Steganography and your color printer [My Favorite Experiment]

I came across an interesting fact several years back and logged it away for investigation at a later date. Now that I have dumped my inkjet printer and own a color laser printer, that day has arrived. According to Wikipedia, "Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message, a form of security through obscurity." Various forms of hidden messaging can be traced back to ancient Greece and beyond, but with the proliferation of modern day personal computers and their peripherals we have truly entered a new era where freeware steganography programs allow unskilled individuals to encrypt and decrypt sophisticated messages anywhere in the world over the Internet. It has been a boon for spies and terrorists alike. If you are an avid Internet user like I am, you have undoubtedly viewed at least one encoded image unknowingly sometime during your internet browsing. If not, let me share one with you courtesy of Wikipedia (Fig. 1).