Quality copying can inspire crime
With inkjet printers producing increasingly accurate images, there are now concerns about counterfeiting
IT Surprises me that anyone should be surprised that someone who did not belong to the University of Westminster was able to forge an ID pass, and then use the university's facilities to mass-produce at least £75,000 worth of forged bus passes.
The scammer, who got a 12-month suspended sentence from Harrow Crown Court, had simply scanned an original pass, edited in digital photos and hard-copied the result on a colour printer.
The World Customs Organisation and Interpol recently organised a conference in Brussels on counterfeiting. The WCO's mind had been concentrated by the discovery of pirate CD-R copies of the CD-Rom database of import/export taxes that the WCO sells to customs houses around the world for €1,000 a time.
The pirated copies, with scanned sleeve notes, were being bought by the very people who are paid to stop counterfeit traffic.
In Brussels I grabbed the chance to ask Ronald Noble, secretary general of Interpol, whether he was worried about people using colour inkjet printers and copiers to replicate valuable documents and money.
"Few people are deceived," he assured me. "I don't believe it's an issue that needs to take up time."
John Newton, Interpol's crime intelligence officer, was just as relaxed. "We talked to the printer manufacturers about standardising on a prevention system, but decided it was not a role for Interpol," he said.
Perhaps Noble and Newton should try talking to De La Rue, the company that has been printing money since 1724. The company makes banknotes in 150 currencies, including the euro, and last year bought out its main customer, the Bank of England's 300 year-old printing operation.
Breaking the traditional silence on currency printing, De La Rue recently warned that inkjets are creating a new breed of 'digifeiter'.
De La Rue spokesman John Winchcombe had told me long before the Brussels conference that this is a "very sensitive subject but we thought it was time to say something and make people think".
In documents sent to banks and governments around the world, De La Rue warns: "There appears to be little appreciation of the nature of the problem, and even less sense of urgency.
"The world's central banks are now having to deal with an increasing number of counterfeit banknotes, generated by colour inkjet printers."
Since the mid-1980s, the makers of the heavy-duty colour electrographic copiers used in offices and copy shops have voluntarily built in character recognition software that detects the fine detail of security marks and blocks copying. Copy shops jump on anyone trying to copy valuable documents.
The four main inkjet makers – Canon, Epson, HP and Lexmark – have now pushed resolution to at least 4,800 dots per inch, with each dot formed from ink droplets as small as 3picolitres. (A picolitre is one trillionth of a litre.)
So anyone can now copy anything accurately in the privacy of their home, at the press of a button, with quality comparable to the heavy-duty machines.
"The banks, treasuries and police should be requiring printer manufacturers to act responsibly," said De La Rue.
But when I tried to talk to the National Criminal Intelligence Service they seemed wholly unaware of recent developments. "Low-cost copiers do not have high enough quality, so you are looking at machines costing £10,000," a spokesman assured me.
And the Bank of England said: "We are confident that our security measures, like watermarks and strips, stay ahead of such developments."
Computer software company Software 2000 has been working with De La Rue on driver software that stops home printers and copiers reproducing banknotes or secure documents.
The driver looks for telltale signs of security detail, serial numbering and banknote size. Fuzzy logic allows only low-quality, monochrome copies of suspect images.
But a year after it was first offered to the industry, there have been no takers. Judging by what has happened to Adobe, it's probably inevitable.
The Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group (CBCDG) developed a system which hides a licensed mark inside a banknote image that is then recognised by any imaging or copy software that incorporates a stop-copy plug-in licensed by the CBCDG.
Adobe plugged the CBCDG software into the latest version of Photoshop. As a result, the company is now widely ridiculed on the internet, with numerous postings on simple ways to defeat the CBCDG block.
I very much doubt if this is what Adobe intended. The promise of 'no-CBCDG included' could become a unique selling point for Adobe's competitors.
So I for one am going to start looking more closely at paper money handed over as change in a dark public bar.
* Post was edited: 2004-09-13 10:52:00