I know that in other applications (industrial food service) patterned dot markings are used to identify a specific machine that printed a label. Basically they're the printer's signature.
yes, every machine produces a unique forensic signature, printers, scanners etc, even retail grade machines, it was a legal requirement introduced with the technology, it was felt that the superior quality of the printouts made it too easy to use in fraud and a unique origin identifier was required.
A Machine Identification Code (MIC), also known as printer steganography, yellow dots, tracking dots or secret dots, is a digital watermark which certain color laser printers and copiers leave on every single printed page, allowing identification of the device with which a document was printed and giving clues to the originator. Developed by Xerox and Canon in the mid-1980s, its existence became public only in 2004. In 2018, scientists developed privacy software to anonymize prints in order to support whistleblowers publishing their work.[1][2][3]
I know that in other applications (industrial food service) patterned dot markings are used to identify a specific machine that printed a label. Basically they're the printer's signature.
yes, every machine produces a unique forensic signature, printers, scanners etc, even retail grade machines, it was a legal requirement introduced with the technology, it was felt that the superior quality of the printouts made it too easy to use in fraud and a unique origin identifier was required.
A Machine Identification Code (MIC), also known as printer steganography, yellow dots, tracking dots or secret dots, is a digital watermark which certain color laser printers and copiers leave on every single printed page, allowing identification of the device with which a document was printed and giving clues to the originator. Developed by Xerox and Canon in the mid-1980s, its existence became public only in 2004. In 2018, scientists developed privacy software to anonymize prints in order to support whistleblowers publishing their work.[1][2][3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
and modest, too.
5head
...so could this help identity ballots from China?
if you know how to read the marks on the authentic ballots,
you can spot illegal copies, they will have a different mark.