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Printers and Government surveillance

Axolotl

14:39 / 20.10.05

I read this in the Metro this morning, and to be honest I was somewhat sceptical, but I checked it out at the E.F.F here. Basically colour printers have "signatures" that they put on every page they print. This is matched to a serial number, which is matched to the owner. The printer companies give this information to the Secret Service who "only use it in counterfeit cases". So all they need to do is look at a printout and they will be able to trace it to its originator.
Am I just being paranoid or does anyone else find this disturbing?

grant

15:02 / 20.10.05

Tell me more about how these signatures work.

Are they breakable?

Axolotl

15:19 / 20.10.05

Well according to the EFF (from the link above) the signatures are a series of dots:
"The dots are yellow, less than one millimeter in diameter, and are typically repeated over each page of a document. In order to see the pattern, you need a blue light, a magnifying glass, or a microscope"
If by breakable you mean de-codable, then the EFF have managed to decode Xerox's code but not other manufacturers.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

12:53 / 25.10.05

How do they match the serial number to the owner?

I never filled out a name and address form when I bought any of mine...

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

12:54 / 25.10.05

If you mean 'It can be done' once you've been arrested for fraud, then so what? Swap printer every batch you run. 14 day returns policy and all that.

Axolotl

09:25 / 26.10.05

It wasn't as much the fact that it's possible, it's more that this has been going on for years and no one was aware of it. What other embedded "security" methods are there in existence that they're not telling us about?
I've just realised I sound like a paranoid nutjob in this thread. *adjusts tin-foil hat*

subcultureofone

14:27 / 26.10.05

i was concerned until i recalled all the times my printer has been unable to print a document as i want to see it. how is it able to correctly print a precise pattern of tiny dots every time yet randomly feather and splotch everything else?

paranoia indeed...

how is it able to correctly print a precise pattern of tiny dots every time yet randomly feather and splotch everything else?

science!

i reckon as the dots are always there, the printer will get them right way more often than it gets the rest of the job right. its what it does. it prints dots. oh, and what you ask it to print.

in terms of filling out a form with your address, i dont think that's the point.
the point is that if you send a ransom note they can ask you to print something else and prove your printer made the original document.
kinda like fingerprints, hey.
even if your fingerprints arent already in a database, the cops finding them on a murder weapon isnt useless evidence.
all they have to do link you to the event somehow and then check your fingers.

Tezcatlipoca

10:55 / 27.10.05

How do they match the serial number to the owner?

Absolutely. There's something not quite workable here.

The vast majority of people buy a printer off-the-shelf and without any kind of payment plan (I'd imagine this is especially true of somebody purchasing a printer specifically for illegal purposes), so it would be like having thousands of fingerprints but no fingers to match them to.
To muddy the waters further, printers also change hands frequently before they come to the end of their lives, making any kind of proper tracing even harder.

Sorry, but I'm filing this one into the same drawer as Echelon; nice idea, but totally unworkable, unless of course you can convince the public that it really does work.

Axolotl

15:02 / 27.10.05

Gah, that'll teach me to listen to a group founded by a member of the Grateful Dead.

Char Aina

19:35 / 27.10.05

maybe you missed my post,orjust disagreed with it.
am i way off?
ownership or access to a printer can be proven, cant it?
they wont be able to check a sheet of paper against a database, but if they have a list of suspects they could confirm their suspicions, yeah?

ransom notes will have to be printed on a machine you intend to throw away.

Axolotl

07:28 / 28.10.05

Well afaik they've always been able to match printer to paper when they are in possession of the printer, in the same way that they used to be able to match typewriters to letters, but to do that they have to have a warrant, search your place, take the printer away etc. It was the fact that they could match these things automatically on some database without your knowledge that freaked me out. Kind of the difference between the police going through your hard-drive after you've been arrested & them reading your e-mails with out your knowledge.

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