Government and Big Business Collusion

Big Brother is Reading

------So, you're casually printing out documents in complete anonymity... you thought...

Apparently not, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EEF) has discoverd that color laser printers are embedding codes that can be tracked back to specific, individual machines as well as embedding information about the date and time the paper was printed. The EEF even provides instructions on how to find the coded information, although it does take special equipment (a magnifying glass or microscope and a blue light).

And, yes, the dots are apparently a result of an agreement between the US Secret Service and the printer manufacturers. And the list of companies doing this is pretty long: Brother, Canon, Dell, Epson, HP, Konica/Minolta, Kyocera, Lexmark, Ricoh, Tektronix/Toshiba and Xerox.

Just something to be aware of, if you've printed it, the government, and others might be able to trace it back to you...

The EEF even asks for help in decoding some of the test sheets they have scanned.------