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this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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It’s so they can print the tracking dots.
For the unaware: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/household-printers-tracking-code/
I do love it when a snopes article is about something being true.
Yeah, usually they're the no fun police.
Wow, I had no idea. I thought the joke was needing full ink in an unrelated color. I didn’t know about tracking. I’m sadly unsurprised.
It's for the purpose of serialization for counterfeit purposes. Also, high end copiers have a device installed called the BDU (Bill Detection Unit) that all scans pass through before being post processed. If the BDU detects a bill being scanned it can error and shut down the whole device until the manufacturer can send someone out to fix it. I used to be one of those people resetting BDUs at schools where a teacher thought it was a good idea to copy images of money for teaching students.
That, and tracking down anyone else the government doesn't like, apparently.
Or their corporate masters! Its not always just the government, you paranoid conspiracy nut! Take your meticulously cited sources and century of baroque acid fueled clandestine horror and go home!
Honestly, the USA is something special. So they do this, instead of putting modern anticounterfit (like polimer notes with transparencies) measures onto their notes.
I think it isnt to stop it, it is to get a conviction.
This is what I mean. It's bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted. This lists the security features on a $5 note, and here's for a £5 note.
In addition to not in lieu of. The US works very hard on preventing counterfeiting, including the creation of the Secret Service.
Our notes have several anti-counterfeit measures. But it's pretty easy to print up money that won't pass scrutiny, but will be spendable at busy nightclubs and such. Well... It used to be easy. Now printer/scanners won't even work if they detect currency.
I believe they missed this part of the memo
It's obvious, more ink used = more profit. The government get the tracking they want, the printer company is slightly more profitable due to extra ink usage, and the customers got fucked. Win-win!
Hold up... Was "Reality Winner" the name of an individual or a business? Like, I was stunned by the fact the yellow dots thing is a thing, but then it starts talking about "Reality Winner" and I can't move on until I know what's up with that name. lol
She is a former NSA translator who sent some classified documents to The Intercept. The Intercept failed to redact the document properly allowing the NSA to view identifying marks on the printout and track her down. I believe she has been release from prison.
Not winning.
Reality confirmed, however.
i wonder: so what do the laser printers use instead?
I can't find the article I read, but if I recall correctly, they use patterns of minute variations in the power of the laser to cause a machine-detectable pattern to appear in the final printed output.
They also use microscopic yellow dot patterns. Black and white only prints use a microscopic grey print pattern at the print boundary. The technique is a form of steganography. They aren't tracking you btw. It gets used primarily to investigate fraud. Printer companies do it primarily because if they don't, their brand will become associated with print related crimes. There are lists of printers that do not do steganographic serialization but those machines are almost entirely too poor quality to produce any convincing counterfeits anyways.
That's how it always starts though.
People use any device or service they want. It's a mix of crooks, tinkerers, journalists, etc.
A company or government makes some moral panic and pushes some privacy or civil rights erosion in the name of "security". The actual security benefit may or may not exist.
Then other companies do the same to keep up.
Then there's only a handful of companies not doing the thing, so anyone who doesn't want their privacy or civil rights eroded uses that, including crooks.
Then politicians and the other companies point to the holdouts as "PROOF!" their changes were good, because look how many crooks use that stuff! (The number of crooks hasn't changed, they've just been concentrated to a single location.) The moral panic deepens.
The non-criminal population that cares about their privacy or civil rights speak out, but get accused of secretly being criminals, or some other crap that can be used to dismiss their concerns. "If you have nothing to hide, why are you so upset?" and all that.
Now laws get passed to force all companies to do the same thing, to stop the criminals! But let's not worry about anyone else. The tinkerers, journalists, privacy-advocates, etc. They don't matter.
The law gets passed, and now all toasters are legally required to record your breakfast conversations, for a silly example.