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Thanks for Helping Us Track You
If you have purchased a new printer in the last few years, be it laser or inkjet,
chances are good that every time you print out a document, a barely-detectable identification
code is being included on the page. Usually a series of yellow dots forms a symbol
similar to the 2-D digital bar code seen on many products (even burned into very
small surface mount devices like metal VCO lids). This code tells investigators
the serial number of the printer that created the document. There is no notice to
the buyer or user that such a scheme has been implemented, so the Big Brother watchdog
groups are up in arms about it. One recent news story tells of a document created
on a Canon printer being traced back by Dutch police to pursue a gang of counterfeit
ticket producers. Canon says it is only trying to protect its customers by providing
a means to recover stolen property. Skeptics believe governments are strong-arming
the companies into cooperation. As with many high tech coding and tracking schemes,
the systems can be used for good or evil, but most fear tends to be born out of
ignorance. Many people believe RFID tags in grocery store packages and garment tags
will result in their every move being tracked by the government. Some think the
magnetic strips on credit cards set off detector networks around the world to track
their movement. So, now a whole new group of fellow citizens can lay awake nights
worrying about whether their political flyers that they obnoxiously put on our car
windshields can be traced back to them; is that a bad thing?
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