“The Mysterious Printer Code That Could Have Led the FBI to Reality Winner” (Atlantic) says that laser printers include an ID code whenever one prints in color (but not in black and white). Has anyone tried reading these hidden ID codes at home or work? With which printers and what did you find?
Related:
“In 2005, the Electronic Frontier Foundation cracked the codes for Xerox DocuColor printers and published an online guide to their detection.[4] Most printers’ codes have not been decoded, although the coding system framework and printer serial number encoding is the same on both DocuColor and the Epson Aculaser C1100/C1100N/A
”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography
The reason the code is only for color printers is that it was supposed to keep people from using color photocopiers and printers from duplicating currencies (same reason photoshop won’t open an image of most currencies, or even a part)
The EFF has an online tool for decoding the printer dots. You’ll probably need to scan the page and fiddle with it in Photoshop to get the dots to show up.
Unfortunately for Ms. Winner, the Intercept inadvertently performed this service for her.
It turns out the microdots were not crucial to the investigation:
https://medium.com/@thegrugq/real-talk-on-reality-cf07cbb78530
She did not try to hide her crime. I am not sure what she thought would happen to her. It seems like she was just idealistic and wanted to tell world that Russia was hacking our elections and hoped she would not get too much punishment.
Wasn’t it a crease in the paper that was the connecting clue?