Ahem. Most COLOR laser printers have tracking "watermarks". It's because the US Treasury frowns on printing your own replica currency, which would be unastonishingly easy to do with a color scanner and printer.
Just ribbing on ya :p
It is true, there are other preventative measures, but any one measure can be beaten. It's like computer security- any computer can be hacked, it's just a game of making it hard enough to hack that it is not worth it, or takes too long.
The fact that this alternative is not even on the table adds to the impression that the U.S. government, as usual, is trying to use Big Bro techniques as a quick fix instead of coming up with real solutions.
BTW, I'm not sure if anyone prints fake Canadian money, but a few years ago some dude in Germany tried to print millions of dollars worth of fake Canadian Tire money :)
Many retailers in Canada have signs saying they'll refuse to take $100 bills (probably the reason for the recent roll-out of new $100 bills).
I suppose if "fingerprints" are so bad, we should probably outlaw ballistic analysis linking a bullet to the gun that fired it?
For some values of "the government" not including many governments; see $OPPRESSIVE_REGIME.
There's a lot of stuff "the government" does now that would have been unthinkable before various terrorist bombing attempts. Really, forcing everyone to remove their shoes before boarding a plane?
And, if you doubt that the US[1] spies on its own citizens you should have a look at the Echelon programme, where a legal loophole was used by the US to gather intelligence on its citizens. (The US gov can't do it legally, so they pass a name onto another gov involved in Echelon.)
[1] US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
The Canadian mint actually produces a lot of coinage for other countries, is one of the most advanced in new techs, etc. They tend to sell out all of their collection coins, especially the large gold ones (including a 1kg coin).
The game of making it hard enough/expensive enough to have it not worthwhile is the goal of every currency. The new 100$ bill definitely succeeds.
Of course Australians invented the plastic notes so they could go surfing with their wallets.
Within a couple of years, the old style notes become so exceptionally rare in everyday transactions that the presence of one raises eyebrows, and is inspected carefully. While our older style notes are technically still "legal tender", I doubt you'd find a single retailer across the country that would accept it.
The Australian switch to polymer meant an entirely new suite of banknotes which bear almost no resemblance to the paper ones they replaced.
Plus, people will complain about the new ones. :)
The classic example is the penny. Get rid of it! You can still collect them and read about them on wikipedia, you just won't have to deal with them while buying your double cheeseburgers any more.
The classic case was the huge Northern Bank robbery in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 2004 -- the thieves stole around 7% of all the Northern Bank banknotes in circulation (currency in NI and Scotland is issued by banks that possess a license to print money, not by a nationalized institution like the Federal Reserve). It was cheaper for the bank to reissue the entire currency and cancel the old banknotes than to trouser the loss, so within 4 months the stolen notes were worthless except as toilet paper:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Bank_robbery
Once there's a noticeable proportion of forged coinage or banknotes in circulation public confidence in the currency drops like a stone. At that point, the only option is to recall and replace.
The reason this hasn't happened in the USA is because there are so damn many dollar bills in circulation -- around $829Bn as of 2007. The cost of recalling and reissuing that little lot would be distinctly non-trivial ...
http://www.ny.frb.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed01.html
For the classic currency-catastrophe-caused-by-forgery, you need to read up on the Portuguese banking crisis of 1925, one of the biggest currency frauds in history:
Printer manufacturers are the ones voluntarily saying 'yes, master'. I have no control over any aspect of that situation.
> I didn't create, buy, or even sanction it.
But, you choose to live beneath it. If you don't like the rules, you can work to change it. This is a democracy though, so don't think that everyone will blindly agree with you.
This obviously assumes you are an American. If you aren't, then I really don't see the issue.
The whole is not merely the sum of the parts. And the people making up the government are nothing like me. For one, they believe government is a means to itself, while I do not.
> If you really want to enact change, you can
Citation needed.
> you choose to live beneath ithh
A one-possibility choice is not a choice. Your unstated assumption is that my personal life should be dependent on the government. I reject this. Also, there are not many places on Earth which aren't controlled by the US govt.
> If you don't like the rules, you can work to change it
And waste my life endlessly fighting others who wish to enforce their differing will on everyone, while we all perpetuate the democracy virus? That's how to become part of the problem!
You're being purposefully obtuse. I'm sorry everyone doesn't agree with you. Your opinion isn't the only one. Your teenage angst driven post is sad, if only because you really believe what you are spewing.
> I reject this.
Big words for someone who clearly doesn't.
Really, if you're being honest here in this post, I can't help but think your a bigger fraud then the people who supposedly shun.
We're just coming from radically different assumptions.
I've been there, thinking my vote mattered, thinking that conservatives just needed some enlightenment (if you prefer the converse - thinking that progressives just need some experience with the real world). Thinking that change happens eventually once enough people wake up and get the message.
But then I realized that we're all just fighting ourselves over surface issues. So much passion is poured into arguing to preserve the littlest bits of freedom while the pedagogues fan the simplistic tyranny of the other "side's" masses. Meanwhile, the organizations seeking increased importance and authority keep their eyes on the prize and offer their 'solutions' to the complex fundamental meta-issues. A battle may be won from time to time, but the system's invasion of and control over your life ratchets ever forward.
I certainly don't have a concrete solution to this whole mess, but the least I can do is avoid contributing to its legitimacy.
I wasn't referring to merely voting. I was referring to actually getting into politics and enacting change from the inside. If you just vote, you aren't enacting any change. You're signaling your belief that others are better able to handle this then you.
To accurately evaluate systems, one has to step back and look at their actual (emergent) behavior, not just their purported (axiomatic) behavior.
To accurately evaluate systems, one has to step back and look at their actual (emergent) behavior, not just their purported (axiomatic) behavior.
Let me start by supposing, as I think we all do, that this date-and-serial watermarking is indeed a form of spying on users of printers. Let me further suppose, perhaps more contentiously, that this international spying conspiracy of printer manufacturers is actually directed by some single nation-state (not an international conspiracy of nation-states), and that that state is the U.S.
EDIT: Regarding the leadership of the conspiracy, on the one hand the EFF apparently has FOIA responses that confirm that the U.S. is complicit, but otoh apparently the Dutch (and other countries) are using it too, so maybe I'm wrong to suppose that there's a single state at the head of the conspiracy.
It staggers me that you would not see why I would object to a foreign government (the U.S.) spying on me. Obviously it's not the _same_ issue as if my own government were spying on me.
Yeah. Doing something works.
In the same way one wouldn't have infiltrated the Soviets to reform communism, or the KKK to reform slavery, one instead subverts, undermines and networks around it. Like the flourishing black markets in the Soviet-era, or the underground railroad, the Counter-Economy can grow, and eventually overcome and abolish the violence of the State, through non-violent means.
Want untracked printers? Consider the risk vs. reward of hacking one and profiting from distributing it on a black/gray market. It will be more more effective and more ethical than voting or any nonsense like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation
Edit: Of course I learn after posting, apparently EURion is not what Photoshop looks for, but rather a digital watermark. The detection is given to Adobe as a binary from a security firm.