The Electronic Frontier Foundation informs us of a new threat to privacy: Secret codes embedded in color copies automatically by the copy machines. See the except below for more.

Underground political movements in closed-societies, TAKE NOTE! Don’t use color copiers for your flyers!

The manufacturers of color copiers have apparently agreed with the US Secret Service to embed microscopic dot codes within the color copies made. These dot-codes tell the government things about the copies, such as When they were made, and What machine they used.

The government can trace a flyer to the serial number of the exact machine used to produce it. Then, using purchase and shipping records, the government can determine the chain of ownership of the machine.

Moral: Use black and white copiers (no info about those copiers embedding codes yet)

EFF: Secret Code in Color Printers Lets Government Track You

Tiny Dots Show Where and When You Made Your Print

San Francisco - A research team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently broke the code behind tiny tracking dots that some color laser printers secretly hide in every document.

The U.S. Secret Service admitted that the tracking information is part of a deal struck with selected color laser printer manufacturers, ostensibly to identify counterfeiters. However, the nature of the private information encoded in each document was not previously known.

. . .

“Underground democracy movements that produce political or religious pamphlets and flyers, like the Russian samizdat of the 1980s, will always need the anonymity of simple paper documents, but this technology makes it easier for governments to find dissenters,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. “Even worse, it shows how the government and private industry make backroom deals to weaken our privacy by compromising everyday equipment like printers. The logical next question is: what other deals have been or are being made to ensure that our technology rats on us?”

EFF is still working on cracking the codes from other printers and we need the public’s help. Find out how you can make your own test pages to be included in our research at http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/wp.php#testsheets.