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A new story on arstechnica.com discusses the establishment of Seeing Yellow -- a brainchild of MIT's Computing Culture research group, which wants to preserve the right to anonymous communication by fighting both printer tracking dots and the government bullying used to sustain them:
We've known for years that color laser printers can embed a series of tiny yellow dots on pages they print. The dots—almost invisible under normal circumstances—can be used to determine which particular printer produced the image. Essentially, each printer outputs its own serial number. This is great for busting counterfeiters but raises all sorts of privacy concerns. Now, MIT students are getting involved in the campaign against the dots with the new Seeing Yellow project.
Seeing Yellow is the brainchild of MIT's Computing Culture research group, which "want to preserve the right to anonymous communication by fighting both printing dots and the government bullying used to sustain them." The project was conceived after the team received word that an anonymous hacker had called his printer manufacturer to complain and was subsequently visited by the Secret Service, who were curious to know why someone with nothing to hide would want to disable the tracking dots.
Full arstechnica.com story...
Information on printer tracking dots (from EFF):
Imagine that every time you printed a document, it automatically included a secret code that could be used to identify the printer - and potentially, the person who used it. Sounds like something from an episode of "Alias," right?
Unfortunately, the scenario isn't fictional. In a purported effort to identify counterfeiters, the US government has succeeded in persuading some color laser printer manufacturers to encode each page with identifying information. That means that without your knowledge or consent, an act you assume is private could become public. A communication tool you're using in everyday life could become a tool for government surveillance. And what's worse, there are no laws to prevent abuse.
The ACLU recently issued a report revealing that the FBI has amassed more than 1,100 pages of documents on the organization since 2001, as well as documents concerning other non-violent groups, including Greenpeace and United for Peace and Justice. In the current political climate, it's not hard to imagine the government using the ability to determine who may have printed what document for purposes other than identifying counterfeiters.
Yet there are no laws to stop the Secret Service from using printer codes to secretly trace the origin of non-currency documents; only the privacy policy of your printer manufacturer currently protects you (if indeed such a policy exists). And no law regulates what sort of documents the Secret Service or any other domestic or foreign government agency is permitted to request for identification, not to mention how such a forensics tool could be developed and implemented in printers in the first place.
Action items:
Read more at EFF's "Is Your Printer Spying On You?"
View a list of affected printers
Visit the Seeing Yellow project for information on efforts aimed at stopping the use of printer tracking dots.
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