Via
BoingBoing: Some outstanding detective work by the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (a great organization I keep saying I'm going to join, and now I will). Researchers working for the foundation have
broken the code
that some color printer manufacturers are using to watermark printouts
so the printer that produced them can be identified, down to the serial
number.
It would be interesting to know more about why the printer
manufacturers are doing this, and how this information is being used by
law enforcement, homeland security investigators -- or governments,
perhaps including our own, that
want to monitor or suppress internal dissent. (A 2004
article
in
PC World, written by one of my former students,
Jason Tuohey, gives
more background.)
The EFF notes that even in the U.S., there is no law preventing the
government from gathering this kind of information or using it to track
the source of
printed documents -- "only the privacy policy of your printer
manufacturer
currently protects you (if indeed such a policy exists)." The
organization points out that the FBI is routinely gathering information
on organizations such
as Greenpeace.
Here's EFF's
list
of printers that include these watermarks. This is a good reminder that
while new technologies in general have made it easier for people to
communicate and share information, they also allow new kinds of
government or law-enforcement monitoring that can threaten our civil
liberties -- or enable despotic regimes to crack down on dissent. I
find this more than a little bit troubling.
