RTFA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izMGMsIZK4U

Imagine that every time you print a document, it automatically includes a secret code that could be used to identify the printer — and, potentially, the person who used it. Sounds like something from a spy movie, right?

Unfortunately, the scenario isn’t fictional. Most color laser printers and color copiers are designed to print invisible tracking codes across every single printed page of their output. These codes reveal which machine produced a document and, in some cases, when the document was printed or copied.

Fun! …and a little bit scary. However, there is some interesting software that can protect your privacy from your boss (even if it is ineffective against government entities). Enter yellowdot, which creates a random dot pattern that you can print on top of documents you’ve already printed. Maybe it doesn’t work at all, but maybe (just maybe) it can keep the office IT guru from figuring out who printed that whistle-blowing document.

From the yellowdot page:

For years, commercial printers have quietly inserted yellow dots into their output for the purpose of tracking which printer was used to create any document. The purpose of the “yellowdot” software is simply to bring attention to the issue, and to thwart amateur attempts to use these yellow dots to breach privacy.

This software will create a PNG containing yellow dots that can then be overlaid onto existing printer output. These dots are randomly distributed across the image, and are therefore not useful for securely obfuscating the identity that is encoded within the printer’s generated dot pattern. However, “yellowdot” raises the amount of resources that must be expended to successfully identify the printer that generated a given document. It is hoped that “yellowdot” can be used to thwart amateur attempts to breach privacy, such as could conceivably be practiced in an office environment.

The commercial printer yellow dot initiative has been endorsed in some capacity by the United States Secret Service for the purpose of thwarting currency counterfeiting. As of October 2008, there is no law that requires printers to generate yellow dots for any purpose, including identification purposes. This software is not intended to be used for committing fraud, and it is the belief of the author that this software, in fact, cannot be used for such purposes. By analyzing a sufficient sample of printer output, the “noise” that is generated by this program can be eliminated, and the original printer source can be reconstructed.

Cool! The instructables howto has just been neutralized! …if you want to undo the yellowdot overlay, you’ll have to do some serious statistical work to extract the identifier information.

UPDATE 2008-10-23 Thanks to boingboing for the pointer to the video. Credit for the yellowdot software goes to Ian Dennis Miller.

UPDATE 2008-10-24 Added link to the original EFF Instructables.

RTFA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7661311….

Perfect secrecy has come a step closer with the launch of the world’s first computer network protected by unbreakable quantum encryption at a scientific conference in Vienna.

The network connects six locations across Vienna and in the nearby town of St Poelten, using 200 km of standard commercial fibre optic cables.

Quantum cryptography is completely different from the kinds of security schemes used on computer networks today.

These are typically based on complex mathematical procedures which are extremely hard for outsiders to crack but not impossible given sufficient computing resources or time.

But quantum systems use the laws of quantum theory, which have been shown to be inherently unbreakable.

The basic idea of quantum cryptography was worked out 25 years ago by Charles Bennett of IBM and Gilles Brassard of Montreal University, who was in Vienna to see the network in action.

“All quantum security schemes are based on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, on the fact that you cannot measure quantum information without disturbing it,” he explained.

“Because of that, one can have a communications channel between two users on which it’s impossible to eavesdrop without creating a disturbance. An eavesdropper would create a mark on it. That was the key idea.”

Wow … people have been discussing this possibility for a long time, but apparently the zeitgeist has come to fruition.

RTFA: http://www.oberwelt.de/projects/2008/Filo%20art.ht…

I-R.A.S.C is an infra-red device working as a protection shield from infra-red surveillance cameras. Everibody can rebuild this device without special technical skills.

Interesting. In the same way that movie theaters have been using IR lights to foil camcorder-toting would-be pirates, you too can use an IR light to foil the surveillance state. Those ubiquitous cameras that are recording your every movement also largely happen to be sensitive to IR. If you can groove on the Laughing Man in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, then this is right up your alley.

RTFA: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/jan/07/person…

Clarkson, 47, writing in his column in the Sunday Times, decried the furore last year after CDs disappeared containing the banking details of 7 million families. The loss led to fears of mass identity theft with people’s bank accounts open to internet scams. At the time he wrote: “I have never known such a palaver about nothing. The fact is we happily hand over cheques to all sorts of unsavoury people all day long without a moment’s thought. We have nothing to fear.” However, yesterday he told readers he had opened his bank statement to find a direct debit had been set up in his name and £500 taken out of his account. “The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again,” he said. “I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake.” He added: “Contrary to what I said at the time, we must go after the idiots who lost the discs and stick cocktail sticks in their eyes until they beg for mercy.”

Oh, the irony.

Regarding privacy, If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about, right?

Perhaps the point is that it’s not about what you’ve done - it’s what someone else can do with information that they would not otherwise have access to.

RTFA: http://www.truecrypt.org/

ree open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP/2000 and Linux

Main Features:

Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.

Encrypts an entire google_ad_section_end google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) hard disk partition or a storage device such as USB flash drive.

Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.

Provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password:

1) Hidden volume (steganography – more information may be found here).

2) No TrueCrypt volume can be identified (volumes cannot be distinguished from random data).

Encryption algorithms: AES-256, Serpent, and Twofish. Mode of operation: LRW.

I don’t use this, but it looks interesting.