Laser Printers that come with Features to Catch those who Make Counterfeit Money
Here's a question doing the rounds in these days of extreme public awareness of privacy issues - does your color laser printer tattle on you? It would seem so, going by the kind of serious interest they show on the website of the Electronic Frontier Foundation over the matter. Here's the deal - specific models of color laser Xerox, Canon, Epson or HP printers, when you ask them to print a page, will often put down a little sign of their brand and serial number on the paper, in light yellow ink, in special coded symbols made up of a few yellow dots that are so tiny, that you couldn't see them without a magnifying glass. What are they there for? They are there on the request of the US Secret Service, the agency that was first established more than a century ago, to catch people who make counterfeit money.
These days, if you have a good quality color laser printer, it has just become a lot easier to print $100 bills than it was ever before. And that quality can be so good, that if you had a sheet of paper to start on that was a close match, you could fool a lot of people. When the Secret Service gets its hands on a fake bill, it looks to see if it contains those dots, finds out when and where the printer was sold that printed the fake bill, and tries to see if it can track down the people behind the attempts to make counterfeit money.
The privacy advocates are worried that the government could glibly claim that it doesn't use those yellow dots for anything other than catching people who make counterfeit money; but what if they use it for other things without telling us? There is nothing in the law that prevents them from doing it. The yellow dots aren't there on inkjet printers, probably because it would be fairly difficult to make an inkjet fake bill, and pass it off as real. If you are worried about whether your laser printer tells on you, you can visit the EFF website to find out if your model of printer is on their list.
In fact, as social activists like Greenpeace members will tell you, the FBI has masses of leaflets they printed, to try to tell where exactly and who exactly printed them. Just imagine if you are trying to run a campaign against the corrupt politician; he could have information gathered about your team, based on the printer used on the campaign. One answer for now, would be, to either buy a printer model that doesn't have such spyware installed. Or, you could use a black-and-white printer, or an inkjet one. If you want to check to see if your printer has this feature, you need to buy an LED flashlight, and light up the sheet of paper in question with it, as you go over its wares a magnifying glass. You'll probably see it if it's there. Unless there is a law on the books that keeps the government from using these dots for anything other than catching people who make counterfeit money, you would probably do best heading over to the EFF website, to find a printer that doesn't invade your privacy. Or else, you could buy a printer from another country.