Human and/or Digital Interrogation of Tax Stamps

An intriguing and important discussion regarding the relative role of human senses and digital methods in authentication has been sparked by two contrasting presentations at the recent Tax Stamp Forum™. Ian Lancaster, who presented one of those papers, here describes the contrasting presentations and the follow-up discussion.

A fingerprinting technique

On the first morning of the forum Avi Chaudhuri, Chief Scientist at Systech, gave a paper titled The Perfect Tax Stamp, in which he argued for the use of ‘fingerprint’ methods to authenticate stamps – specifically Systech’s new e-Fingerprint^® technique. This works on the basis that if a tax stamp carries a two-dimensional barcode (eg. a QR or datamatrix code), the barcode pattern printed on each stamp will unavoidably vary (caused by environmental variations, dust, line speed, vibrations and printing or substrate imperfections).