Comment on Reality Winner documentary concealed how she got caught (yellow tracker dots)
Sumocat@lemmy.world 1 week ago
To be clear, yellow dot encoding is done voluntarily by printer makers to ensure their printers cannot anonymously enable counterfeiting schemes. So yes, there is no legal obligation to do this, but only because printer makers don’t want Secret Service intervention. Basically, there’s no law requiring yellow dot encoding because they already do it. Black and white printers are exempt because they are inadequate for counterfeiting, but they are certainly capable of gray dot encoding.
evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org 1 week ago
It’s a good “cover for action”, considering most of the printers that have the stego are naturally incapable of achieving the high quality needed to counterfeit banknotes. And those that are high enough quality are artificially crippled to be incapable of producing an exact match on the colors used in banknotes. Printers are generally lousy at matching colors. IIRC, Epson supplied software that would alter the photo displayed on your screen to best match what the printer could do, because demanding that the printer precisely match the source color is unrealistic.
Self-regulation out of fear of regulation is a tough sell. What regulation do they risk if they don’t self-regulate, other than the very same outcome: tracker dots?
Like a lot of surveillance, there is the cover story and then there is the real reason.
Nonetheless, I appreciate the link… it’s always good to be aware of the /official narrative/ regardless.
Sumocat@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Color printers weren’t good enough for high-quality counterfeiting when Xerox introduced the encoding in the 1980s, and they’re less capable of it now that bills are improved, but counterfeiting doesn’t stop being a crime because the fake bills suck.
Also, if appeasing the Secret Service isn’t the real reason, why aren’t black and white printers printing gray dot codes? Since yellow dot encoding was introduced, the vast majority of office documents were churned out on BW printers. Seems like a big miss for mass surveillance.
evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org 1 week ago
It stops being an effective crime that is significant enough to warrant disproportionate intervention with printer design. Someone who would use a SOHO printer to counterfeit banknotes isn’t going to the trouble of making paper that integrates colored fibers into the paper. Maybe lousy counterfeits will fool some low-grade vending machines and some kids will loot some candy bars. For me that’s not justification for fingerprinting every single printed page using ink that the customers pay for.
A gray dot is harder to hide than a yellow one.
BTW, it’s worth noting that the whole industry of counterfeiting yields less counterfeit money than what the secret service spends on controlling it. It’s security theatre for the sake of reputation and respect for the currency.