                    |
Posted on 07/31/2005 4:35:32 PM PDT by ChildOfThe60s
EFF probes printer watermarks
Color laser printers print hidden data that lets law enforcement agencies tell which printer was used and when, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF on Thursday sent a freedom of information act request to the U.S. Secret Service in an attempt to get details on the tracing feature, which the group says impacts the privacy of users.
"This undermines people's ability to speak and publsih anonymously," Seth Schoen, a staff technologist at EFF said Friday at the 13th annual Defcon hacker event in Las Vegas.
In the traditional EFF presentation at DefCon, Schoen placed a sheet of paper printed on a Xerox DocuColor printer under a microscope with a blue light. Yellow dots appeared. These identify the printer and when the print was made, Schoen said.
"If you actually print out a white page you would get a whole page with yellow tracking dots that you can't see with the naked eye," Schoen said.
The marking technology in printers was developed at the request of governments to deter counterfeiting activities using the machines, PC World reported in December. The Dutch government, for example, has used it to track counterfeiters of railway tickets, WebWereld, a Dutch technology news site, reported in late 2004.
Schoen isn't hopeful that the Secret Service will share details on the laser printer watermarks. EFF's lawyers probably have to go to court, he said.
Posted by Joris Evers
So laser printer sales are tracked better than handguns?
Okay. So it's back to cutting and pasting individual letters from old newspapers and magazines for me....
| |
LOL....these guys would have a cow if they ever got a look at some of the anti-privacy stuff Ft. Meade's been using for over 20yrs.
good one
This makes a lot of assumptions, the first of which is that all printers are capable of printing the yellow dots. In any event it can be easily defeated by simply photo copying anything you want to send.
I'm one of the few people who might actually be affected by this - I own a HP Color LaserJet 3500. As far as I can tell, it doesn't print anything when you send it a blank page.
I'd be interested in learning a bit more about this since it strikes me as a huge waste of yellow ink, which is pretty expensive. My yellow toner cartridge costs $139 and prints about 4,400 color sheets.
I don't know if my LaserJet does this because it seems to separately track monochrome and color prints. Perhaps only color prints get this technology?
Or maybe it uses a different technology since my yellow cartridge was last to run out (it's actually on its last few hundred pages as I speak, while my cyan and magenta cartridges are long since replaced with new ones).
If you're really worried about this, buy a used color laser off eBay, or better yet, use a color inkjet you buy for $49.95 and throw it away when you're done.
Or just print subversive documents in monochrome.
D
That's fantastic! LOL!! And I can barely figure out how to do italics. Thanks.
So remove your color cartridge. Presto! No yellow dots.
Well now. Thanks for the Russell pix (although that movie gives me the creeps)....
I think the point is primarily counterfeiting of currency, which has to be done in colour.
In theory, a colour photocopy should suffer from the same problem.
D
Maybe the watermark will match the medical info microchip that's planted in my butt.
Just don't sit on a copier and you'll be alright.
Wasn't something like this used to identify the BTK serial killer?
For information sake. Here is the background on the group pushing this story. Sounds to me like charter group of the Tin Foil Hat crowd. Funny how these groups in SF are always more worried about what the USA might be doing rather then what our enemies might be up to.
Based in San Francisco, EFF is a donor-supported membership organization working to protect our fundamental rights regardless of technology; to educate the press, policymakers and the general public about civil liberties issues related to technology; and to act as a defender of those liberties. Among our various activities, EFF opposes misguided legislation, initiates and defends court cases preserving individuals' rights, launches global public campaigns, introduces leading edge proposals and papers, hosts frequent educational events, engages the press regularly, and publishes a comprehensive archive of digital civil liberties information at one of the most linked-to websites in the world: http://www.eff.org.
Typewriter typeface impressions were supposedly registered with the Romanian government when it was a Communist dictatorship, so that the authorities could more easily arrest anybody writing or publishing anti-Communist documents. Who says that it can't happen here?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.