[Clips] Sleuths Crack Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers

[R.A. Hettinga]

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 Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 15:28:33 -0400
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 From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
 Subject: [Clips] Sleuths Crack Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers
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 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101801663_pf.html>

 The Washington Post

 washingtonpost.com
 Sleuths Crack Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers

 By Mike Musgrove
 Washington Post Staff Writer
 Wednesday, October 19, 2005; D01

 It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it isn't. The pages coming out of
 your color printer may contain hidden information that could be used to
 track you down if you ever cross the U.S. government.

 Last year, an article in PC World magazine pointed out that printouts from
 many color laser printers contained yellow dots scattered across the page,
 viewable only with a special kind of flashlight. The article quoted a
 senior researcher at Xerox Corp. as saying the dots contain information
 useful to law-enforcement authorities, a secret digital "license tag" for
 tracking down criminals.

 The content of the coded information was supposed to be a secret, available
 only to agencies looking for counterfeiters who use color printers.

 Now, the secret is out.

 Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco consumer
 privacy group, said it had cracked the code used in a widely used line of
 Xerox printers, an invisible bar code of sorts that contains the serial
 number of the printer as well as the date and time a document was printed.

 With the Xerox printers, the information appears as a pattern of yellow
 dots, each only a millimeter wide and visible only with a magnifying glass
 and a blue light.

 The EFF said it has identified similar coding on pages printed from nearly
 every major printer manufacturer, including Hewlett-Packard Co., though its
 team has so far cracked the codes for only one type of Xerox printer.

 The U.S. Secret Service acknowledged yesterday that the markings, which are
 not visible to the human eye, are there, but it played down the use for
 invading privacy.

 "It's strictly a countermeasure to prevent illegal activity specific to
 counterfeiting," agency spokesman Eric Zahren said. "It's to protect our
 currency and to protect people's hard-earned money."

 It's unclear whether the yellow-dot codes have ever been used to make an
 arrest. And no one would say how long the codes have been in use. But Seth
 Schoen, the EFF technologist who led the organization's research, said he
 had seen the coding on documents produced by printers that were at least 10
 years old.

 "It seems like someone in the government has managed to have a lot of
 influence in printing technology," he said.

 Xerox spokesman Bill McKee confirmed the existence of the hidden codes, but
 he said the company was simply assisting an agency that asked for help.
 McKee said the program was part of a cooperation with government agencies,
 competing manufacturers and a "consortium of banks," but would not provide
 further details. HP said in a statement that it is involved in
 anti-counterfeiting measures and supports the cooperation between the
 printer industry and those who are working to reduce counterfeiting.

 Schoen said that the existence of the encoded information could be a threat
 to people who live in repressive governments or those who have a legitimate
 need for privacy. It reminds him, he said, of a program the Soviet Union
 once had in place to record sample typewriter printouts in hopes of
 tracking the origins of underground, self-published literature.

 "It's disturbing that something on this scale, with so many privacy
 implications, happened with such a tiny amount of publicity," Schoen said.

 And it's not as if the information is encrypted in a highly secure fashion,
 Schoen said. The EFF spent months collecting samples from printers around
 the world and then handed them off to an intern, who came back with the
 results in about a week.

 "We were able to break this code very rapidly," Schoen said.

 --
 -----------------
 R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
 The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
 "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
 [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
 experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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