Printers are the text book examples of why device manufacturing shouldn’t be left to big companies. You have tracking dots, spyware infestation, subscription for ink/toners, reporting of the cartridge as empty when you still have much left in it, refusal to print when unused color cartridges are empty, intentional bricking if 3rd party cartridges or ink is used, and utterly crappy firmware in general.
Inkjets require precision manufacturing. But assembling it or other types from components should be possible - like how desktops, mechanical keyboards, etc can be. We really need to ditch filthy mass market printers because DIY printers will be much better than anything they offer.
I’m pretty sure this measure was requested either by the government or some big three letter agency.
I doubt that, if all printers were manufactured by a government monopoly, you wouldn’t have this shit baked in. It would probably be way worse
I’m not at all asking for a government monopoly on making printers, if that wasn’t clear.
It’s insufferable how people will respond to “We shouldn’t let corporations do this” with “OK SO YOU WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO DO IT?!?!”
It was requested by the secret service as a countermeasure for counterfitting. More frequently it’s been used to “catch other criminals”, at least that’s what they say.
More frequently it’s been used to “catch other criminals”
Germans are used to this already. It’s called “Salamitaktik” (pushed piece a piece).
It’s how Reality Winner got real fucked.
via Wikiedpia:
Both journalists and security experts have suggested that The Intercept’s handling of the reporting, which included publishing the documents unredacted and including the printer tracking dots, was used to identify Winner as the leaker. In October 2020, The Intercept’s co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald wrote that Winner had sent her documents to The Intercept’s New York newsroom with no request that any specific journalist work on them. He called her exposure a “deeply embarrassing newsroom failure” resulting from “speed and recklessness” for which he was publicly blamed “despite having no role in it.” He said editor-in-chief Betsy Reed “oversaw, edited and controlled that story.” An internal review conducted by The Intercept into its handling of the document provided by Winner found that its “practices fell short of the standards to which we hold ourselves”.
A technology that was made To Stop Criminals™ being used against a political whistleblower? Color me surprised! (thanks for sharing the link btw, didn’t know about that)
You’re very welcome. It’s good to be able to show real-world examples so people are less skeptical. A lot of people won’t read a deep technical document describing printer surveillance, but they will read a paragraph excerpt from Wikipedia.
And they will argue that whistleblowing is actually a crime, because, uhm, it’s, uhm, yeah it’s illegal! And if it’s illegal to be a good citizen, then this is totally warranted and no scandal at all, because only bad people do illegal things!
Many people are willing to sacrifice a lot of people for the tiny chance of maybe stopping a criminal once.
Interesting. I remember reading a news article before 2017 stating that printers used to do this, but the practice has since ended because someone was able to prove they were doing it in the mid-2000s. At the time, I saw some people on Reddit claiming they just switched to a new, harder to detect method, and everyone was saying they were conspiracy theorists.
On wikipedia there’s some suggestion that methods that involve intensity of toner/ink across a document could be used to uniquely identify a machine but no such methods are currently publicly known (at least as far as the Wikipedia article has been updated)
Those dots are practically invisible if you have the printed copy, they’re not going to be visible at all in a photography. Printers and their network leave a lot to logs behind, pretty sure they just check up the printed files of their network, found the document and who send the printer order and done.
So you think tracking her down with forensic methods that objectively exist is farfetched, but accessing the print logs of every printer in America to figure out which one printed the document is realistic?
It’s cheaper and easier to look at the print logs. Most business computer and printer solutions tie every print to a user and log at least the name of every document printed
The hidden code is for court cases where they wish to prove which machine made the print, they’re not very good for identifying which user printed something in a multi user environment
Wikipedia has a good article on it, including photos of what the marks look like. They’re practically invisible to the naked eye, getting them to show up usually requires additional steps like taking high quality scans and running them through some color filters, or using a UV light.
From the EFF coverage of it, it sounds like every laser printer probably prints these marks now. I’m not sure if inkjets or other printer types do or not.
They probably started with the inkjets. More so, considering that inkjets have turned into a money grabbing scam. You’re better off with a laser printer if you need only B&W.
From the wiki they mention researchers created a tool to check the identification code yourself, or to anonymize documents you’re printing: https://github.com/dfd-tud/deda
Clearly a pain in the ass and not user friendly for the general public though.
If you’re going to do illegal shit, or shit against the owner class, don’t use modern technology to do it.
I don’t think they make them anymore but unsurprisingly most are still functionnal.
I know Tom Scott was able to buy one brand new on Amazon a few years back.
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Typewriter and serial-killer bashed together article clippings are based anti-establishment.
Wasn’t there some way to fingerprint typewriters as well based on yhe exact shape of the letter stencils? I vaguely remember something like that being an actual thing for solving crimes
Each letter in a typewriter isn’t perfectly aligned and will be slightly higher or lower, this variation is distinctive to each typewriter.
Kind of an an-prim take. Understand the technology you’re using. The only thing you should take for granted is that any opportunity tech has to spy on you has already been exploited by multiple outlets. Use your worst possible faith and you’ll probably still fall short of what’s happening.
Or do while making sure you 100% know WTF you are doing. Some modern tech, like onion routing and encryption, are still very useful.
But if you’re not the kind of person who can convert a 32 bit hex number to decimal in your head or recognize a JTAG port on a device when you see it, then yeah stay away.
Dear conspiracy theorists
Sorry i called you crack pots. Please pass the foil
I find that a large number of conspiracy theories are asking the right questions, just not providing the right answers. Does big tech want to control our minds with 5G towers and microchips hidden in covid vaccines? Probably not. Does big tech want to control our minds with social media and invasive advertising? Absolutely. Is the world controlled by a secret society of lizard people? Probably not. Is the world controlled by a not-so-secret society of billionaires and politicians? To a large extent. Even those awful racist or bigoted conspiracy theories start to sound somewhat palpable palatable if you filter out the racist or bigoted part. Do Jews make life for the rest of us miserable by controlling the economy? No. But replace “Jews” with “the owning class”, and suddenly it kind of makes sense.
EDIT: Is the government putting chemicals in the water that turn frogs gay? No. Are corporations putting chemicals in water bottles that turn frogs into hermaphrodites? Literally yes
EDIT PART TWO - ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: Palatable, not palpable. Words are hard.
As someone who has worked in IT communications, nobody deploying 5G is doing anything differently than for 4G/LTE/3G/2G or even coax/DSL/fiber/whatever. The only functional difference is that it’s faster. It may operate with newer tech, faster chips, different frequency bands, different modulation techniques, etc… But at the end of the day, it’s just a means to get data from here to there. Nothing more.
Also, the government (or “the man” or “them” or whatever), already have an almost universal method to track every living person in the country. You willingly carry this tracker with you at all times; to work, to the park, to friends and family locations, etc… If you haven’t guessed yet, it’s a cellphone.
A big part of increasing the network speed on commercial wireless networks (cellular provider networks) is reducing cell size, aka, the amount of space each radio covers, and just increasing the number of cells (radios) serving an area. They know exactly which cell(s) your phone is connected to, where those cells are, which direction the antennas are facing and how far you are away from it (by signal strength, or rssi). This can be triangulated with other antennas that can “hear” the same signal, and all of their metrics (location, direction, distance), and that information can be quickly collected and cross referenced into a very accurate location.
This can be done without any software on your device, and very likely without having a valid service plan. As long as you’re in range and the cellular radio is on, “they” already know where you are. And you carry your phone with the radio online at all times, willingly. Pretty much once you get to have your own phone as a teenager, they know where you are and “they” have been able to track you since.
Having apps like Facebook and whatever that get your location information from the network and the app relays it to Facebook (or whatever corporate entity), is the equivalent for the corporate overlords. You just need to invite them in by having the application installed, and it can report that data to them.
Most do this entirely willingly and could not give any fewer shits about it.
This is not speculation, this is part of the technical capabilities of the systems. Whether or not the government or any legal entity is using the information for this purpose is up for debate, but the fact that it can be done isn’t in question. There are entire companies dedicated to building solutions which correlate connection data to geolocate connected devices with a high degree of accuracy.
A nontrivial part of the reason these systems exist is for e911, which can relay GPS information to emergency services. A system which does not work very well for most counties because their 911 systems are too old and underfunded. If it works correctly, your precise location and altitude (to determine if you’re on the ground floor or not), can be accessed by emergency services in the event that it is required. Usually those features are only accessible or activated if you actually dial 911 (or your country’s equivalent emergency number), but they’re built out and exist regardless of if you need/use it. This was made a requirement by the government since your physical address bound to the number you are calling from, is not necessarily where you are when you make the call. In the olden days of landlines, every phone number would come up with the service address when you called 911. Since the service address was the only location you could use that line from, that worked. Now that we’re almost entirely mobile, it’s not useful anymore, so this system was devised. Then the government promptly denied sufficient funding to 911 systems to implement their end of the system, while mandating that carriers set it up.
It’s stupid. But I digress.
The fact is, you are being tracked. It’s being done for your own good (re: emergency services), but it’s very easily abused by those who can access it. People like government agencies.
Whether they’re abusing it or not, that’s a question you’ll have to figure out for yourself.
different frequency bands
Actual conspiracy theory: Very small fish tend to die a few days after being exposed to electromagnetic metal detectors. Fewer die if you hold them above the metal detectors. This is an observable phenomenon you can try at your own expense. While I don’t think 5G is a significant enough increase in energy density to cause you to die, there is a good chance it’s enough to introduce destabilization in homeostasis due to body warming. Especially if you live within 100 meters of a tower. Babies tend to be fussier sleepers when sleeping very near routers or baby monitors using a meager 2.4, 5, or 6 GHz, attempt experimentation at risk of the children.
Whether they’re abusing it or not, that’s a question you’ll have to figure out for yourself.
Not a conspiracy theory: Snowden proved they are. Everyone in a 5 Eyes country is stuck having their private moments exposed at any given moment for any reason.
That’s the worst part about those distractors.
Verified evils are so numerous as to invite a lifetime of agitation.
Instead people make up BS others have to refute or report on.
Asking the right questions, listening to the wrong people.
Sure, if you completely disassociate them from the answers that they act on (5G towers, lizard people, Jews, gay frogs) then yeah they’re just hunting for the answers.
They’re also refusing to accept evidence they don’t like. Like there are two examples that spring to mind: the fact that the earth is an oblate spheroid and the fact that trans people existing is a natural phenomenon in our species. For the former there are mountains of evidence and anyone who’s spent any time near an ocean knows it’s true. It’s just not what your eyes or feet notice. They’re questioning their assumptions but they came to a conclusion and accept all flimsy evidence rather than more solid evidence that it’s not true. And they never ask why. For what fucking reason would people spend billions fabricating this conspiracy?
For the latter these people see a group of people who violate social norms in a way that they aren’t comfortable with anc do ask why. But they then answer it maliciously without evidence and repeatedly reject evidence and in the process eventually find themselves conspiring to hurt that group preemptively. Similar thinking happens against Jewish folks.
I applaud curiosity, I didn’t get enough sleep last night because of my own, and I’ve done a science before. But conspiracy theorists give their curiosity to dark parts of their psyche and let it run wild
Yes. Antisemitism complains about the right things with the wrong target.
