Late last year, owners of Adobe's Photoshop CS began to notice a peculiar quirk in the software: It refused to open files containing images of $20 bills. At first, Adobe kept quiet about whether the feature - or was it a bug? - even existed. But eventually the company admitted that it had seeded the program with anticounterfeiting controls courtesy of the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group, a consortium created by the industrial nations known as the Group of 10. They're apparently scared witless by digifeiting, the home brewing of currency with low-cost desktops and inkjets. Turns out Photoshop was just the beginning of solutions that are equal parts clever and chilling.
Error messages: The anticounterfeiting controls in Photoshop CS were concocted by the Counterfeit Deterrence Group. The software, which is also in Jasc's Paint Shop Pro 8, spots markers embedded in currency. If an image file contains them, an error that scolds the user pops up. The group's software code is a closely guarded secret; even Adobe says it doesn't know exactly which bills are protected.
URL warnings: After Adobe's admission this winter, privacy guru Richard Smith wondered what other secrets companies might be hiding in their code. He found that HP has armed several high-end printers with drivers that recognize when a currency image has been queued. The printer spits out only an inch of the bill, followed by the URL for a site run by the European Central Bank, rulesforuse.org. HP refuses to talk about the software.
Scanner controls: In March, the Bank for International Settlements (the central bankers' central bank) announced that leading hardware and software makers had adopted the consortium's controls. The statement omitted all details, but an anonymous bank official told the Associated Press that the controls would be in scanner software by year's end.
Color detection: HP researchers are playing with a color-detection technology that would recognize when a queued document features a hue too similar to those found in currency. The printer would automatically alter the color so the difference between, say, banknote green and a counterfeit dollar could be detected by any cashier. In a white paper, HP assures photographers that the shifts won't affect other images that "use lots of green."
Bill recognition: Xerox researcher Zhigang Fan pioneered anticounterfeiting technology; he patented his first currency-detection method back in 1994. All Xerox color copiers now come equipped with algorithms that can detect when a bill is on the glass, regardless of the currency's orientation. Because Xerox licenses its anti-counterfeiting technology worldwide, the controls can be tweaked to recognize a bhat as easily as a euro.
- Brendan I. Koerner
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