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Sleuths crack code discovered in color printers
By Dirt wire | Wednesday October 19, 2005
WASHINGTON - 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. saying that 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.
Tuesday, 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.
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