
Why printers add secret tracking dots - happy-go-lucky
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170607-why-printers-add-secret-tracking-dots
======
nerdponx
I would love to know how many engineers, managers, and execs at printer
companies were/are complicit in this.

Obviously it's a useful feature for an employer; a little underhanded (it
should be common knowledge, not a secret program) and understandable from a
business perspective. Especially for an organization like the NSA.

But for a consumer product, it is completely unreasonable to at least not
offer an option to disable the feature. The only other product that
deliberately leaves identifying traces that I can think of is ammunition.

Did anyone at one of these printer companies express reluctance over the idea?
Was anyone let go over it? Did anyone refuse to work on the project?

~~~
greedo
How does ammunition deliberately leave an identifying trace?

~~~
in_the_sticks
Others mentioned microstamping but that's not the only method. Increasingly,
ammunition being sold has serial numbers on both the bullet and the case.

~~~
fivestar
I was not aware that any ammunition in the US is microstamped.

~~~
Zak
California has a law requiring the use of microstamping on semi-automatic
handguns, however, models previously certified for sale in the state are
exempt. I do not believe any manufacturer is actually offering a microstamped
firearm for sale.

The stamps are required to be on the firearm, not the ammunition. They're
supposed to leave an identifiable mark on the ammunition when fired.

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cmiles74
I believe they are in place to help the Secret Service track down people who
counterfeit money.[0]

In 2012, the Secret Service released a document in response to an FOIA request
that listed the manufacturers that agreed to add these tracking dots at that
time.[1]

[0]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/technology/personaltech/24...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/technology/personaltech/24askk-001.html)

[1] [https://www.scribd.com/doc/81897582/microdots-
pdf](https://www.scribd.com/doc/81897582/microdots-pdf)

~~~
nerdponx
Can you convincingly counterfeit money with a home inkjet printer? Find that
hard to believe.

~~~
ptero
Probably not today, with all the new features, but maybe earlier, e.g. when
color inkjets became mainstream and for small denomination bills (no one
checks watermarks when accepting old $1 bills).

That said, I suspect this mis-feature is being forced on manufacturers now
ostensibly for anti-counterfeiting, but in reality to enable tracking for
other 3-letter agencies :(

~~~
daxorid
What are the consequences of telling NSA "no"?

Is there any law that permits the USG to compel any action, other than those
legal requests pursuant to an active investigation, on the part of private
companies?

~~~
JackFr
How about the the General Services Administration saying "We won't buy, nor
allow contractors to use, any printers that don't comply." If I were a
manufacturer, that would be compelling.

~~~
cosinetau
That would be too easy though. Since we're acting as the toughest game in
town, why not also bully people?

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ungzd
TLDR: the article does not answer this question.

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tarikozket
For the people wondering what it looks like:
[http://static.snopes.com/app/uploads/2017/06/printer_EFF_dot...](http://static.snopes.com/app/uploads/2017/06/printer_EFF_dot_code_fb-865x452.jpg)

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bediger4000
Is this an example of market failure? I mean, absolutely no customer pressed
for this mis-feature, and no customer made a decision to buy a printer with
this mis-feature.

~~~
fixermark
It doesn't feel like it fits easily into an economics template to talk about
it as a "market failure."

If I turn my head and squint, it looks roughly like "Government oversight /
voluntary manufacturer action to minimize cost due to tragedy of the
commons"\---the technology makes some forms of crime much cheaper, the
government worked with manufacturers (probably with some off-the-books arm-
twisting) to alter the technology to minimize its efficacy for a subset of
those forms of crime.

~~~
cestith
The GSA buys a lot of stuff. It's probably very clearly on the books. Only
products of class "Y" which offer feature "X" will be considered for purchase
by the entirety of the US government based on a single document by a single
agency.

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DarkKomunalec
Because 'your' printer, and its manufacturer, are hostile to you.

Edit:

> Finish your sentence, please :)

OK: Because 'your' printer, and its manufacturer, [and the
NSA/Erdogan/multinational corp.] are hostile to you [printing illegal protest
posters/exposing corporate crimes/spreading dissent/whistleblowing].

And yes, preventing individuals from breaking the law _is_ hostile to those
individuals, even if all laws were just. And they are _not_.

~~~
pc86
> _Because 'your' printer, and its manufacturer, [and the Secret Service,] are
> hostile to you [counterfeiting money]._

Finish your sentence, please :)

That was the original purpose of the tracking dots. I don't think it's at all
surprising that an intelligence agency would co-opt a law enforcement
identification mechanism.

There is nothing "hostile" about preventing individuals from breaking the law.

~~~
_jal
> There is nothing "hostile" about preventing individuals from breaking the
> law.

1) It prevents nothing. It is about post-facto detection.

2) It is self-evidently hostile to the law-breaker.

3) Whether or not it is _moral_ to break the law is the relevant question, and
that depends on the law. The "original purpose" of this tech hardly matters.
Ask the authors of Soviet-era samizdat.

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nonamechicken
If printers have this type of tracking, I wonder what type of tracking they
have in our PCs (other than ad tracking and Windows telemetry).

~~~
rockinghigh
For the internet, they intercept all communications at the internet provider
level.

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twobyfour
Anyone notice that the article doesn't actually answer the question of "why"?

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jmkni
They were doing this with typewriters in Germany during the cold war, Mikko
Hyppoonen talks about it in this Ted talk -
[https://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_three_types_of_onli...](https://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_three_types_of_online_attack)

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rabboRubble
This is why you can't print in B&W from a color printer when the color
cartridges are out of ink. No yellow ink, no printer fingerprint on the
document.

My Dad had a complete melt down one day about not being able to print in B&W.
When I told him about the yellow fingerprinting, he thought I was joking.
Nope!

------
bloaf
So what's the status of open source printer firmware that doesn't have secret
tracky dots?

~~~
nerflad
I find it sad/ humourous that open source printer firmware was part of the
impetus behind the free software movement, yet it's probably still one of the
most opaque areas there is.

------
acomjean
I know someone who used to design chips that went into printers.

There is code At the chip level that is unknown to the what it actually does
provided by the government. Thought to be currency detection, but maybe adding
these dots too?

------
mapimopi
At one point I was working at a printing shop. One time I was testing color
calibration, running the same sheet through the printer multiple times, and
these dots became visible clearly.

It was quite a head scratchier, we actually thought there's something wrong
with our printer until I googled about these yellow dots.

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squarefoot
Someone with knowledge and money should push for the development of
alternative open and free (as in speech) printer mainboards to swap the
original ones. In some cases reverse engineering and flash reprogramming
should be enough. I'd happily donate some quid if such a project would exist.

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agentgt
Sort of relevant is microprinting that still is in use today on money
documents such as checks [1].

It would be interesting to combine the two techniques!

Microprinting is for preventing forgery and thus is incredibly difficult to
copy but techniques to copy are always improving. I assume microdots are not
as difficult to copy and are about tracking.

So if someone effectively copied the microprint you could inject microdots and
those would be copied as well. Thus you might be able to track the forger as
well detect forgery statistical analysis (based on the fact microdots encode
changing data such as time).

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprinting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprinting)

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JumpCrisscross
Are there any American printer makers not selling out their customers?

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Double_a_92
How do the dots get linked to me? E.g. lets say I print a ransom note and send
it to someone. The police can analyze the dots on them, find the id of my
printer... And then? I never registered my printer with my name somewhere or
so.

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newman314
Not to go off on a tangent but I find it disappointing that printer
manufacturers choose to spend time and money on this instead of providing up
to date firmware.

I know of a line of printers that you can netcat firmware into. That's just
terrifying.

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893helios
I always figured one of the drivers for this was that the NSA basically
mandated that this feature to be built into any printers it would buy (or let
be bought). The power of the federal/DOD purse is a thing.

~~~
cestith
The Secret Service and FBI really wanted it.

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tehwebguy
Would like to know if any serious counterfeiting arrests have ever been made
with these.

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touristtam
err ... how is this news? Here are two article from 2005 [1] and 2009 [2]
about exactly the same thing:

[1]
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/20/outlaw_printer_dots/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/20/outlaw_printer_dots/)
[2] [https://viewfromll2.com/2009/11/16/big-brothers-invisible-
ye...](https://viewfromll2.com/2009/11/16/big-brothers-invisible-yellow-dots-
using-secret-printer-tracking-data-in-civil-litigation/)

~~~
coldpie
Because it's interesting background information for a current news item.

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compsciphd
you'd think it be smart if securedrop post processed everything in a manner
that removed the dots.

