Buying A Color Laser?
By Ian Scott
If you’re considering the purchase of a color laser, and your concerned about your privacy, you might want to rethink your purchase. In a revelation that should concern you, it seems that major printing companies have a feature which can track any document printed on a color laser back to you. It’s like a digital finger print, that will print the serial number of your color printer on the document.
If you have a color laser printer, apparently if you shine a LED beam on a document that you’ve printed to, and then use a magnifying glass, you will be able to view tiny yellow dots which appear random, are in fact when examined, will show the serial number of the machine.
I find this to be a major invasion of privacy!
What is the rationalle for this? Well, governments and law enforcement agencies are using this technology to track counterfieters. But what else might they be able to track with this?
If you want to print a tract anonymously, similar to what many did back in the 18th century, fearing repercussions if it became known who the author was, you won’t be able to do this on your color laser. Contrary to the opinion of some, I believe it is very important to be able to publish anonymously. I do not support the publication of libel anonymously, but the ability to publish opinion that a government might not want published is far too important. Imagine the disidents in countries like Iran, or Saudi Arabia, or even here in America, having their writings tracked because the printer they used provided a direct link to them.
This is Orwellian in all its glory. According to Yahoo News, Peter Crean, an employee of Xerox says, “It’s a trail back to you, like a license plate.”
Apparently if you try to disable this feature, your printer will no longer work. More from the article:
“Lorelei Pagano, a counterfeiting specialist with the U.S. Secret Service, stresses that the government uses the embedded serial numbers only when alerted to a forgery. “The only time any information is gained from these documents is purely in [the case of] a criminal act,” she says.”
Oh, isn’t that very reassuring! And there’s more:
“”The industry absolutely has been extraordinarily helpful [to law enforcement],” Pagano says.
According to Pagano, counterfeiting cases are brought to the Secret Service, which checks the documents, determines the brand and serial number of the printer, and contacts the company. Some, like Xerox, have a customer database, and they share the information with the government.
Crean says Xerox and the government have a good relationship. “The U.S. government had been on board all along–they would actually come out to our labs,” Crean says.”
I find this very disturbing.
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