We do not even know if the government actually needs to consult manufacturers each time it seeks to identify document authors it could obtain a complete customer database from the manufacturer and simply access the specific information on its own for any purpose it chooses. Then, with the cooperation of distributors and manufacturers, it could identify who purchased the machine.
#THE COLOR MACHINE SERIAL NUMBER#
If the Secret Service or any other governmental body wanted to identify the author of an anonymously printed political pamphlet, it could use the markings on the document to at least determine the serial number and the manufacturer of the machine on which it was printed. The possible misuses of this marking technology are frightening-individuals using printers to create political pamphlets, organize legal protest activities, or even discuss private medical conditions or sensitive personal topics can be identified by the government with no legal process, no judicial oversight, and no notice to the person spied upon. We also have no way of knowing whether the Secret Service is the only governmental agency using this technology. This means that we have no way to require them to adhere to these purposes or even verify that they are the only purposes. While they may actually use it for legitimate anticounterfeiting purposes, currently no law prevents them from exploiting the technology in ways that could infringe on the privacy and anonymity of Americans.
#THE COLOR MACHINE PC#
In the PC World article, manufacturers and the Secret Service claim that the marking technology was developed to deter counterfeiting activities using color machines. The distributor performs a database query to match the serial number with a purchaser manufacturers can also do searches if they have access to the database. A document whose author a governmental agency wants to discover contains only the serial number and the manufacturer's name of the machine on which it was printed, so upon extracting this information from a document, it must consult the distributor responsible for selling the machine. The purchaser's identity is then associated with the serial number and the manufacturer's name of the machine. In a typical scenario, when distributors sell printers, they obtain information about the purchaser, which is maintained in a database. According to the article, since information about a user is not encoded into the arrangement of markings, law enforcement agencies work with manufacturers to obtain the identities of the persons to whom the printers were sold. 26, 2004, PC World article entitled "Dutch Track Counterfeits Via Printer Serial Numbers" explained that Dutch railway law enforcement officials were employing this same technology to investigate a large-scale railway ticket counterfeiting operation. government is not the only national government using the marking technology to deter counterfeiting activities. The Secret Service and manufacturers would be able to decode these values from the markings and in the event a color machine was used to print a suspected counterfeited document, these values would be used with customer information to discover the identity of the machine's owner. At the request of the United States Secret Service, manufacturers developed mechanisms that print in an encoded form the serial number and the manufacturer's name as indiscernible markings on color documents. Governments, including the United States, already use the hidden markings to track counterfeiters." According to the article, the high fidelity of outputs from color machines to their original documents suggests that counterfeiters can potentially succeed in creating high-quality counterfeited currency and government documents using these machines.
#THE COLOR MACHINE CODE#
"several printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document those machines produce.
22, 2004, PC World published an article stating that
Please note that EFF is no longer requesting or accepting samples of printer dots. Please visit for the most up-to-date information on this project.
Note: As of October 13th, 2005, some information in this paper
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