Researchers crack secret tracking code in laser printers

• Theorists will have even more to ponder following a research effort reported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation Monday, which revealed a government tracking initiative embedded in some color laser printers.
• The research cracked a secret code used in certain laser printers that shows the date and time a printed document was created, as well as the serial number of the printer.
• The code appears as a grid of microscopic yellow dots, each less than a millimeter in diameter.
• The researchers used documents printed from the Xerox DocuColor line of printers to break the code, but the yellow dot patterns from other printers will likely use a similar code, according to a release from the foundation.
• "It certainly seems like the sort of thing a government ought not to be doing in a free and open democracy," said Alison Myhra, a professor of law who specializes in privacy legislation.
• "This may be the best example of where we have laws in place, and the old laws and old principles don't really work," she said.
• "Internationally, that's one of the big reasons you see so many countries going to holograms, watermarks, things like that," said Ed Youngbloood, assistant professor of electronic media and communications.
• The foundation provides a list of "yellow-dot" printers on their Web site, www.eff.org, as well as instructions on how to locate and view the patterns.
• For users of Xerox's DocuColor printer line, clients can decode their prints using the foundation's Web site by entering the pattern of yellow dots into a grid-based decoder at www.eff.org/privacy/printers/docuco....
• Goodman said much of the paranoia surrounding government intrusion into Internet history or personal library records for subversive-tracking purposes seems unlikely and impractical.