
FE-Schrift: forgery-impeding typeface - chki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift
======
contingencies
The Wikipedia page didn't seem to mention other similar systems created
historically to impede modification/miscomprehension.

China has a separate set of accounting number glyphs specifically for this
purpose, as the regular numbers 1-9, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 (一二三四五六七八九十百千萬) are
obviously easy to change, for example 一 to 十 or 千, 二 to 三, 八 to 九, etc. The
replacements are 壹貳參肆伍陸柒捌玖拾佰仟萬.

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numbers#Standard_numbe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numbers#Standard_numbers)
for background.

~~~
contingencies
Also check out also a mistranscription error database I defined in BNF at
[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/globalcitizen/php-
iban/mas...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/globalcitizen/php-
iban/master/mistranscriptions.txt) to help with rebuilding errors made by
humans from invalid checksum IBANs.

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grzm
Most typefaces are designed for regularity, so this is quite the purposeful
twist. I found a comment from Erik Spiekermann that makes the point

> _While nobody could simply turn one of them into another one, now they all
> look totally forged in the first place. No policeman would notice if you
> invented new characters instead._ [0]

[0]:
[http://www.printmag.com/article/hot_type_feschrift/](http://www.printmag.com/article/hot_type_feschrift/)

[1]: [http://spiekermann.com/gefalschtes-
nummernschild/](http://spiekermann.com/gefalschtes-nummernschild/)

~~~
secmax
The goal of this system is too make faking license plates using a bit of black
tape hard/impossible. So I have some trouble getting the point of Erik
Spiekermann's comment.

~~~
martin_a
Erik is just trying to position himself as the only one in Germany who knows
something about typography...

Just bullshit talk imho, as the FE Schrift does exactly what it´s supposed to.

~~~
bmn__
I flipped the bozo bit on him when he flatly denied the existence of the
capital sharp s. Spiekermann is and remains an ignorant blowhard.

~~~
Tomte
Well, that's one thing where he's right. Agree to disagree, I guess. ;-)

I had two online interactions with him that formed my opinion of him.

When I started being interested in typefaces, but not really able to discern
one from another, I wrote him an email asking for the title of one or two
books where I could see his FF Meta used for the body text. He's a busy man,
so I only half expected him to reply, but I certainly didn't expect his
condescending abusive email that he wouldn't help a lazy student with his
homework. Great way to inspire people interested in your work!

The other time was in a type aficionado web forum where I mentioned that I had
bought the Adobe Type Classics collection CD for much less than retail price
(second hand). He accused me of piracy, again in pretty abusive manner.

Taken together with his holier-than-thou attitude, riling against "spec work"
([https://www.nospec.com/](https://www.nospec.com/)), but then asking
designers for spec work, because "it's for the UN" (and he was on the jury).

Or with his blatant lie in a Fontshop brochure I have on my shelf, claiming
that there is virtually no intellectual property protection for fonts in
Germany, and how it would have been impossibly expensive to register for type
protection… but somehow a lot of hobbyists and small fish managed to do it.

Erik Spiekermann is a very important designer who did lots and lots of
outstanding work, but I've found him to be a deeply unpleasant person.

~~~
ktRolster
_claiming that there is virtually no intellectual property protection for
fonts in Germany, and how it would have been impossibly expensive to register
for type protection… but somehow a lot of hobbyists and small fish managed to
do it._

What kind of protection is there? I've read that claim before.

~~~
Tomte
Back then there was the "Schriftzeichengesetz" which offered protection
roughly similar to a design patent called "Geschmacksmuster" (but with its own
registry). It has since been subsumed by the "Designgesetz".

Typeface protection has always been weaker in Germany than copyright
protection, but it existed and exists.

As an aside: Fontshop used to claim at every opportunity that they had
achieved a verdict in a lawsuit that gave fonts full copyright protection.
That only worked because nobody on the forums and the web had ever seen the
verdict. It wasn't secret, just behind a paywall of a legal database. A friend
who's a lawyer retrieved it for me and I was much amused: The verdict said
precisely the opposite!

------
m-ou-se
Dutch license plates have similar properties. Not by changing the proportions
of the letters, but by cutting out parts of letters. For example, the R is
missing a piece so you can't make it from a P and some black tape:
[https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Netherlands_licens...](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Netherlands_licenseplate_car_trailer.JPG)

~~~
megapatch
One could also use white tape as well...

~~~
et2o
They address this in the article, pointing out that white tape would look
different under headlights from the reflective background paint.

~~~
IshKebab
I'm pretty sure you can get retroreflective white tape. Extra effort though.

~~~
faceplanted
I believe "extra effort though" is entirely the point.

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the_mitsuhiko
I really wonder how common this trivial faking of license plates is. The UK
have printed plates that can be easily faked and seem to be doing well.

The FE font is still hidious even years after it was introduced.

~~~
ubernostrum
It's an issue in China. As an anti-congestion and anti-smog measure, Beijing
has rules which rotate the vehicles permitted on the roads according to the
plate number (for example, on Fridays a vehicle whose number ends in 5 or 0
cannot be driven). And of course some people don't want to follow the rules,
so they develop all sorts of ways to try to temporarily change their plate to
one that's allowed to drive.

------
jack_jennings
You might also be interest in ZXX, a typeface made for fooling OCR:
[http://www.sang-mun.com/zxx](http://www.sang-mun.com/zxx)

~~~
breakingcups
Not just OCR. I read the first word as "Growing"

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kowdermeister
I don't get how this font makes hard to fake a plate. (yes, upon close
inspection you'll get busted, but cameras are an easy target)

You can get the font and then 3D print your plate or invent your own process
in the kitchen.

[http://www.autokennzeichen.info/kennzeichen-
schriftart.htm](http://www.autokennzeichen.info/kennzeichen-schriftart.htm)

~~~
tbabb
3D printing an entire new plate and making it retroreflective seems quite a
bit harder than "putting some tape on it" to me, so it seems like it's
successful?

~~~
clort
what about having a blank retroreflective tape and just getting vinyl
lettering to stick on and change it when you want a different one?

My "James Bond" idea was to have a car with cameras front and back that could
read the plates of the vehicles to either side. Then, the plate would be a
retroreflective panel with an active LCD overlay.. you could change your
plates to whatever you wanted, and the car could have a 'stealth' mode, where
when you drove behind a car, your rear plate would match theirs.. and from the
front, your plate would match the car behind.

------
pbhjpbhj
Did they forget about C and G? Surely the top of one should be modified
otherwise you can add the "tail" to a C to make G??

~~~
emerongi
There's a notch on the bottom of the G and the end of the top of the C has a
different angle.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I see it now, thanks for the correction.

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xtreme
I wonder why they chose monospace. Wouldn't a proportional font be more
tamper-resistant?

~~~
msangi
I'd guess that's because it's designed for a fixed number of letters to a
plate.

Monoscpace doesn't have spacing issues and possibly make the plates easier to
recognize.

~~~
dfox
One of the peculeraties of german license plates is that the number is not
fixed length at all. Another one is that the dash in the plate number (which
is not printed on the FE ones and only implied by position of the inspection
stickers) is significant and there could be two plates with same characters
that differ only in placement of said "dash".

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amenghra
Doesnt prevent taking two or more plates, splitting them vertically and re-
combining them.

~~~
hanbura
It also doesn't prevent you from stealing (or buying) a machine that can make
licence plates.

You can't defend against everything, but any criminal who defeats the current
license plates wouldn't have been caught based on his license plate anyway.

The font is enough to make plate manipulation not worth the effort for average
criminals and for people trying to defeat speed cameras. Going any further
than that isn't worth the effort.

~~~
contingencies
_a machine that can make licence plates_

Isn't that basically any decent sized metal press?

If it only has to look the part, 3D printing plus paint will likely do it
without the outlay.

~~~
usrusr
In any case those would be devices that terrorists (usually kids who excel
more in ideology than in training) on the run would not have with them, to
quickly change the identity of the car they stole.

This is not a sophisticated anti-forgery scheme, it's a no-cost layer of
tamper resistance.

