Do y'allself a favor and get a blue LED flashlight and point it at a color print. It's shocking how many are printed. It looks like a spattering of sand across the entire page!
Also, what is the meaning of this tracking, must every corner of our lives be tracked just on principle?
> If there are really no tracking dots, you can either create your own ones (deda_create_dots) or print the calibration page (deda_anonmask_create -w) with another printer and use the mask for your own printer
The thought of being able to “spoof” the tracking dots of another printer has interesting implications for deniability. Though I guess in this case you’d still need access to the original printer to print the anonmask…
There is a copy here: https://ericbalawejder.com/assets/hexview/Forensic-Analysis-...
Table 1 (manufacturer, #of printers analyzed, dots found):
Brother 1 no
Canon 10 yes
Dell 4 yes
Epson 8 somemodels
Hewlett-Packard 43 somemodels
IBM 1 yes
KonicaMinolta 21 somemodels
Kyocera 4 yes
Lanier 1 yes
Lexmark 6 somemodels
NRG 1 yes
Okidata 9 somemodels
Ricoh 6 yes
Samsung 5 no
Savin 1 yes
Tektronix 4 no
Unknown 1 yes
Xerox 15 somemodels
1. You're looking for a very specific person.
2. You want to unconstitutionally punish somebody for free speech, and you don't care who, you just want to cheaply find a convenient victim.
In that respect, tracking-dots are an invitation to #2, since they don't really need much in the way of human labor-hours or focus.
It's time to fight back! Let's start hacking the good printers out there, get their firmwares replaced with something viable, and start divorcing this nonsense. These tracking dots and other steganographic tracking methods exist precisely to track people like me and silence me, people who point out the occulted control methods, people who spread memes deemed information hazards and malinformation by the giant onyx squid.
[/rant]
The tracking dots are used by the FBI if someone prints out classified information and passes it around, or other copyrighted/illegal documents.
For counterfeiting, a technical person's first thought is: "how does the Bureau of Engraving and Printing actually do it?" and then they do that - and you nailed it: offset printing.
Laser printers and inkjets can't even remotely compare.
Printers send telemetry to the mothership, including serial number. Anyone under NSL cannot disclose that fact, so it's possible (probable) that if OEMs are pulling serial numbers, computer names, usernames, registered owner names, IP address logs, that they are NSL to retain and/or redirect that data feed.
It explains why everything, everything is so ****ing leaky with your information (beyond just advertising). Where do you think our modern machine learning came from? It was in order to process this stupendously gigantic mountain of data! I'm sure Utah was running some less efficient prototype of the learning we see in the public today back in the time of the GWOT!
So no, it's not just to confirm, as a few privileged individuals [at best] can go to terminals and pull up gobs of information. This is one of the reasons seeing-sphere-company's stock has done so well recently (money money for me)!
(I mean it is, but seeing this almost real-world implementation is fun!)
Bill scanning to verify authenticity is already occurring, why not record the fact Bank of xAI ATM #67387 tendered two Franklins with serial numbers $SERIALA and $SERIALB to you (verified by PIN and card, and possibly bolstered by Face ID incognito); maybe older systems only do the verification locally and lack OCR, but I'm positive new systems are plenty powerful enough to run pared down OCR on serial numbers... wait they have been doing it with cheques all these years with handwritten dollar values, so why not OCR serial numbers coming and going? You see? The net deepens. I probably can't suggest methods of washing this data without possibly committing some obscure crime, so I will leave you to your creative imaginations...
I also find it interesting because the person who posted the discovery and breakdown of the dots stood to personally lose thousands of dollars they'd spent on the fakes, but posted their findings anyway.
I forgot if we learned whether the government side was a specific government or governments, or the consortium called Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group
which has been involved in other related stuff (like making some software and devices refuse to process images that are detected to be images of currency!).
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.
I think its not like "somebody gone to each..", but rather "... a good idea".
When color printers/copiers first appeared there was a concern about people photocopying money. The old joke was that your color photocopier "would pay for itself in no time".
If everything you print has the same fictitious serial number, it's still a stable identifier that can be triangulated.
Super cool demo btw
You might fool someone who does such analysis casually but I'd expect an actual experienced investigator to e.g. go "the tracking dots are clearly brand X, but the raster used for greyscale is obviously from Y, soooo"
There were people who did counterfeiting "right", down to getting real printing presses, suitable paper etc. https://www.businessinsider.com/frank-bourassa-on-how-he-cou... (it's strongly implied that he got away with 6 weeks in prison and likely got to keep a decent amount of the profit).
Except if you can manipulate the timestamps, then they aren't relevant anymore, so the search space is much bigger than the intersection of each set of days.
It's the intersection of all the people who visited each printer at least once any time.
Similar question can be asked: Why some (consumer) supply tanks are units and can only be exchanged together in one, even there's still dye left in one of the colors? Why do cartridges signaling "empty" even there's still enough in them?
You can sell more of units and save on dye/ink.
If you really afraid, just overlay your PDFs with noise of yellow dots before printing. Or apply a digimarc pattern onto that with gibberish. That will mitigate recognition unless the digimarc pattern is recognized and removed, which is kind of difficult if unknown (https://www.digimarc.com/). There are possibilities.
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.
If anything, having them different would prevent mistakes: customers cannot install a yellow tank in the place of a blue one, because it does not fit.
Then they throw bogus charges on you because "the process is the punishment" and to discourage other people saying things they don't like. Prior restraint is what some would call that.
a. there are easy possibilities to poison the printed tracking code
b. the location of the printer is not trackable by default (but for sure can be added through drivers. But then, tracking will be the smallest problem)
c. there are laws what can be said and what not. Also, what is legal, free speech & thought, or, what is art, is defined. Other than that might give you problems. And it should. No one is above the law in a proper democracy, except your name is Trump of course.
so, you can print what you want. But if its illegal, than I'm glad you get the punishment. But, for being able to punish you, the executive needs your location and know it's been you. How can they find out it was you, other then with "caught in the act"? If they have enough hints who you are and for being able to locate you, then the tracking code is just an evidence that you produced it.
What if you use your neighbor's printer? What if you use the poisoning technique? Knowledge is all, when being a criminal. Others are not touched by that, and if, poisoning, old disposable printers or usage of neighbor's devices and the classical reproduction methods aka printing (industrial) are still tools, one can use. I don't understand the alarmism.
With the ability to identify perceived enemies of an administration, this weapon can be leveraged against anyone saying entirely legal things that the administration doesn’t like.
It’s not alarmism, it’s simply realpolitik.
because its easy and convenient to replace the tanks for the customer without the needs of opening the device
.. there are a lot of why-reasons one can think of and which we don't know. But, the fact that its been done that way, should tell us, there are other people thought about this already and decided to do it like its done.
If you want to be able to change YMCK individually, then look for a model with individually replaceble tanks or choose a professional device with 8+ dyes. But they're expensive.
prosecution without evidence -> what does it have to do with tracking code?
How does the government know, the one've written what they dislike is you, in case they find a peace on the street and read the tracking code? Its an evidence, but, they dont know who printed it, where the printer is, and, hence, its absolutely not a imminent problem.
It will be a problem, though, if you register your device (serialnumber + name/address). But then, the printer-producer is the last firewall - and - its darwin' law then.
If one wants to criticize, distribute illegal writings and whatever else, then one should be literate in what one does and use caution. In a democracy, there are rules for all to adhere to. In areas without rules, one is literate enough to know how to keep safe or just not criticizing anyway.
btw, in europe its not realpolitik. In U.S. it wasn't until Trump - but, the populous have voted!
Of which countries are you talking, where such is realpolitik?
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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Product Usage Data – We collect product usage data such as pages printed, print mode, media used, ink or toner brand, file type printed (.pdf, .jpg, etc.), application used for printing (Word, Excel, Adobe Photoshop, etc.), file size, time stamp, and usage and status of other printer supplies. We do not scan or collect the content of any file or information that might be displayed by an application.
Device Data – We collect information about your computer, printer and/or device such as operating system, firmware, amount of memory, region, language, time zone, model number, first start date, age of device, device manufacture date, browser version, device manufacturer, connection port, warranty status, unique device identifiers, advertising identifiers and additional technical information that varies by product.¹ https://web.archive.org/web/20190828162443/https://www8.hp.c...
Thats on top. So, as an informed individual being, one should avoid HP. The other printer producers do not insinst on registration or wifi-before-first-use politics. But, who knows.
.. again, how can the government find out who you are by having just a code? If there's no mandatory registration (f.e. not HP)? If one knows how to poisen the tracking code? If one use a new/used printer and dispose afterwards? If one use the "neighbor from the first floor" printer?
There is no possibility to find out who printed that, if one takes a little bit caution and have little bit of knowledge. Even print-out-once-copy-many would make the code unreadable (f.e. normal quality and/or black & white) ...
spread the word! W00t W00t! :)