[ChildOfThe60s]

Sorry, but I just can't go along with this. Maybe the watermark will match the medical info microchip that's planted in my butt.

[digger48]

So laser printer sales are tracked better than handguns?

[mumps]

Okay. So it's back to cutting and pasting individual letters from old newspapers and magazines for me....

[seadevil]

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.

[Natural Law]

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.

[daviddennis]

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

[bill1952]

Well, how is this news?

Long ago the Secret Service asked for and got laws issued for the purpose of defeating the counterfeiting of our paper money from groups using laser printers to dupe money. Iran was behind a huge amount of 100 dollar bill fakes and this is how we nailed them.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

"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.

So remove your color cartridge. Presto! No yellow dots.

[tet68]

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.

[DJ Taylor]

Wasn't something like this used to identify the BTK serial killer?

[MNJohnnie]

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.

[Lx]

Didn't anyone see this in a CSI episode?

[politicalwit]

"Color laser printers print hidden data that lets law enforcement agencies"

This rumor was floating a couple of years ago and was proved to be false. Time to do some research.