MIT group aims to stop printer tracking by Secret Service

Did you know that most color printers today place invisible yellow dots on documents to help authorities track these documents to their source? The patterns of the embedded dots help law enforcement groups figure out who printed a document, and the practice has been useful in busting counterfeiters, identify authors of ransom notes, and nab murderers. Researchers at MIT, however, have decided that there is too much invasion of privacy here, and are trying to put an end to the practice.

InformationWeek’s K. C. Jones reports that MIT’s Computing Culture Club has launched the Seeing Yellow Web site after a club member called the club’s printer manufacturer for instructions on how to stop a printer from embedding the yellow dots. A few days later Secret Service agents visited the club, asking why would the caller not want to be tracked. “Computing Culture wants to preserve the right to anonymous communication by fighting both printing dots and the government bullying used to sustain them,” the group explained. “Our privacy and our control over our own technology is far too important to give up over trumped up fears of photocopied money.”

Seeing Yellow gives details on printers that embed the dots (laser color printers), tips on how to spot them (using a bright blue LED and examining closely, possibly with a microscope), and urges people to contact their printer manufacturer with a series of questions and requests. It states that no law requires the companies to engage in the practice and recommends that people ask why the function is there and whether there are other covert tracking mechanisms. “Ask them to stop using tracking codes and demand that they tell you how to turn it off,” the group states. “The Secret Service can’t come and question all of us!”

The site contains links to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s list of printers that create patterns the group has spotted.