Printing protest flyers? Your printer is spying on you!

[Phrogman]

http://www.seeingyellow.com/

When you print on a color laser printer, it's likely that you are also printing a pattern of invisible yellow dots. These marks exist to allow the printer companies and governments to track and identify you -- presumably as a way to combat money counterfeiting. When one person asked his printer manufacturer about turning off the tracking dots, Secret Service agents showed up at his door several days later.

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Most color laser printers made and sold today intentionally add invisible information to make it easier to determine where (and when) a particular document was printed. This seems to have been done as part of a secret deal between the United States Secret Service and the individual manufacturers. Some of the manufacturers have mentioned the existence of the tracking information in their documentation, and others haven't. None of them have explained exactly how it works or what information is conveyed. No law requires printer companies to help track printer users this way, and no law prevents them from stopping this practice or giving customers a solution to avoid being tracked.

This information is most famously known to be coded by patterns of yellow dots that the printers add to the background of all the pages they print. The yellow dots are hard to see with the naked eye, but can be seen under bright blue light or with a microscope. Their arrangement reveals which printer was used to print a particular document, and sometimes also shows when it was printed. Some of the codes have been understood while others are still mysterious, but none of the printer manufacturers has denied that the dots are intended to help track a particular document to a particular printer (or that they can actually be used for this purpose). This is a direct attack on the privacy of the owners and users of printers, and in particular, on their right to free, anonymous speech.

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Tracking dots are usually invisible to the naked eye under normal light. They are tiny and light yellow which makes them hard to see against the white of a page. They are usually printed across the entirely of a page -- even the parts where that are otherwise blank. They are present in both color printers and copiers but do not show up in pages printed in black-and-white mode.



What next?

[Phrogman]

1. List of printers at this link....

http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/list.php

[conscious evolution]

2. Thanks for posting this

Whenever I make flyers I always use public copy machines at library's or at commercial establishments for this very reason.

[Phrogman]

7. Thats a good idea

e0m

[Tesha]

3. A Blue LED flashlight can help you see these yellow dots. (NT)

[hobbit709]

4. None of my printers are on the list

The very reason I bought them in the first place.

[hootinholler]

5. Which is why you need to color balance photos when you print them...

A legitimate reason to turn it off: the yellow shift. Not that it is legitimate for the manufacturers to sell broken printers.

-Hoot

[Ian David]

6. Don't register your warrantee on your printer. n/t

[Edweird]

14. and buy it with cash.

[Ian David]

15. And use a seperate printer for politics than for business. n/t

[Perky]

8. Ok now this is a bit of a straw-man don't you think

I suspect it is more likely that the yellow dots are used as suggested by law enforcement to track down serial killers, kidnappers, counterfeiters (probably why the secret service is involved) and the like. I am fine with that.....We should all be fine with that.

But realize speech and petition are constitutionally protected. And bluntly if you are trying to divorce your identity from what you want to say...Then I personally would not be particularly interested in what you have to say in the first place... It's the definition of moral cowardice to do such things are constitutionally protected. And if you are simply ashamed of what you want to say anonymously, maybe you should not be saying it in the first place.

:shrug:

[Ezlivin]

9. And what if I don't fall into your "category" of cretins who don't need privacy?

What if the government decides to track down people who printed protest flyers? What do you say then?

And therein lies the rub: This information can be used to trace back a printed item for any reason.

That's one hell of a strawman.

[Perky]

10. And their grounds for doing that would be?

[gilpo]

11. They're Fascists, they don't need a reason...

[Ezlivin]

17. You are incredibly naive

I'll cut you some slack if you're a teenager or someone who's never read the Constitution or world history.

But when you ask what "their grounds" would be, you are showing your naiveté.

[Richard Steele]

23. Is that really a question? What fucking country have you been living in since 2000?

Well, I'll answer it anyway: The same grounds
that the USA's "Founding Fathers" had when they
disseminated their ideas ANONYMOUSLY via pamphlets,
broadsheets, and pseudonymous letters to newspapers.

The GROUNDS being that they were ruled by totalitarian
criminal forces which were well-known to exact reprisals
upon those who dared speak out against their tyranny.

THOSE "grounds", that's what!

Here's one of those "anonymous opinions" that you
wouldn't feel was worth your precious time:

[slampoet]

19. Maybe anonymous speech isn't worth listening to but You're not a real American unless you defend it.

Otherwise you're just someone trusting America to people with no oversight.

It is the equivalent of thinking someone else will mow your lawn for you.


(PS-your post is anonymous speech)

[Richard Steele]

21. Uh huh. Only people with something to hide should care about PRIVACY, eh? Very nice.

[karlrschneider]

22. Aren't you saying things anonymously?

:eyes:

[peacetalksforall]

12. Q's, no A's.

1. Can this information be used in a legal case against a citizenor is it just data mining - to feed a file on a person for government phishing purposes?

2. How is is tracked back to somone - by the computer the printer is connected from - or by registrations as hinted in a post here - to not register your printer?

3. Has this been included in the Patriot Act? Was it written out that manufacturers must comply with this level of identification?

I can't begin to imagine how many people are employed to spy on citizens (and stealing their privacy in the process).

Assuming this is something contained in the Patriot Act.

Feingold - the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act.

[Pachamama]

13. Buy a printer w/ cash or cash for a used one at a garage sale...

:hi:

[robinlynne]

16. Then why don't they arrest the people who handed out false election flyers

all over the country, such as the ones I saw in nevada, 2004: if you are republican, vote on nov 2, if you are democrat, vote on nov 3...

[slampoet]

18. Nobody has been caught using this because No one prints in color for political flyers.

Most political fliers i see are printed in Black and white on a laser printer and then the are Xerox Copied thus destroying any digital signature that was on them if any.

Personally for anything like this anybody can get a used laser printer that only prints in B&W for about $40 on the used market.

[indepat]

20. Wonder if these light yellow dots use up some of the very costly printer ink

the public is already being typically gouged for?

Edited: spelling

[IDemo]

24. I was told the yellow dots have been replaced on many models by firmware

that can recognize the most common currencies, and cancel the print. They might even permanently disable the printer, I don't recall.