I was stopped yesterday by an article in the Washington Post entitled "Sleuths Crack Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers" that starts with:
It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it isn't. The pages coming out of your color printer may contain hidden information that could be used to track you down if you ever cross the U.S. government.

What's all about?

Printouts from many color laser printers contained yellow dots scattered across the page, viewable only with a special kind of flashlight. The dots contain a secret digital tag.
The content of the coded information was supposed to be a secret, available only to agencies looking for counterfeiters who use color printers.


Now, it's not a secret anymore.

Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco consumer privacy group, said it had cracked the code used in a widely used line of Xerox printers, an invisible bar code of sorts that contains the serial number of the printer as well as the date and time a document was printed.


The group said that currently only the US Secret Service and now itself had the ability to decrypt the imprint. It said that although the Secret Service claims to use this information only for cornering counterfeit crimes, there is no legal framework to prevent the information being put to other uses.

Where are we going ?

Have you seen the movie "Ennemy of the state" with Will Smith ?
NO ?
You have to.

You can check if your printer is concerned. The complete list of the printers that have the yellow dots can be found here: http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/list.php