http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101801663.html

It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it isn't. The pages coming out of your color printer may contain hidden information that could be used to track you down if you ever cross the U.S. government.

Last year, an article in PC World magazine pointed out that printouts from many color laser printers contained yellow dots scattered across the page, viewable only with a special kind of flashlight. The article quoted a senior researcher at Xerox Corp. as saying the dots contain information useful to law-enforcement authorities, a secret digital "license tag" for tracking down criminals....

Saw this on the news tonight. All printer manufacturers implement this currently, and it's intended to curtail counterfeit money printing.

That's incredible! I wonder when this started.

This was rumoured for almost a year but now I guess it is confirmed.

Does this mean I should pull the dot matrix that came w/my Atari 800 out of the attic?

Does this mean I should pull the dot matrix that came w/my Atari 800 out of the attic?

"Wait 10 minutes while I print page 1 of our quarterly earnings"

--RRNNGGHH RRNNNGHH RNNNGHH RNNHGHH---

Ahhh how fond of the dot matrix. Not.

"Wait 10 minutes while I print page 1 of our quarterly earnings"

--RRNNGGHH RRNNNGHH RNNNGHH RNNHGHH---

Ahhh how fond of the dot matrix. Not.

Justin,

You must not have ever had the pleasure of using some of the faster Okidata printers. Those things screamed and would have produced your page 1 in very short order, albeit with lesser quality than the modern inkjet. The real slow pokes were the 'daisy wheel' printers that produced fully formed characters like a typewriter but were soooo noisy, most people had them in sound deadening enclosures.

-gb-

There was a whole thing about using any encryption software from US, apparently they (US software companies) had left "Backdoors" that was accessible for law enforcement agencies.

Moral of the story, program your own encryption software, it can be fun!

My close friend programmed his for his last year thesis, it had three layers (after deciding 7 layers would be a little over the top) including bogus data. Nobody ever cracked it (not even the professor) :)

Well, law agencies are becoming more intrusive that’s for sure, just picture the following in Court:-

Defendant " You can't prove, I didn't do F*$%^ [CENSORED]"

Prosecutor "I shall now produce exhibit B, namely "Toilet Cam"
:)

Anhar

Actually, I read on the internet yesterday that the technology is only on color laser printers. No worries if you use an inkjet, I guess. I'm looking down at my Epson right now...I hope I'm not wasting my yellow ink cartridge on that crap.