The dots we can't see!

I was in Philadelphia last week.  After handing a cashier a fifty dollar bill, she swept a marker over it and declared "It's good." I told her it'd better be, because the bank gave it to me. She then told me that just recently she'd been given a counterfeit twenty dollar bill and had heard about bogus tens being circulated. You seldom hear about counterfeiters producing denominations that small. I guess if you're going to take a chance, may as well go big.

When I read this article "Printer dots raise privacy concerns" I kind of had a mixed reaction. It seems laser printers are being manufactured with technology that allows the items they print to be examined and traced back to the printer. Microscopic dots are left on each printed page and with the right tools, those dots will reveal the printer's serial number. That information makes it possible to track down the printer's owner. I'm all for using this technology to thwart counterfeiters. In fact, I learned that some international business transactions require that only printers equipped with this technology be used - a policy that arose in the wake of the increase in laser printer production in the 1980s.

To make matters more interesting, some of these laser printers even include the date and time of the printing. The article quotes Lorelei Pagano, director of the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group, who says, "The Secret Service is the only U.S. body that has the ability to decode the information." And a Secret Service spokesman quoted in the article says that they're only using the printer dot data to investigate counterfeiting. That may be the case right now, but for how long? It's only a matter of time before the technology will be put to use in other ways - perhaps by individuals or organizations - to look into unrelated matters. These dots have the potential to open up a whole new can of worms when it comes to privacy issues. Just think of the stuff people print that they they don't necessarily want to lead back to them....