to be all that interesting.
Extremely paranoid? Pay cash for your printer, and get someone else to actually purchase it. Or don't leave home, because 'they' may be watching. Ha!
Re:I was right! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I was right! (Score:5, Insightful)
fingerprint (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a magic bullet, just another tool for law enforcement.
Full Disclosure (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate to break your party (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I was right! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, they can still ask the daisey wheel vendor, but they will get an "I don't know" answer.
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:3, Insightful)
Suppose I wanted to do it in Vidor, TX.
Do I really want that document traceable to me?
Imagine what would have happened to Swift if such a technology were available then.
And moreso, the document is only traceable to a printer, not an individual. Do you really want to explain that to a jury?
Not to mention to possibility of framing someone else.
Inasmuch as the gov. doesn't have transparency in their dealings, I think I should be accorded the same.
And huge, Godzilla sized disgusting that printer manufacturers weren't upfront about this from the get go. If they can't be forthcoming, why should I?
Do people actually register? (Score:3, Insightful)
The local retailers I deal with will warranty these items with nothing more than a reciept, which doesn't have any kind of personal information on it. On top of that, if you pay cash (not with a CC/Bank card) how is this serial number useful to them?
bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
You can bet there's tricks they don't advertise on the discovery channel, particularly the intelligence agencies.
You can't be paranoid enough.
Re:I was right! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparisons of laser printers' chips with Soviet Russia are, however, exaggerating. There are probably lots of possibilities to distinguish two copies printed by two laser machines. While giving the state the possibility not just to compare the output of two known laser printers (which I'm sure comes very handy when tracking false money, extortions or some con-man tricks) but to find the printer which printed any possible text is surely disturbing, there is no comparison with Soviet-style secret police. Soviets didn't have to bother with chips, they had people spying on other people, on their neighbours and spouses --- it always works better than technology. The best defence before Soviet-style supervision is assuring your country isn't run by such kind of people.
Re:Do people actually register? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, that's hyper-paranoid, but when you're printing counterfeit bills you kinda have to be.
Re:Privacy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Old News (Score:3, Insightful)
What is this serial number like? Is it like a MAC address? Is there any way to print the secret serial number out without printing any text or is the serial number embedded in the text?
I wonder if counterfitting is that much of a problem? Stores now use pens to make bills to see if they are counterfit. I wonder how many people are out there printing their own money. Heck, I think it would be impossible to even find paper that feels enough like real money.
Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
1) I never register a printer with the manufacturer after I purchase it. I also don't know anybody else who did either. It's a waste of time and an invasion of privacy.
2) Let's say a printer was never registered - and it was paid for with cash at a store like Best Buy. Good luck tracking down the buyer.
3) Even if both the above were not true and the manfucturer knew who originally bought it, one word foils their plans: Ebay. If you buy a printer on ebay, who knows how many hands it's been through before yours. While it is still possible to track it after a sale on ebay, it just got a whole hell of a lot harder.
Non free and why it's important (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't know what you are up against and I question your ideals. That's the problem with non free software and this crap is definitely non free. This trick is 20 years old, how do you know what other patterns they put in? Subtle changes in letter spacing, and other color manipulation can do the same thing. This kind of thing is very disturbing.
This is an area where software freedom directly affects real freedom. Speech without anonymity is not free. "Big deal," you might say, "they know a printed page came from a particular printer. So what?" So, if you are using a non free operating system, your print driver might have a back door that responds to requests for information and your ISP can be forced to reveal what IP the correct response came from. Zip, zip, just like that, without any help from retailers, you can be tied to what you thought you were publishing anonymously. You think you are going to get around it with an old typewriter? You might as well be the only person in your city making woodblock prints because everyone will know you are the nutcase with antique printing equipment. The Xerox down at the corner copy shop can put it's mark on every copy you make, and it won't take much doing after that to uniquely identify you.
The free software foundation and RMS' comparison of non free software to the old Soviet Union, where copy machines were numbered and guarded are right on target.
You could script a program to 'split' the image so that you print unmarked bands in multiple runthroughs which eventually add up to a full image.
I suppose you could simply shred your work, but that's what an oppressive government would want anyway. Tell on yourself, throw you work away and wait for the trip to Minilove, the place where there is no darkness.
Re:Just another reason... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Those rat b--- (Score:3, Insightful)
Say you print some literature that the government doesn't like. There's all sorts of things the government doesn't like. It doesn't (at least the current republican government) like abortion, marajuana legalization, protests against the war in iraq. You print these up and post them around, pass them out. Laws don't change themselves, it takes action. Disagreeing with a current law is perfectly legal but in the current climate in America might be considered subversive. So if you print them on these printers the FBI can track you down, build a file on you, and perhaps bring Joseph McCarthy back from the dead you commie, tree hugging, pot smoking hippe. That's just an example. Of course you could print money and then the secret service would track you down.
Re:In the old Soviet Union (Score:5, Insightful)
The USSR was doing this 30+ years ago. They collapsed 13 years ago (1991). Total span of 17+ years.
The U.S started doing this 20 years ago. We only found out now. So, by the USSR model, it should be collapsing anytime now. Now take a look around and ask yourself, "Is this the America I grew up reading about?"
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming 8 digits of hexadecimal, that would give you 32 bits. So a little box 6 x 6 pixels would be enough. A laser printer has resolutions ranging from 600 to 2400 dpi. So you would need far less than one square millimetre to store such information. Even if you double the size of the box in order to have some sort of redundancy, that would still be far less than 1 square millimetre.
Too damn easy to bypass (Score:4, Insightful)
"Mischief," he says... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's nice to know that tinkering with a machine I bought and paid for is now referred to as "mischief." I didn't realize they started "licensing" hardware the way some people do software.
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:3, Insightful)
Dictatorships, like any other monopolist, want to limit the free flow of information.
cumulative effect is overwhelming. (Score:3, Insightful)
The aggravating part is that an upright citizen should not have to go to such great lengths. It seems that 20 years ago, Uncle Sam decided that there should be no more anonymous publications or did not take steps to prevent that from happening.
Free software helps, but electronic publication is just about impossible and everything you do will have to be checked with a hexeditor. How can anyone effectively communicate without the benefit of digital cameras, for instance? Every little gadget with a serial number is a potential give away. OpenBSD might be good for this, but most free software is built with openness in mind. I used to think OpenBSD was paranoid, now I'm thinking they were right all along.
You might find some comfort in the fact that your software is not ratting you out, but you have still lost a considerable fraction of your privacy and ability to publish anonymously. When you buy that printer at the swap meet, you can be sure the previous owner was not as careful as you. It will still be linked to a particular city, and further "terrorist" investigation will lead the domestic spys to the swap meet. That's way more information than a government agency would have for an analog printing press. You won't be able to use that printer for anything but your anonymous printing and you will have to keep that on the QT. Analog printing, of course, will stand out like a sore thumb.
I don't even want to think about how bad things will get with widespread RFID tag use.
I don't think that will work. (Score:3, Insightful)
You have to do that with every color and it will probably make it impossible to print. If they designed the print so every pixel is a single bang, there are no lower frequency signals.
Worse, this would have no effect on something subtle like line or character spacing, which could encode a serial number the same way a bar code does. Proper equipment can be set up to detect line spacing serial numbers despite scale and rotation distortion.
If you don't know what the signal is, your noise might not be helping you.
What you know is that the US government and every major printing company have conspired to make it impossible to print a document that can not be tied back to the printer. That's creepy and it lends weight to stories that once you might have dismissed as paranoid delusions.
There is a question remaining... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have seen several arguments here that this is a perfectly harmless technology, and some of those arguments have been logical and valid. However, it still begs one question: If it is such a useful, valuable technology, why are the manufacturers not informing the customers of this "feature" in their instruction manuals or on their packaging? I checked the websites of Canon, HP, and Xerox, including the specifications of several laser printers. In none of the feature or specification listings is it said "Prints unique serial number to easily identify printer of every document!"
If this technology is so useful, wonderful, and defensible, please feel free to inform those who pay money for your products. They might have a different view to give you. There are legitimate reasons to remain anonymous. (Even if that's just that you want to.) A desire for anonymity doesn't mean that you're doing something illegal, and that mindset is extremely dangerous, getting into the "Well if you don't want cameras in your living room, what do you have to hide?" territory.
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:1, Insightful)
Give it a bit of time. Today the government puts a tracking chip into printers, tomorrow you are cheerfully shoveling snow somewhere in a labor camp in Alaska.
Gradual change is the key to turning a democratic country into a "Big Brother" society.
Bad headline (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good enough? I doubt it. This is one time where security through obscurity worked. Considering there is not a live market and a real desire to remove these codes, it has not passed the test of many hands. A bunch of hackers can work collectively to get around an Xbox and a Playstation because there is the incentive of more functionality and thrill of experimentation that you can share with others. Printing money is not something there is a big following for and not something you advertise that you are interested in. I would assume many big time money printers people have got around this serial number issue but it can still be used to catch the other 99% that thgouht they knew what they were doing.
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of the people who spoke out and signed the original Declaration of Independence were wealthy, and lost everything after they signed! Freedom of speech doesn't always come with no price tag. Sometimes people pay dearly for expressing their opinions, even in the "Land of the Free".
I am a Conservative Christian Libertarian (I know it sounds messed up). The sad thing is that there are many in our nation that have no problems with _more_ government control. These "conservatives" offer excuses like if you have nothing to hide, then why would you care? _I_ personally care because A) I have nothing to hide and B) if I did have something to hide it is none of your @##$@# business! Our government was never set up to be "big brother". Sadly we are almost there. Many of my fellow Christians are more then willing to give up their rights/liberties because they _think_ it will make them more "safe". They think that only "bad" people would want privacy and not want "big brother" to know your every move.
I am sorry but I will not give up my rights, liberty or privacy to make it easier for the government to catch a "bad" guy. As a "good" citizen, I am willing to help the government, police (I give them money every year), etc to stop crime, but my help stops when they try to encroach my rights. Yes, being able to print on a stinking piece of paper without the government tracking me is what I consider a right.
Re:There is a question remaining... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure there are other reasons as well, but how about this one: this way, law-enforcement can quickly weed out stupid counterfeiters and forgers, the "script-kiddies" of fake money. They get arrested and convicted before they get a chance to graduate to more advanced fakes. If the box had a warning, the bar of stupidity would be raised somewhat, instead of just stupid they'd be catching only the extra stupid ones
Re:bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just another reason... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll add a fifth rule that directly follows from the fourth rule. Work alone if you can. If the hijinks you have in mind need helpers then fewer is better. Most people aren't very good at keeping secrets and the cops know how to exploit that as well.
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:3, Insightful)
And of course, they all know that they are the only truly good people out there. This comes with a certain naive child-like trust of certain government officials that really should be reserved for certain religious figures found in rather thick traditional texts.
Re:And then there was no anonymous speech. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:5, Insightful)
Print the document - then go get multiple copies done at Kinkos, or some other copy centre.
This serves two purposes - firstly you will have two sets of dots overlaid on each other - presumably this will 'confuse' anything trying to read the dots. Secondly, the dominate signature will be the public access device - if the dots are hard to see by the naked eye, they will be very difficult to copy.
For the tracking to work they need to match a serial number to a user - i.e. the device has to be registered. For small consumer devices (e.g. the HP CLJ 2500) it is simple for the user to simply not register the purchase with the manufacturer, however these sort of devices are unlikely to be capable of producing anything which could be remotely be considered a good forgery.
Large colour devices often come with maintenance contracts attached, so if you knew the serial number and had a cooperative manufacturer, tracking the owner would probably be relatively simple, however you would also find that these devices are typically in a shared user environment (offices, copy centres, student resource centres, etc...).
Having said that, I work for Xerox and conduct audits for large corporate clients regarding what equipment they have and how it's used - even with access to the sales records, client asset registers and physical identifcation of units we frequently have problems identifying every device on a site back to original point of sale. Errors in how SN's have been entered into billing systems or asset registers is not uncommon, chassis or logic boards get changed during maintenance changing the actual or apparent SNs (very common with HP or Lexmark equipment). This would only work with seriously large hardware with fully tracked service histories.
Re:bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know about that.
I'd dumpster dive for it. People turf those cheap printers without a second thought, and it's probably possible to restore many of them to working order with a bit of care. You can probably get paper and ink that way too.
Assuming "they" can trace the paper, ink, and printer to the people that bought them, "they"'d still be unable to connect it to you if you don't leave clues on the dumpster or on the paper.
Re:Can you say "Patriot Act"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Those rat b--- (Score:4, Insightful)
And if you dont They've already won
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:4, Insightful)
>your convictions and using your name.
yes, but it is only courage if you have the choice.
Re: Gold-backed currency (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, so? You've missed the point -- her straegy worked. If she hadn't saved that gold, she wouldn't have gotten those dozen eggs. Your story only shows how rare and precious eggs had become in that situation. Thing is, you can't store things like eggs forever, while gold will store forever.
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't sound messed up to me. Traditional Conservatives are (supposed to be) very much in favor of personal liberty. Traditional Christians have that whole Golden Rule thing going, and are (supposed to be) very tolerant. Put it together, and a Conservative Christian should, in my eyes, be a Libertarian almost by default. Sadly, it rarely works out that way.
Re:Countermeasures? (Score:3, Insightful)
I plead the ninth. Read the constitution sometime, wonderful document.