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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Thursday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week –
11/02/2005 |
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Big brother might be watching your computer and printer
too - . We’ve all seen an
old detective movie where a ransom note was typed on a typewriter,
and the bad guy was caught by the police matching the note to the typewriter.
All typewriters produce slightly different output, and experts can prove a
certain typewriter typed a certain document. But in the computer world
– we’re safe from that old fashioned stuff – right ? Wrong - News24.com recently reported on
an alarming code that is built into color laser printers that would allows
government agencies to track the owners down. “A secret code
embedded in many colour laser jet printers allows
the US government and any other organisation
capable of reading the cipher to identify when the copies were made and on
which particular machine, according to research conducted by the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF). The San Francisco-based
privacy organization said it had detected almost invisible patterns of yellow
dots on every document printed on the affected machines that could indicate
when and where the print was made. Among the copiers found
to include the secret yellow dots are ones made by Brother, Canon, Dell,
Epson, HP, Konica and Xerox. The foundation cautioned
that though it had deciphered the code on Xerox machines, it had not done the
same for the yellow dots found on other copiers, but that it was likely that
they too represented a sophisticated document tracking system. The group said that
currently only the US Secret Service and now itself had the ability to
decrypt the imprint. It said that although the Secret Service claims to use
this information only for cornering counterfeit crimes, there is no legal
framework to prevent the information being put to other uses. So now not only do have
to worry about internet spyware and phishing and pharming schemes, you have to worry about your own
printer turning you over to the feds.... If you recall several
years ago when Intel introduced their new Pentium III chip, there was an
uproar over a unique serial number code programmed into it which would be tracable,
which Intel fixed. And Microsoft Corporation
had to move to defuse a potentially explosive privacy issue several years
ago, saying it would modify a feature of its Windows 98 operating system that
quietly used to create a vast data base of personal information about
computer users. Microsoft conceded that
the feature, a unique identifying number used by Windows and other Microsoft
products, had the potential to be far more invasive than the traceable serial
number in Intel’s Pentium. The difference was
that the Windows number was tied to an individual's name, to identifying numbers
on the computer hardware and even to documents that created. So they
supposedly fixed it. But even today if you
create a word document, your name is embedded in the page as the author, and
if you don’t believe me, go out to my website and read this transcript
–http://www.mtamicro.com/rb/rb110205.html
which I create in word and then
save as a web file, and then in your browser click on – View –
Source or Page source – and there’s my name embedded as the
author. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2005 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html (509)624-7230 |
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