these codes have been in colour printers for about 10-20 years (the EFF ran a similar press relese 10 years ago) and TBH they are indeed mostly just used for preventing counterfeiting of ID documents, currency, stamps etc. Although the Secret Service is associated with men in black and and its rôle often exaggerated by US TV/movies one of its jobs has always been to detect counterfeit currency/official documents in the USA; like all other such services it does often work across borders as criminals operate worldwide.
At my work we legitimately scan all sorts of ID documents for the staff files of foreign staff and every so often on some devices they either refuse to scan and/or a warning prints out in 10 different languages that you might be breaking the law (of course you aren’t when your country’s Immigration Service has asked for the documents to be scanned and put on file!).
