I once worked at a company where the change machine was right next to the copying machine. This was in the engineering department... Well the experiment was done and the change machine _did_ accept the copy. I never head if anyone admitted to doing the unapproved test.

 

I used to be a copier repair tech and just for proof of my skills I at times would set up really picky customers machines with the optics system focused fine enough to make the micro print on a dollar bill readable.

Granted the machine would maybe do 30 - 50 copies before the mechanical parts drifted out of tolerance enough to make the miro print focus inconsistent enough to be unreadable again but hey the machine was perfect when I left the service call!

So I say yes with an old analog style commercial printer the right ink and some careful adjusting to line up a bleached dollar bill in the exact right spot a sheet of paper so it can pass through a copier a fake bill could be printed that would pass a average persons handling 15 years ago.

 

Back when first moved to the Springs in 1995 the company we shared space with was developing special drivers for high-end color printers and, of course, on of the first things someone tried to do was copy a dollar bill. It didn't work. Actually, we could copy the front but not the back. So they printed out the front and mounted it on a plaque right next to the main entrance door with an engraved plate that said, "The first dollar we ever made."

Coinciding with the introduction of the new $100 bills was a TV special put out by the Treasury Department about counterfeiting and how the new bill designs would make it nearly impossible to successfully counterfeit U.S. currency. But right at the very beginning the agent that was narrating the show should an array of bills that where pinned up around his desk area and said that all of them were bills that had been successfully passed. This include huge red, white, and blue bills. My immediate reactions was: If those bills passed before, how on earth are all the anti-counterfeiting measures in the world going to stop them from being passes now? While some of the show did deal with large-scale foreign counterfeiters, most of the show focused on low-level, mom & pop counterfeit attempts. To which my first thought was: If I'm going to try to counterfeit money in small batches, I'm not going to have to worry about getting a copy of a new bill past a bank teller, I just need to get a copy of an old bill passed the guy selling hotdogs on the street corner or the kids selling candy for their school fundraiser at the grocery store.

 

That the printer manufacturers would intentionally tamper with print quality to enable government tracking, is disturbing. I mean, the technology could be used for far more nefarious purposes than detecting counterfeiting. I doubt that it would withstand a constitutional challenge.

 

I don't know that any printers send info back to the government. (I don't know that none do, either.)

The ability of printers to recognize and refuse to print U.S. currency (and that of some other nations?) has been around long before they started having any kind of internet presence.

 

I don't know that any printers send info back to the government. (I don't know that none do, either.)

The ability of printers to recognize and refuse to print U.S. currency (and that of some other nations?) has been around long before they started having any kind of internet presence.

https://www.eff.org/issues/printers
https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots

 

It seems like this would present a market opportunity, to market a printer guaranteed to not encode "extra" data into its output. It'd be interesting to see who shows up at your door once you start advertising.

 

https://www.eff.org/issues/printers
[URL='https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots[/QUOTE']https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots[/URL]

I've known about this -- and other digital watermarking techniques -- for some time. This is different than your printer communicating information back to the authorities, though I agree that it's something that can be abused. Frankly, I don't know where I come down on this one. This is somewhat akin to firearms sellers being required to keep copies of who they sold what gun to so that, if the gun is used in a crime (and recovered) then the ownership can be traced back. This is a compromise that makes it possible for law enforcement to trace weapons but difficult for them to determine who owns weapons. A similar thing would be at work here -- it's possible to trace back who purchased a printer that printed the ransom note, for instance, but very difficult to find out what someone is printing. It is also similar to the microscopic tagging agents that have been added to lots and lots of products over the last 20 years. All of these have legitimate law enforcement uses -- and all of them open the door for government abuse and oppression. I would argue that the ability to trace back what printer was used to print a document is probably one of the things that has the most potential for government abuse. If it came down to my judgment, I might buy off on some of these as being constitutional, but I doubt I would buy off on this one.

Now, some might argue that the First Amendment protects your freedom of speech but doesn't preclude the government from being able to determine who said what -- that as long as they don't take any action against you that is unwarranted, that they haven't done anything wrong. I tend to be of the opinion that the government doesn't need to be able to find out anything that doesn't constitute a violation of law.