Perhaps it would be naive to think that the 21st century governments would stop at monitoring your every move on the street. Pause for a minute to contemplate what the next level of tracking could include. The answer is laser printers. If you think a document from your colour laser printer doesn’t carry your name, think again.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) claims that it has cracked the tracking codes embedded in Xerox Corporation’s DocuColor laser printers. Such codes are simply one of the numerous ways manufacturers employ technology to help governments fight currency counterfeiting.
The United States government is allegedly involved with a number of other companies in separate anti-counterfeiting programmes meant to prevent currency from being scanned and printed. The U.S. government, however, is not the only country teaming with the printing industry to fight counterfeiters. A few experts believe that the Dutch government is also using similar anti-counterfeiting methods through Canons encoding technology.
Researchers in the U.S. have uncovered patterns of yellow dots arranged in 15 by 8 grids and printed repeatedly over every...