From the Houston Chronicle:
Can Your Printer Tell on You?
The gist of this article, in case my recommendation is insufficient to pique your interest, is that many retail printers add patterns of yellow dots, which contain a cipher of the printer's serial number as well as the date and time of the printing, to every page printed.
Now, I'm not one of those people that were cutting off their own limbs to use as projectile weapons agianst the President when he signed the USA Patriot Act, but I can't say this doesn't bother me. My printer is supposed to print what I tell it to print, and if I don't want any identifying marks on it, then there should be none.
EDIT: The machine-identifying system is only reported to exist in color laser printers, so most of us need not necessarily worry about it.
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2 comments:
I've located a bias in this article and your reporting it. They say, if you cross the government, then they can track you down. Fact is, anyone who has the technology to read the damn dots can do it. Who knows how? The companies who built the damn things! Anyone with enough resources really can find out. The point is the illegal seisure of your documents. That's what people bitch about. The fact is, if they're taking my private documents, the dots are the last thing on my mind.
No. The point is the secrecy. The printing manufacturers put this semi-surveillance system into your printer without telling you, and you're printing self-identifying information onto the pages without knowing, without wanting to do so.
Illegal seizure is not the issue here, even if you consider it important. If authorities are taking your private documents, they may have reason to, and they may carry a subpoena for them. In that case, it's often right of them to take the documents. But with these dots, you've unknowingly left - nay, created - evidence of which printer was used to print them, and when.
But it's not just law enforcement here. With the secret out now, anybody who knows or can figure out the code can read the information - coworkers, business parters, professors, and anyone else who might care to know. Maybe you don't want that information known! Is it really disagreeable to suggest I should be allowed to print pages without it?
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