Color Laser Printers Tracking Everything You Print

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.'"

Countermeasures?

Anyone know any methods of getting around this short of physically ripping apart the printer and soldering a few wires together?

Re:Countermeasures?

Just disconnect the yellow. Who needs all three (or four in some cases) colors anyway?

Re:Countermeasures?

One word: Kinkos

Two more words: Pay cash

Re:Countermeasures?

Hahah, that'll work.

"Hello Kinko's Employee. I'd like you to print 500 copies of this here One-hundred dollar bill. You can just keep one of them to cover the cost."

Re:Countermeasures?

Maybe he just wants to print anonymous, is that a crime nowdays?

Re:Countermeasures?

my suggestion? find another same model printer that does this, then DUPLICATE PRECISELY these yellow dots in your final image... two sets, should--- well, supply reasonable doubt at least...


Thinking about it, adding in a speckled yellow pattern as part of your printing algorithm would work - it would just take a little knowledge of what they print.

Does anyone know if the pattern gets printed even on white space? Printing a "blank" page should reveal the pattern and allow a suitable overlay that would stuff up the recognition algorithms.

Michael

Re:Countermeasures?

Printers are cheap, every time you run out of ink, place old printer inside ion cannon* and turn it into a ball of molten obsidian.. and also never send in warrenty registration etc etc... and even though they can trace documents to a certain printer, since said printer is no longer identifiable.

*= if you don't Own an ion cannon yet, you can build one care of these DIY directions [slashdot.org] (a cyclotron is the key component to an ion cannon...)

Re:Countermeasures?

> I suspect that if this technology has actually been around for 20 years, it has gotten good enough to be nearly impossible to bypass.

This technology has been around a lot more than 20 years.

In Soviet Romania [google.com], a sample page from every typewriter had to be registered with the police, so that any samizdat produced could be quickly traced back to the typewriter's owner. Use your imagination as to what happened to the owner, or Google for it.

In Romania every typewriter had to be registered with a local magistrate. Samples of letters typed on these machines had to be produced under the observation of the secret police so they could trace underground publishing activity.

- G. Davey, Christian Publishing: Before and After the Communist Collapse

In Soviet Russia [geocities.com], all photocopiers were registered with the KGB and kept in secure rooms, to which physical access was restricted.

Some samizdat works, mostly magazines, were typed on typewriter. The copies were indistinct and hard to read. I realized that the movement against violating human rights was doomed to be an eternal amusement of the few intellectuals without proper copyprinters. But where could one find a copyprinting machine in the country, where all the copiers were affixed with seals at night and placed in the special rooms where only proved KGB members could work on it. There was the only decision - to make the machine ourselves. It had to be easy to make and quite efficient.

- A. A. Bolonkin, Memoirs of Soviet Political Prisoner

The West is probably still playing catch-up.

I was right!

This is why I always print my ransom letters using an old daisy wheel printer.

Re:I was right!

Of course a daisy wheel printer can be tracked forensicly anyway since they suffer the same "signature" issues that a typewriter does. Hammer based printers, manual and electric typewriters, leave distinct, identifiable, characteristics in the copy that they produce. For example, wear on the hammer, a tendancy to "drop" a letter etc.

Re:I was right!

You overlooked a vital problem in your plan.. The prints created by a daisy wheel are as unique to the printer used as fingerprints to a person, if not more so.

Re:I was right!

Yes, but the feds can't go the the daisey wheel printer manufacturer and say "which printer of yours makes this unique pattern?", whereas with the vendor embedded watermarks, they can.

Well, they can still ask the daisey wheel vendor, but they will get an "I don't know" answer.

Just another reason...

To be lazy and NOT send in your product registration card!

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!

Re:Just another reason...

Lesson learned, if you want to print hundreds of forged checks or counterfeit bills, pay for the printer in cash!

But not cash that you printed yourself on a printer that wasn't paid for with cash you didn't print yourself. Or something.

Re:Just another reason...

To be lazy and NOT send in your product registration card!

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.

CSI

And as we all know very well, CSI has a machine that will read the code and bring up a 3d map with your current location, a recent photo of you, and a list of every cash purchase you've made in the last six months.

In the old Soviet Union

The early photocopiers in the USSR had a state issued serial number eched on the glass so copies could tracked to that machine and possible the user(s). And the tracking wasn't about counterfeiting either.

It seems they were ahead of the US by 30+ years. Another sign of a dying empire.

odd

The technology... was created by Xerox about 20 years ago.
It was 1984 twenty years ago.

We can turn this to our advantage...

...by printing tons of encoded, "dots", so when police read them, they will read, "All Your Base Are Belong to Us!"

The Geek revolution has begun.

They never learn. . .

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.'

So use substandard mischief. :p

I'm quite serious really. Unless the serial number is tiled, just print a full border and keep whatever stuff you want to cut out away from the serial.

If it is tiled, you have a number of options. 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. You could offset some unknown amount and then surround the serial number with other sequences to disguise the actual serial (would take some knowledge of how serials are assigned to do a good diguise). Both of those would require a little hardware modification. But if you're printing $100 bills. . . .

Anyway, those are just some ideas off the top of my head. The point is that if people know what they're up against, they can find a workaround. Ideally, these kinds of tricks would be kept secret. In the case, the point is trip up ignorant cons who don't account for something they don't realize exists.

Oh well. This will still nail the 16 year old delingquents who decide to pull a fast one on the clerk at their local grocery store.

Back to the old methods

Well, looks like it's back to cutting out newspaper headlines to make my blackmail notes.

Old News

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!

I hate to break your party

I hate to break your "They can't stop me i pay cash" party, but i think the idea of these serial numbers is so that if the police suspect someone and have evidence to get a warrant tehy can use printer data to secure a conviction.

Re:Those rat b---

"That just has to break some kind of privacy law"

What makes you think we still have such archaic things as privacy laws anymore? Dont you know that if you have a private life the terrorists win?

Re:Those rat b---

Here's a worse one:

Did you know that every time you touch something, you leave an invisible mark that's unique to you and can be used to track where you've been?

It's a privacy nightmare.