Author Topic: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!  (Read 58603 times)

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Offline GNU_Ninja

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #100 on: December 02, 2015, 10:59:21 am »
We need a tinfoil emoticon btw

<|:-/  :-+
 

Offline crispy_tofu

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #101 on: December 02, 2015, 11:10:33 am »
Maybe if you know the pattern of the yellow dots, you could print out more dots that would make the background a nice polka dot pattern...  :-+
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #102 on: December 02, 2015, 11:39:36 am »
I find it pretty selfish in debates over freedom of expression, rights, whatever when someone comes claiming he doesn't care for it. One person not interested in freedom of expression doesn't make it for the whole planet, on which everyone else still has to voice her/his point. As if it were enough to ask one fool in the place of billions of others... That always bugged me.
If you don't care because you've got nothing to hide or say, amen to that. But it only counts for you and you're not necessarily an example to follow.

Even if 99.999% of the world didn't want free speech, everyone should still get free speech because it's that 0.001% that will drag the world out of the dark ages and progress the human race.

Same thing for religion.
Even if 99.999% of the world was Islamic and wanted death for apostasy, that should not be the law, there should freedom from religion, because it's that 0.001% again who will drag the world out of the dark ages and progress the human race.

Freedom of speech is that important.
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #103 on: December 02, 2015, 11:46:05 am »
I was, in a past life, a copier tech.  Some machines will copy money no troubles! (As a test, printout destroyed afterwards)  The yellow dots aren't even a secret!  Who cares! 

Would you say the same thing if you bought a digital camera and it encoded tiny yellow tracking dots onto every image?, and that was mandated by the government?
 

Offline Macbeth

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #104 on: December 02, 2015, 12:46:41 pm »
This is a measure to block counterfeiting. So if you don't print money, clones of valuable art pieces or IS pamphlets : no problemo.
No it isn't. Counterfeiters don't use laser printers, you cannot print credible counterfeits with that technology. Every people handling money on a daily basis will immediately see the difference.
huh. some dude got away with fake 25 dollar bills ... he even got change back when paying with em. and they couldn't sue him , since there is no 25 dollar bill it is not counterfeit. Stupidity has no boundaries..
I love Steve Woz's joke pad of perforated $2 bills he gets printed and spends as legal tender  ;)

 

Offline AF6LJ

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #105 on: December 02, 2015, 02:13:02 pm »
I was, in a past life, a copier tech.  Some machines will copy money no troubles! (As a test, printout destroyed afterwards)  The yellow dots aren't even a secret!  Who cares! 

Would you say the same thing if you bought a digital camera and it encoded tiny yellow tracking dots onto every image?, and that was mandated by the government?

There are two camps in this country when it comes to the privacy subject;
The I don't care camp they really do care but feel pressured into saying they don't care.
The I do care and try to minimize my traceable footprint camp. The latter gets a lot of bad press simply because they are informed and concerned, this group is made of ex hippies who thought government should be small and under the control of the public, what a concept...
Imagine that; a government by the people, and for the people.
Sue AF6LJ
 

Online tszaboo

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #106 on: December 02, 2015, 02:28:26 pm »
Even if 99.999% of the world didn't want free speech, everyone should still get free speech because it's that 0.001% that will drag the world out of the dark ages and progress the human race.

Same thing for religion.
Even if 99.999% of the world was Islamic and wanted death for apostasy, that should not be the law, there should freedom from religion, because it's that 0.001% again who will drag the world out of the dark ages and progress the human race.

Freedom of speech is that important.
There is no freedom of speech, there probably never was. You cannot say whatever you want.
If you say offensive on the internet, they moderate you.
If you say that holocaust didn't happen in europe (this is a quote from the law, i personally belive the facts, that this happened and I encourage anyone to do the same) they can fine you or throw you to prison.
If someone said pretty much anything, some "religious guy"* (* self moderated, because the internet) can gun you down.
If you say something in the middle east ...*
If you say something against the propaganda in Russia, the black car will take you away.
If you are not PC in the US, they make you leave your job, and society throws you away pretty much. Search "First Amendment zone".
Scientific studies, saying that "blue people" have "shinier shoes" than "orange people" got censored, because they are offensive, it doesnt matter if it is true.
Even saying, that there shouldn't be freedom of speech cannot be said.

There is no freedom of speech. You are only supposed to say the same as the others.
 

Offline GNU_Ninja

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #107 on: December 02, 2015, 02:34:53 pm »


The good communists guide to surveillance :)
« Last Edit: December 02, 2015, 02:40:03 pm by GNU_Ninja »
 

Offline rolycat

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #108 on: December 02, 2015, 02:54:43 pm »
I love Steve Woz's joke pad of perforated $2 bills he gets printed and spends as legal tender  ;)

Well, they are genuine currency, issued by the Federal Reserve.

In the clip the Woz claims that the ink isn't dry, the president may be wrong and the serial numbers are suspicious. I'm sure he is well aware that none of that is true.

Those $2 bills are nearly $3 each, plus the cost of getting them bound and perforated, so it's an expensive joke unless you're as rich as he is.
 

Offline Macbeth

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #109 on: December 02, 2015, 03:08:27 pm »
I love Steve Woz's joke pad of perforated $2 bills he gets printed and spends as legal tender  ;)

Well, they are genuine currency, issued by the Federal Reserve.

In the clip the Woz claims that the ink isn't dry, the president may be wrong and the serial numbers are suspicious. I'm sure he is well aware that none of that is true.

Those $2 bills are nearly $3 each, plus the cost of getting them bound and perforated, so it's an expensive joke unless you're as rich as he is.

Yes I know. His printer just happens to be the Fed rather than a laserjet.
 

Offline free_electron

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #110 on: December 02, 2015, 03:32:35 pm »
Yellow Dots might not affect *you* because the Internet is your outlet of expression. But it does affect those who print flyers, newsletters or otherwise use printed media to get their message out.

Show me ONE case where these yellow dots have affected freedom of speech. They don't prevent you from printing the document , handing it out or stapling it to a power pole.
'it could be used' , 'hypothetically they can track you'.

Hypothetically possession of a piece of wood and a nail could be construed as 'this guy could put the nail in the piece of wood and go on a killing rampage with this , let's jail him'.

i think people are overreacting.

how about this : any photo camera stores tons of data in the exif headers. Even down to geotagging information these days. there are even services where oyu can upload a picture to have it analysed and it will show you where and when the picture was taken and from what angle. run a few facial recognition processes and you can find out who and where. (facebook and apple icloud run automatical face detection algorithms to conveniently cluster your images by whomever is in it )

So what would be the solution ? go outside wearing a burka and sunglasses , just in case someone might snap you as a passerby in a picture is not very feasible, so : we should forbid anyone from owning camera's. just to prevent you from accidentally being recorded on one. let's also ban all image recognition software . For that matter, let's turn off the internet , wifi , cellphones and go back to using carrier pigeons. At least you can eat those when they arrive. That way nobody can track you.

There's a website where you can track dollar bills as they travel around the country. -gasp- now they are tracking that dollar bill you bought that soda can with that you didn't properly recycle.

Come on people, there is a lot of overreacting to this.

The thing is : they started doing this to be able to detect reproductions. if the dot's are there : printed on a laser. That's what that constellation is for.
As for the encoding of the serial number : camera's do that too. Even photocopiers do that.

None of that stuff blocks freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is only impaired if an oppressive state uses that information to prosecute people. The information itself is harmless. It is how you use it.
If information were the problem : turn off the internet, burn all libraries , do not write anything down, do not make phone calls, don't talk to anyone. Then there will be no information.

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Offline rsjsouza

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #111 on: December 02, 2015, 03:32:50 pm »
There are two camps in this country when it comes to the privacy subject;
The I don't care camp they really do care but feel pressured into saying they don't care.
The I do care and try to minimize my traceable footprint camp. The latter gets a lot of bad press simply because they are informed and concerned, this group is made of ex hippies who thought government should be small and under the control of the public, what a concept...
Imagine that; a government by the people, and for the people.
There is a third camp I am in, and it has everything to do with NANDBlog's reply: the "I don't care" camp that finally realized everybody lives in a police state with varying degrees of censorship - either from the state itself or from your own living community, neighbors and peers.
Vbe - vídeo blog eletrônico http://videos.vbeletronico.com

Oh, the "whys" of the datasheets... The information is there not to be an axiomatic truth, but instead each speck of data must be slowly inhaled while carefully performing a deep search inside oneself to find the true metaphysical sense...
 

Offline free_electron

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #112 on: December 02, 2015, 03:33:34 pm »
I was, in a past life, a copier tech.  Some machines will copy money no troubles! (As a test, printout destroyed afterwards)  The yellow dots aren't even a secret!  Who cares! 

Would you say the same thing if you bought a digital camera and it encoded tiny yellow tracking dots onto every image?, and that was mandated by the government?
they do.  in the exif data. photocopiers do it too.
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Any comments, or points of view expressed, are my own and not endorsed , induced or compensated by my employer(s).
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #113 on: December 02, 2015, 04:18:30 pm »
If you say that holocaust didn't happen in europe (this is a quote from the law, i personally belive the facts, that this happened and I encourage anyone to do the same) they can fine you or throw you to prison.

My late mother was a camp survivor, along with my father. Not Jewish either, but had for Mom the bad misfortune to be born Polish, and Dad was a pilot who did not come back from a mission.
 

Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #114 on: December 02, 2015, 05:02:48 pm »
I was, in a past life, a copier tech.  Some machines will copy money no troubles! (As a test, printout destroyed afterwards)  The yellow dots aren't even a secret!  Who cares! 

Would you say the same thing if you bought a digital camera and it encoded tiny yellow tracking dots onto every image?, and that was mandated by the government?

There are two camps in this country when it comes to the privacy subject;
The I don't care camp they really do care but feel pressured into saying they don't care.
The I do care and try to minimize my traceable footprint camp. The latter gets a lot of bad press simply because they are informed and concerned, this group is made of ex hippies who thought government should be small and under the control of the public, what a concept...
Imagine that; a government by the people, and for the people.

Ex hippies aren't the only ones.  And only the hippies that woke up to reality are paying attention to their data.  The hippie movement had its own share of sheep and idiots.
 

Offline AF6LJ

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #115 on: December 02, 2015, 05:03:11 pm »
There are two camps in this country when it comes to the privacy subject;
The I don't care camp they really do care but feel pressured into saying they don't care.
The I do care and try to minimize my traceable footprint camp. The latter gets a lot of bad press simply because they are informed and concerned, this group is made of ex hippies who thought government should be small and under the control of the public, what a concept...
Imagine that; a government by the people, and for the people.
There is a third camp I am in, and it has everything to do with NANDBlog's reply: the "I don't care" camp that finally realized everybody lives in a police state with varying degrees of censorship - either from the state itself or from your own living community, neighbors and peers.
NandBlog has a point, but every police state can be torn down from within if the people have the will. This has slowed the progression of the US police state, and in time will begin to reverse it and freedom like we had before 1900 will return.

Every chance I get I STICK IT TO THE MAN..
Sue AF6LJ
 

Offline AF6LJ

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #116 on: December 02, 2015, 05:08:25 pm »
I was, in a past life, a copier tech.  Some machines will copy money no troubles! (As a test, printout destroyed afterwards)  The yellow dots aren't even a secret!  Who cares! 

Would you say the same thing if you bought a digital camera and it encoded tiny yellow tracking dots onto every image?, and that was mandated by the government?

There are two camps in this country when it comes to the privacy subject;
The I don't care camp they really do care but feel pressured into saying they don't care.
The I do care and try to minimize my traceable footprint camp. The latter gets a lot of bad press simply because they are informed and concerned, this group is made of ex hippies who thought government should be small and under the control of the public, what a concept...
Imagine that; a government by the people, and for the people.

Ex hippies aren't the only ones.  And only the hippies that woke up to reality are paying attention to their data.  The hippie movement had its own share of sheep and idiots.
Yes it did, the phrase; "Tune In Turn On and Drop Out." had a double meaning. You are right about non-hippies waking up back then, My grandparents who at one time believed FDR could walk on water and turn led into gold woke up in the early sixties. Most of the people in the gun culture of the day were already awake.

They can only go as far as we let them, people need to remember that.
Sue AF6LJ
 

Online Mechatrommer

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #117 on: December 02, 2015, 05:32:59 pm »
just watched it maybe too late but...
thank you very much sir! you just teach terrorists on how to erase their traces...
Nature: Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness (Stephen L. Talbott): Its now indisputable that... organisms “expertise” contextualizes its genome, and its nonsense to say that these powers are under the control of the genome being contextualized - Barbara McClintock
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #118 on: December 02, 2015, 05:39:39 pm »
Show me ONE case where these yellow dots have affected freedom of speech. They don't prevent you from printing the document , handing it out or stapling it to a power pole.
'it could be used' , 'hypothetically they can track you'.
There's probably one somewhere... but that's missing the point.

You should be against this sort of thing ON PRINCIPLE. Just because.

Let's not forget that governments don't have any rights. None whatsoever.

They have "powers", granted to them by the people.
 

Offline Augustus

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #119 on: December 02, 2015, 05:50:16 pm »
just watched it maybe too late but...
thank you very much sir! you just teach terrorists on how to erase their traces...

Terrorists? Thought the times of printed terrorist manifestos were long gone... Nowadays, they are apparantely busy fiddling with their playstations  :palm:

It may backfire on whistleblowers, who, for example, discover some gross unethical practices in their company and hand the evidence secretly to the press. If it gets somehow backtraced to their cubicles laserjet, they may get fired. Never heard of such a case, though. They would use USB sticks anyway  :-DD
Greetings from the Black Forest, Germany
 

Offline AF6LJ

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #120 on: December 02, 2015, 05:50:53 pm »
Show me ONE case where these yellow dots have affected freedom of speech. They don't prevent you from printing the document , handing it out or stapling it to a power pole.
'it could be used' , 'hypothetically they can track you'.
There's probably one somewhere... but that's missing the point.

You should be against this sort of thing ON PRINCIPLE. Just because.

Let's not forget that governments don't have any rights. None whatsoever.

They have "powers", granted to them by the people.
our Constitution sets limits on what government can do and sets those items which government is responsible for such as protecting the borders.
Sue AF6LJ
 

Offline technix

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #121 on: December 02, 2015, 06:03:22 pm »
As of now I think adding a little bit of yellow background to every single color laser printout may be the best way to obfuscate the code. Or someone figure out the internals of some popular color laser printer and write open source firmware that does not apply the code. Or someone create a new open source hardware color laser printer (which probably have to accept some name brand cartridge.)
 

Offline dr.diesel

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #122 on: December 02, 2015, 06:27:23 pm »
Is there an online pattern generator?  I have a few things I'd like to attach from now on.

Offline Brutte

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #123 on: December 02, 2015, 06:29:17 pm »
Surprised with yellow dots? That is because you have not read the EULA.
It clearly states (paragraph 452, point 17) that either you agree on surveillance or forget printing.

When you pick first option then where does the whining come from?
 

Offline free_electron

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Re: EEVblog #825 - Your Printer Is Spying On You!
« Reply #124 on: December 02, 2015, 08:18:35 pm »
I was, in a past life, a copier tech.  Some machines will copy money no troubles! (As a test, printout destroyed afterwards)  The yellow dots aren't even a secret!  Who cares! 

Would you say the same thing if you bought a digital camera and it encoded tiny yellow tracking dots onto every image?, and that was mandated by the government?
they do.  in the exif data. photocopiers do it too.

EXIF can be trimmed off, yellow dots can not.

there is also subchannel encoding in the jpeg stream....

http://www.tsi.lv/sites/default/files/editor/science/Research_journals/Computer/2004/V1/article4.pdf

http://www.adptools.com/en/signmyimage-durability.html

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Any comments, or points of view expressed, are my own and not endorsed , induced or compensated by my employer(s).
 


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