A system and method for generating a signed hardcopy document and
authentication thereof is provided. A data representation including
digital data is recorded from a hardcopy document. The digital data is
compressed using a compression scheme including one of low-fidelity
compression and symbol-based compression. An authentication token is
generated from the compressed digital data. The authentication token is
encoded. A signed hardcopy document including both the encoded
authentication token and the data representation is printed.