by Derek—2005.10.19 @ 1556
We happen to have a Xerox color laser printer at work. I found this article very eery. When I worked at Kinkos, management told us never to copy money because the color printer was calibrated to recognize digital signatures in money and record infractions in its memory. At the time I doubted if that were possible, but according to the article, this type of technology has been around for many years. I wonder what else is floating around like this…
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.
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.
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven’t left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)