Colour Copiers In The Use Of Counterfeiting

The ability to reproduce colour documents with colour copiers has always been one which amazes and inspires - full, rich, vibrant copies - which bring presentation to a whole new level. Although black and white copiers are far more widely used and indeed often the only required level of copying, colour copiers remain a powerful piece of office technology.

But some less scrupulous members of society use the power of colour copiers to break the law - namely by using the technology to create forgeries of bank notes. This process can net the forgers a great deal of money - along with a substantial stretch behind bars. But the quality of modern colour copiers means that forgeries can often be hard to spot.

Authorities in the United States of America and indeed across the globe are always keen to find ways to prevent the misuse of this technology. In the instance of a suspected forgery crime related to a certain piece of copying technology, it is possible to identify a printer or copier's identity. This is done by examining tiny imperfections and barely noticeable banding created by the running mechanisms of a given machine. A machine which has printed a specific document can be identified, even among machines of the same make and model, by comparing their output.

Using the process of steganography, some high quality colour copiers embed their identification code into the copied or printed pages - which occurs in the form of barely visible yellow dots. It has been said that some Xerox and Canon Colour copiers are implementing this system - thought to be a repeating 8 x 15 dot pattern in the yellow channel. This information might detail the date and time of printout, extremely useful when trying to identify a potential forgery.

It must be wondered then, if printed money would look realistic without the yellow ink source being used? Of course, the exact method of adding these identifying 'tags' is shrouded in mystery - so that forgers do not get wind of techniques and try and find ways around them. Critics might say that forgers could potentially find out which part of the printer or copier creates this piece of printed code, and disable it.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the government organisation involved in persuading companies to begin these processes. It is also thought that a reverse engineering process is also planned for additional printers, making the occupation of master forger a difficult one indeed.

Whatever the technological advances we see in the development of printers and colour copiers, the authorities will have their hands full keeping one step ahead of these criminals.