Printer dots raise privacy concerns

Thomas Frank
USA TODAY
Monday, July 14, 2008

More manufacturers are outfitting greater numbers of laser printers with technology that leaves microscopic yellow dots on each printed page to identify the printer’s serial number — and ultimately, you, says the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the leading watchdogs of electronic privacy.

The technology has been around for years, but the declining price of laser printers and the increasing number of models with this feature is causing renewed concerns.

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The dots, invisible to the naked eye, can be seen using a blue LED light and are used by authorities such as the Secret Service to investigate counterfeit bills made with laser printers, says Lorelei Pagano, director of the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group.

privacy advocates worry that the little-known technology could ensnare political dissidents, whistle-blowers or anyone who prints materials that authorities want to track.

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7 Responses to “Printer dots raise privacy concerns”

1. no one Says:
   July 14th, 2008 at 9:07 pm

   All you have to do, is buy your printer for cash and not give your zip code at the register. Then even if they trace the serial number, they’ll never be able to trace the owner.:)

2. ItsMike Says:
   July 14th, 2008 at 10:03 pm

   Or you could just use an old fashioned typewriter, then go to your local grocery store or library and make a few hundred copies.

3. Highlander Says:
   July 14th, 2008 at 10:57 pm

   Unfortunately, this is old information.

   Several news journals —Wired® in particular— covered that aspect years ago.

4. ThePatriot Says:
   July 15th, 2008 at 7:48 am

   Will the “dots” show up on second generation b/w copies?

5. Kevinabt Says:
   July 15th, 2008 at 11:47 am

   no one: That isn’t exactly true. By tracing the machine they can find out when and where the sale was made. If the store it was bought from keeps their security camera tapes it would be possible to get a picture of the person who bought it.

6. Learner Says:
   July 15th, 2008 at 2:16 pm

   We have these monthly publications that are put out around here. Black and white cheap. Called Pennysaver. In it people post things they want to sell used. Beds, toys, cars, printers….. Each county has one. Yard sales, places where you take your trash might have an electronics collection area. Many shops now collect and resell others electronics. Now if you do this… lol buy your ink in cask too. Have no doubt the very ink can be tracked. Back to a store near you. I remember reading this in Wired a couple years ago. If you are going to print stuff that will get you in trouble, and that seems to be changing… Think ahead. YOur car has GPS, Your phone has GPS, your computer has an I.P. address that can be read through a proxy. These dots are an identifier of model, serial, and manufacture. It isn’t just laser just though lol. Do not thin a desk jet and you are safe.

7. sapphire Says:
   July 15th, 2008 at 10:56 pm

   The old story was that all type-writers, photocopiers etc., in East Germany had to be issued and controlled by the state. The laughable piece of german-zionist propaganda, ‘The Lives of Others’ even has the secret police threaten a neighbour with imprisonment, if she informs their target that they have buuged his flat.

   The joke is that the laws allowing monitoring and police state operations in the UK and US make the old soviet nations look like bastions of freedom. No consumer device is allowed in the UK or US, unless it makes secret police tracking or forensic operations easy. All printers are designed to produce unique signatures of some type. Car GPS navigation systems accidentally on purpose store data on previous journeys. Mobile phones ensure that switching off all electronic functions is essentially impractical for a phone in normal use, allowing various aspects of the phone to be secretly controlled at all times, including using the microphone as a remote listening device, and tracking the movement of the phone in real time.

   Even if our masters were not evil b*****ds, the temptations offered by the possibilities of new electronic devices would not be resisted. In the past, the ONLY thing that limited a police state was the storage and processing of collected intelligence. At some point, in the age before modern computers, the bulk of information collected would become self defeating, since quantity would start to far out-weigh quality.

   Today, companies like google have solved this age old secret police problem. Now the quantity of information collected never leads to any ‘bogging down’ issues. All data collected remains equally available for examination and analysis. When new data mining techniques are discovered, they can be deployed in an instant, at near zero cost, with no additional manpower required beyond the initial coding.

   Anyway, re: the article- we should all assume that when push comes to shove, we have no privacy, and should plan around this fact. The state will allow us to pretend to be anonymous, so long as the cost of proving they know who we are is too high (not in money terms, but in proving to the masses exactly how far their spying extends). When it is time for the concentration camps, data mining will be used to identify those people on line that have demonstrated ‘dangerous’ potential in oppositional comment, so that the most ‘troubling’ can be rounded up. This moment is getting closer all the time.