Austria 2008 50 years airlines in TWO versions

[Rein]

The 2008 commemorative stamps for the 50 years of the Austrian Airlines had a special feature! Under a rectangular black foil you may see something special!

After rubbing off the foil you might see the winning destination of your holidays... There were 50 flights available for the lucky ones having a 3-letter code! London, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, but also Beijing, Mumbai, Chicago, New York, Toronto, Bangkok etc. Just for ONE person....

Apart from that finding a 4-digits code would make you the happy owner of 1 of the 5000 model airplanes - the Airbus A 320.

For those not so lucky you could still mail a postcard to the WIPA'08 Post Office stand! A lottery there might result in another 20 flights...

[Rein]

As you can tell by the stamp above, I did not belong to the happy few! Nothing underneath the black foil!

But in some other respect I felt awfully happy:

[Rein]

The yellow dots appearing were the result of a digital print that had been used for applying the lottery codes!

And it turned out to be possible to decypher what the yellow dots were hiding!



Using the above instruction it was easy enough to tell the date of the digital print!

03.12.2007!

[Rein]

What is this all about?

The yellow dots are the result of a MIC or Machine Identification code that allows Big Brother - read the CIA or the NSA of the USA - to be able to tell ALL colour prints / colour copies where they come from as the manufacturers of such colour laser printers of photocopying machines have the obligation to print - assumably not visible for the human eyes - by ways of yellow dots the data that will give away where the machine is operating and who is the owner!

The existence of such MIC'[s was discovered by chance by members of the EFF [Electronic Free Frontier] in 2004. The use of such dots goes back to the 1990-ies!

Not all machines had the possiblity of applying the yellow dots at first, but in order to be able to sell your products in the USA you had better do what Big Brother wanted you to do! And implement the yellow dots into your machinery.

[Rein]

It even can tell us the exact time! At 7:56 am this stamp got printed!

[Rein]

The MIC's are spread all over the stamp in a chessboard way:

[Rein]

The copy I was lucky enough to have was a used one! I got it on a cover from Austria mailing me my Ebay buys!

I did try to get more copies of th at stamp - all mint ones - but then I got another surprise!





Not a trace of the yellow dots!

[Rein]

I assumed that this was because of the stamps being on sale with the Philatelic Department and that the Austrian Post Office simply reckoned that philatelists would never rub off the black foil so there was no use for applying the extra layer of digital print at all....

That was how I though about it, until I mentioned the whole story to the members of the Austrian stamp forum!

http://www.briefmarken-forum.com/t5940p ... philatelie

Several members of that Forum reacted in such a way that they remember having bought the stamp just from an ordinary post office counter! Not the Philatelic Service!

Checking their stamps they did not find the yellow dots! Only one came up with a used copy that had the dots.....

So it looks as if there have been manufactured just enough sheets with the 3-letter code or the 4-digits!

Having just ONE of these codes per sheet, 5050 sheets would be involved! With 700.000 stamps printed in total!? Or 14.000 sheets of 50?!