everydaystakkin on Nostr: Since the 1980s, Xerox and Canon made a secret deal with the US Secret Service. every ...
Since the 1980s, Xerox and Canon made a secret deal with the US Secret Service. every color laser printer now embeds invisible yellow dots on every single page it produces. too small to see with the naked eye. they repeat up to 150 times per page so they survive cropping, damage, even shredding.
the dots encode:
— your printer's serial number
— the exact date and time of printing
— the manufacturer
no law requires manufacturers to tell you this. most printer manuals don't mention it. you almost certainly didn't know.
The first use case was counterfeiting. catching people printing fake money. reasonable.
Then, in 2017, Reality Winner printed a classified NSA document and mailed it to journalists. investigators cross-referenced the yellow dots with security footage. she was identified, arrested, and sentenced to 5 years.
Published at
2026-06-15 16:24:36 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "Since the 1980s, Xerox and Canon made a secret deal with the US Secret Service. every color laser printer now embeds invisible yellow dots on every single page it produces. too small to see with the naked eye. they repeat up to 150 times per page so they survive cropping, damage, even shredding.\n\nthe dots encode:\n— your printer's serial number\n— the exact date and time of printing\n— the manufacturer\n\nno law requires manufacturers to tell you this. most printer manuals don't mention it. you almost certainly didn't know.\n\nThe first use case was counterfeiting. catching people printing fake money. reasonable.\n\nThen, in 2017, Reality Winner printed a classified NSA document and mailed it to journalists. investigators cross-referenced the yellow dots with security footage. she was identified, arrested, and sentenced to 5 years.",
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