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banku_brougham 2 days ago

Do black and white laser printers produce tracking dots?

Also, what is the meaning of this tracking, must every corner of our lives be tracked just on principle?

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rustcleaner 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I can't affirm knowledge of steganographic identifiers in B&W printers. I wanted to state I would be surprised if B&W printers did not embed tracking information. There's too much national security value in spamming origination details on everything. There is always, always a safety or security argument to do so, followed with "but what's the harm, you're not doing anything you shouldn't be doing... are you? "

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doctoboggan 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's my understanding that the secret service requested (required?) that the printer manufacturers start adding the dots once the printers got good enough to easily recreate paper bills. Because they are primarily a tool for tracking counterfeiters, they are not needed with black a white printers and thus are not included.

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krupan 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The tracking dots aren't for anti-counterfeiting. The secret service has a separate chunk of code in every color printer that detects if you are printing money and prints out a page that says essentially, "you can't do that." (at least that was the case 20 years ago when I worked for HP).

The tracking dots are used by the FBI if someone prints out classified information and passes it around, or other copyrighted/illegal documents.

	▲	Doxin a day ago \| parent [-]
		The EURion constellation[0] is how that detection mostly works as I understand it. Neat bit of tech. It's real obvious on euro bills once you know what to look for. Fun fact: not all printers give a hoot about this pattern, so it's a neat trick to annoy people with if your printer doesn't. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

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theGeatZhopa 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

mostly, the software in printers/scanners and Adobe's Photoshop alikes is looking out for the "EURion" pattern.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

That is not to be confused with (dynamical) and non-visible tracking info on printed sheets, which in fact can have everything coded in. By that, even 1-bit printouts can be identified up to the source. If the printer model and #salt is printed alongside, the prosecution has evidence for the cases the printer involved.

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axus 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...

List hasn't been updated since 2017, was probably one guy making inferences from FOIA requests. We'll have to wait until the next time a Chinese university publishes some US government secrets.

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jandrese 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think the idea is that nobody is going to be fooled by a B&W $20 bill, so they don't have to print the dots.

	▲	dylan604 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		"money be green, fool!" --D'Angelo Barksdale, The Wire the only people to be fooled by B&W money are most likely drug related, at least, the only ones willing to attempt to fool others with it.
	▲	crtasm 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Until you colour it in with a crayon.

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tonyedgecombe 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

No yellow dots on monochrome printers.

Decades ago I worked on some software that would adjust the kerning on characters to hide information. As far as I know the project never went anywhere.