Wednesday, February 20, 2008
If you worry about your DNA and personal information being used to invade your privacy, now you have something else to add to your worries. According to a research by the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) documents you print on your colour laser printer are able to indirectly identify you by encoding information that is not visible to the naked eye. Tiny dots are scattered on each page of your document. The information encoded includes time, date and the serial number of your printer. These are just the information that the EFF has managed to crack at the moment.
So, who is behind this brilliant system? The U.S. government, of course. They claim the purpose of this tool is to enable them to identify counterfeiters. Is that the only purpose for this tool? It is yet to be discovered.
According to Mr. Franco Frattini, the EU Commissioner for Justice and Security, there are no laws against tracking mechanisms in colour printers and photocopiers. "... the information based on tracking printed or copied material does not necessarily include data relating to identified or identifiable individual, i.e. personal data.
To the extent that individuals may be identified through material printed or copied using certain equipment, such processing may give rise to the violation of fundamental human rights, namely the right to privacy and private life. It also might violate the right to protection of personal data."
The EU acknowledges that this tracking system is a violation to human rights and is an invasion of our privacy. We have the laws to protect our privacy but seeing this tracking system in printers is part of the U.S. government's policy how far will the EU go to protect us?