The Secret Service knows you printed that...

This is perhaps the scariest thing I've read in the news today. Keep in mind, this isn't something that has been proposed. This initiative is already in place on many printers:

Secret Code in Color Printers Lets Government Track You

yeah.. I believe it is a small yellow on white dotcode like thing..

I've seen it on a HP 4550 at work a while back..

[added]
EFF's docucolor guide
[/added]

LOL. This finally went public.

I've known about this (and other things) being done to aid in quick back tracking of criminal activity. The good guys have an understanding that the bad guys are not the dumb asses classically associated with the criminal label.

You'll find this on any color printing device (among the participants) which is capable of printing somewhat convincing counterfeit material.

As Jinxy pointed out, it indeed is the small yellow on black dot sequence.

--Th13

http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=264208 - from about a year ago ;)

Yeah, I'm getting the feeling that I'm a little behind the times on this one. I'm surprised I missed it the first time around. I guess the news today is that the meaning of the dots was actually deciphered by the EFF for many printers. It's just a timestamp and printer serial number.

I hearby declare this thread moot. :bigsmile:

I turned to the tacked-up picture of Mario Van Peebles beside me, mustered up enough courage to admit fault, and let out those healing, penance bringing words: 'My bad, Mario Van Peebles'.

=))

Well in all honesty you're not that behind, as said, /. did post that the EFF broke the meaning of the 'inkblots'.

Actually I remember in the late 70's early 80's when my father was working for a local paper, some of the reporters copied (on the brand new color laser jet) some Twenty Dollar bills to see how accurate the copies would look.

After passing the phony bills and reporting the results, there was a BIG stink with the FED's. The only thing that saved their asses was they informed the store clerks immediately about the fakes and they were reporters. I do believe that the paper still had to pay a huge fine.

A follow up article quoted a Fed on the condition of anonymity, that the Feds would be able to track the phony bills to the paper with little to no effort.

There was a big issue again between the Feds and the paper, being that the paper wanted to know the source.

On a side note The color laser was as big as a desk, cost more than a car, and took almost 20 minutes to print three pages.

Lessee, HP introduced the first color laser jet on Sept. 19, 1996, to compete with Xerox, Hitachi and others. General run of color lasers at the time cost $10,000 per. HP's cost about $7300.

;)

Ohh man, we had one of those God awful HP Color Laserjet 4000 jobbies. I remember the toner was like 400 bucks. LOL. How time flys.

I remember hearing about this almost 15 years ago in Technology Review.

I guess it must have been a slow privacy news day.

cheers,

catch