While the codes may aid the Secret Service’s fight against counterfeiting, the practice raises some larger issues for society, according to EFF Staff Attorney Lee Tien. "People who want to protect their anonymity — whether they’re whistleblowers or dissidents or journalists or whatever — when they print something out, should know that there’s an issue here," he said.
Clandestine codes used to track the output of some color laser printers have been cracked by a research team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
According to the organization, the codes are part of a deal cut by the U.S. Secret Service with some printer makers to help curb the counterfeiting of currency.
In a statement released yesterday, the EFF said the codes, which are invisible to the human eye but can be seen with a microscope or under blue light, reveal the date and time a page was printed as well as the printer’s serial number.
The EFF has published a list of printers that deploy the coding scheme at its Web site.
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