EFF: Secret Code in Color Printers Lets Government Track You

Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release

For Immediate Release: Monday, October 17, 2005

Contact:

Seth Schoen
   Staff Technologist
   Electronic Frontier Foundation
   seth@eff.org
   +1 415 436-9333 x107

Secret Code in Color Printers Lets Government Track You

Tiny Dots Show Where and When You Made Your Print

San Francisco - A research team led by the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently broke the code behind
tiny tracking dots that some color laser printers secretly
hide in every document.

The U.S. Secret Service admitted that the tracking
information is part of a deal struck with selected color
laser printer manufacturers, ostensibly to identify
counterfeiters.  However, the nature of the private
information encoded in each document was not previously
known.

"We've found that the dots from at least one line of
printers encode the date and time your document was
printed, as well as the serial number of the printer," said
EFF Staff Technologist Seth David Schoen.

You can see the dots on color prints from machines made by
Xerox, Canon, and other manufacturers (for a list of the
printers we investigated so far, see:
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/list.php).  The dots
are yellow, less than one millimeter in diameter, and are
typically repeated over each page of a document.  In order
to see the pattern, you need a blue light, a magnifying
glass, or a microscope (for instructions on how to see the
dots, see: http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/).

EFF and its partners began its project to break the printer
code with the Xerox DocuColor line.  Researchers Schoen,
EFF intern Robert Lee, and volunteers Patrick Murphy and
Joel Alwen compared dots from test pages sent in by EFF
supporters, noting similarities and differences in their
arrangement, and then found a simple way to read the
pattern.

"So far, we've only broken the code for Xerox DocuColor
printers," said Schoen.  "But we believe that other models
from other manufacturers include the same personally
identifiable information in their tracking dots."

You can decode your own Xerox DocuColor prints using EFF's
automated program at
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/index.php#p....

Xerox previously admitted that it provided these tracking
dots to the government, but indicated that only the Secret
Service had the ability to read the code.  The Secret
Service maintains that it only uses the information for
criminal counterfeit investigations.  However, there are no
laws to prevent the government from abusing this
information.

"Underground democracy movements that produce political or
religious pamphlets and flyers, like the Russian samizdat
of the 1980s, will always need the anonymity of simple
paper documents, but this technology makes it easier for
governments to find dissenters," said EFF Senior Staff
Attorney Lee Tien. "Even worse, it shows how the government
and private industry make backroom deals to weaken our
privacy by compromising everyday equipment like printers.
The logical next question is: what other deals have been or
are being made to ensure that our technology rats on us?"

EFF is still working on cracking the codes from other
printers and we need the public's help.  Find out how you
can make your own test pages to be included in our research
at http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/wp.php#testsheets.

For this release:


About EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil
liberties organization working to protect rights in the
digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and
challenges industry and government to support free
expression and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported
organization and maintains one of the most linked-to
websites in the world at http://www.eff.org/


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