Robert Lee, Yale College '05

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a San Francisco-based non-profit organization that seeks to protect free speech and privacy rights in the context of technology use. It was founded in July 1990 as a result of Steve Jackson Games v. U.S. Secret Service, a case which, among other things, recognized electronic mail as a valid form of speech protected by the First Amendment. Over the past ten years, EFF has been instrumental in ensuring that technology policies and court decisions do not violate nor restrict citizens’ “digital rights.” In DVD-CCA v. Bunner and DVD-CCA v. Pavlovich, EFF defended Andrew Bunner’s and Matthew Pavlovich’s First Amendment right in their republishing of DeCSS, a software program that decrypts data on DVDs. More recently, EFF has been working on issues related to electronic voting, blogging, digital rights management technology, broadcast flags in digital television broadcasts, radio frequency identification, and the USA PATRIOT Act. This past March, EFF represented StreamCast Networks before the US Supreme Court in MGM v. Grokster.

In pursuit of its goals, EFF often acts as counsel, litigant, and amicus curiae in court cases. It also educates policymakers and the public on current technological issues through its web page, white papers, and lectures. It has twenty-six staff members, who work with outside attorneys and other non-profit organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

At EFF, I was assigned the task of investigating color laser printers and their potential threat to user privacy. A board member of EFF and director of the Internet Archive learned from a November 22, 2004, PC World article that “several printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document those machines produce. Governments, including the United States, already use the hidden markings to track counterfeiters.” He recognized that with this counterfeiting deterrence mechanism came privacy risks for users who print anonymously. Although manufacturers and the United States Secret Service (the agency given exclusive jurisdiction over counterfeiting cases)
claim that they use the hidden markings solely to deter and to investigate counterfeiting activities, no law prevents them from using the markings to identify the machine involved in anonymously printed color documents. The absence of legislation regulating the technology means that the Secret Service could potentially use the markings for purposes unrelated to counterfeiting deterrence and investigation. Since free speech and anonymity are inextricably linked, EFF decided to look into this technology.

The first component of my project consisted of verifying that the hidden markings, allegedly in the form of tiny yellow dots, were indeed being printed over color documents. I began by researching the Internet to find information on the technology used to print the yellow tracking dots. Reliable facts were scant, but conspiracy theories were many. Only one other article existed on this technology, and it was an earlier PC World article that described Dutch railway law enforcement officials’ use of the technology in investigating a large-scale ticket counterfeiting operation. Although it provided some new information, it did not describe the technology in sufficient detail.

I decided to contact manufacturers for more information. I chatted online with a Xerox employee who claimed to know nothing about this technology. He wrote that he did not know yellow tracking dots were being printed by Xerox color machines onto documents (the November PC World article stated that several Xerox models used the technology). Although I was highly skeptical of the employee’s lack of knowledge, in retrospect I believe him because manufacturers have not publicly announced or discussed this technology before this past year. In not disclosing the technology to the public, Xerox has seemingly also avoided informing its entry-level employees about it. My telephone interview with a Xerox senior research fellow was more fruitful. He had been quoted in the November PC World article and had confirmed that several Xerox models printed yellow tracking dots onto documents. During the telephone interview, he
reconfirmed many statements made in the PC World article and provided several other details about the technology.

Although he had attested to Xerox’s use of the technology, I needed to verify that color machines actually printed the alleged hidden markings. I compiled a list of local printing stores where I could print color documents. I then designed test sheets and took them to the stores where I ordered their printing. Upon receiving the outputs, I examined the sheets for small yellow dots. To my amazement, all of the color machines that I tested except one printed the yellow tracking dots.

Finding the yellow tracking dots was exciting. For the first three weeks of my internship, the dots’ existence was merely an unproven and unobserved allegation. I had never seen these tracking dots nor heard of anyone else’s discovery thereof. Despite the November PC World article, which confirmed the printing of the dots, there was a small possibility that I would not be able to detect them. Given this uncertainty, I was delighted to find the yellow tracking dots on test sheets when I examined printouts from a FedEx Kinko’s store. Many individuals at the office were interested in the discovery and were fascinated that manufacturers would print tracking information on their machines’ documents. Detecting the dots was a milestone for the project.

Knowing that color machines printed tracking dots onto documents, I proceeded to the second part of my project: attempting to decipher the encoded message of the dots. I decided to focus on the structure of the dots printed by the Xerox DocuColor 12 model. My supervisor and I discovered that the dots printed by this model resembled a computer punch card. Unfortunately, we were unable to decipher the dots’ message. Further work is needed to understand what information these dots could be potentially encoding.

During my internship, I wrote two documents. One was a white paper that summarized the current results of the printer project and solicited printouts from the general public. It was exciting to have people send their test sheets to us for analysis; their participation demonstrated that this project was important to them. People were writing about the tracking dots in blogs. The media also took note of the project. The Register, vnunet.com, Slashdot, Investor’s Business Daily, and a TV show have covered or will cover the results, and their publicity will help increase public awareness of the potential privacy risks in using color laser printers that have this marking feature.
The second document was a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) letter, which requested Secret Service records related to the marking technology. Since it was important to determine the Secret Service’s involvement in promoting this technology and since the agency might have reasons to withhold information, submitting a FOIA letter was necessary. An EFF senior staff attorney taught me the requirements of a FOIA letter and proofread numerous drafts. The Secret Service has not yet responded to our request.

Overall, my internship at EFF was a wonderful experience. I enjoyed working with everyone at the organization. EFF is truly working on cutting-edge technology issues, and I was impressed with everyone’s passion for their work. I highly recommend a Liman Summer Fellow to apply for an internship at EFF. Not only would he or she work on fascinating research projects, but a fellow would also meet brilliant individuals who care deeply about free speech and privacy issues while also living in San Francisco, a pleasantly quaint city full of cultural and intellectual activities.