Hidden Codes in Printers Cracked

r84x writes "A research team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently broke the code behind tiny tracking dots that some color laser printers secretly hide in every document. The U.S. Secret Service admitted that the tracking information is part of a deal struck with selected color laser printer manufacturers, ostensibly to identify counterfeiters. However, the nature of the private information encoded in each document was not previously known. "We've found that the dots from at least one line of printers encode the date and time your document was printed, as well as the serial number of the printer," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth David Schoen."

Before...

[trevordactyl]

Before anyone has a conniption, consider this: do you really think that "they" have a database they could reference to find out what printer serial number goes to what citizen? I don't. I know they could, but I choose to believe (most likely for good reason) that they don't.

Just realize that 99.9% of the world doesn't give a shit about anything you do, and all that paranoia just slips away. That's what I did.

Conspiracy math

[zappepcs]

I love conspiracy math: Lets see, conservative estimate of 400 million printers in North America alone, and no method of tracking serial number to location or owner past the original purchase, assuming cash was not used. So, hmmmm a data base with 400 million records, tied to dubious information... yeah, that's useful, but on second thought, it would allow police to figure out if the printer that counterfit documents were created with was in North America or Europe... that would be helpful, but not really worth putting on the tin foil hats.

Anyway, so the government requires each printer manufacturer to maintain a database of all printers sold, so that if needed, they can subpeona the records? No wonder printer ink costs so much :)

I'm thinking that this would only go so far, and not be much more useful than a database of gun rifling marks?

Re:Before...

[Alchemar]

What do you think all the registration cards that are "required" for warrenty are about. It is utterly amazing how much junk they store on individuals in the name of marketing. I will agree that no one will care about most people, but not caring and not having the information in a database are two different things. I have a very unique name derived from a misspelling on a birth certificate. The only two people in the world with my name is me and my father, but I still pull up over 500 hits if I enter it in google. Most of them some kind of goverment or school entery. No one cares about me or my father now, but the information is still there if that ever changes.

Re:Before...

[Tx]

Don't swallow too much of that sand while your head's down there. They don't need a centralized database, the same manufacturers that agreed to implement this tracking scheme will happily tell them which vendor received the shipment containing a particular serial number, and the vendor will happily tell them who that individual printer was sold to, it's in their records from when they scanned the barcode prior to selling you the printer.

Re:Conspiracy math

[c_g_hills]

It's doubtful it could be used for tracking a printer's life history. More likely is that it would be used in court to prove the origin of a particular document.

Disgusting.

[caluml]

That's pretty disgustingly low behaviour. Makes you wonder what other identifying information might be written into seemingly random data.
Improve, or something else [microsoft.com]....? TCP timestamps too. Just use the LSB, and by making it a 1, or a 0, and you can transmit infomation hiddenly..

Welcome to life in 21st century United States

[elrous0]

We had might as well get used to this kind of stuff, because I suspect it's just the tip of the iceberg. Hell, I suspect it's just the tip of the iceberg of what's ALREADY going on, much less what is to come.

-Eric

Localization

[Biking Viking]

Tracking to the home would be difficult but tracking to an area is more realistic. If there is a serial # embedded in to the code, the manufacturer can track that # to a particular store or warehouse. While this isn't enough to catch anyone alone, it could be used as supporting evidence in an ongoing case. Ofcourse, if a conterfeiter is stupid enough to actually register the printer (like the other 1% of the population) then they deserve to be cought in the first place.

Re:Slashdot Delay

[HABITcky]

Yes but that's because Digg has self (so: no) moderation, which lowers the quality of the overal articles displayed. So, shut your mouth fanboi and stay on topic.

Re:Before...

[Grail]

My concern isn't about the 99.9% of the world who don't care. My concern is that the 0.1% of the world does care - and they're the ones who control the people with the guns and prison cells.

Not everyone is out to get me, but when I express an unpopular opinion I don't want to risk being labelled a Terrorist (with a capital 'T') and thrown in gaol for an indefinite period with no rights, no contact and no food.

Re:Before...

[rbochan]

Yep, and Americans in the 1930's and 1940's didn't think the cute guy/girl they dated for a couple of months in college were any big deal. They didn't think writing a book report for a class was any big deal.

Then along came Senator Joseph McCarthy...

Re:Investigate printer ink price-gouging instead?

[goldspider]

The EFF != The Government

In fact, you may be surprised to learn that the two are usually at odds with one another.

Re:Disgusting.

[base3]

Sure, there's nothing bad that can come of the modern version of the Soviet Union's typewriter registration scheme. I'll loosen my tinfoil hat and set aside my indignant outrage the second ordinary people like you quit being apologists for would-be fascists.

Re:Before...

[Itchy Rich]

If you paid with a credit card, then yes, they have it in a database.

The retailer or manufacturer may have it in a database, but whatever shadowy organisations the parent was alluding to probably doesn't. Government agencies have enough trouble keeping track of where people live without having to track their posessions too.

Re:Conspiracy math

[CmdrGravy]

I agree that is probably what it is intended to be used for but I wonder how they would prove the mark is unique to that printer and couldn't have been generated by any one of hundreds other printers ?

Re:Before...

[WeeLad]

Yes, they must, otherwise this tracking information is useless, right?

I don't know that the lack of a database would make the information useless. It may work like running ballistics tests on a shell casing found at a crime scene and matching it to a weapon seized from a suspect.

Even if there ability to find a suspect is limited, they may have the ability to prove, within a court of law, that a document came from the printer in your basement.

Re:Printer Friendly Version?

[SB5]

Hell, it's not like anyone actually cares what you print unless you're doing something illegal that would warrent them spending a lot of time and money to try and find you.

That is true in an uncorrupted system. The question remains what would happen if someone did use their power like J. Edgar Hoover did, and others in history that have got away with abuse of power in such a manner.

And there is the case of just because something is illegal, that doesn't mean that something is a wrong thing to do.

Re:Investigate printer ink price-gouging instead?

[spencerogden]

Repeat after me, "Cost does not equal value". No one is forcing you to buy inkjet cartridges. The value of something is what the market will bear. These companies are watching their revenue go up as they raise prices. that's their job, maximize revenue. If there is collusion among printer manufacturers, which I doubt, then it is illeagal. Otherwise, buy a laser.

Re:Before...

[Anonymous Coward]

I put much more faith in the ability of the US government to oppress its people than to find someone like Osama Bin Laden, unfortunately. All of these billions spent on "Homeland Security" produce technologies that will just as easily track and locate a US citizen as find a guy on a camel in Pakistan.

Re:Before...

[panthro]

The Shadowy Organization probably doesn't have all that information on file directly, but clearly the idea behind setting up this "deal" with the printer manufacturers is that they can obtain the information from them when they need it (say, when they find a fake twenty with the dot pattern embedded).

Who's to say what it takes for them to obtain this information and how they use it? I'm personally not satisfied to just think "they'll only obtain it when they need it, and they will only use it for a Good Cause". It's not paranoia, it's like Murphy's law: if it can be abused, it probably will be.

Re:Printer Friendly Version?

[nolife]

Hell, it's not like anyone actually cares what you print unless you're doing something illegal that would warrent them spending a lot of time and money to try and find you.
The people that do not want their houses randomly searched must be hiding something, after all, why would they not want searched? I know, point taken to the extreme but where do you draw the line?

Re:Before...

[Hans Lehmann]

The CIA/FBI doesn't need to keep the information in a database, they have the manufacturers & retailers to do that for them. If they find a printed paper that's of "interest", they contact the manufacturer of the printer. The manufacturer knows which retailer the printer was sold to. The retailer, not wanting to question on their patriotism, rolls over & hands them your credit card information. Presto, you've vanished to behind barbed wire on some Carribean island.

Re:Before...

[Silverstrike]

I personally worry much more about the oppressive capability of large corporations than my own government.

Since we live in an elective democracy, its usually in the best interest of your politicians to at least make their shady doings HIDDEN (read: not directly effecting you). Spooks showing up to toss you into a van and throwing you into a hole, really isn't something that benefits anyone in the federal or state government no matter what you did, as those responsible would be quickly out of a job and possibly jailed.

However, while a free market is supposed to be economic democracy, I think that the actions taken by large commercial entities (MS, RIAA, MPAA, etc) are indicative that they really don't care what we think, or they rely very heavily on the vast majority of people not caring/noticing.

Although, since this is Slashdot, someone would have to notice that the spooks took you, so make sure you crawl out of the basement once a day or so and someone know your still down there ;-)

Re:Er, huh?

[BJZQ8]

If you honestly think that companies have the time and money to track things to that ability, you are crazy. It would cost them *millions*, and benefit them zero. They would be fighting tooth and nail against any request by the government to do that.

The companies don't have the time or money, but the government definately does. Any company I've worked for, if asked by a semi-anonymous "federal" agency for information, rolls over like a scared puppy. The government has (like Spiegel) nothing but time to spy on its citizens. They are the paranoid ones that we need to be watching out for, they are the crazed mumbling guy on the streetcorner that everybody goes out of their way to avoid. Handing them technology like this is like handing the aforementioned freak an automatic weapon. Sooner or later he'll figure out how to use it to fight off the voices that keep pestering him. Sooner or later, the government will figure out how to use this technology to oppress its citizenry.

Re:Printer Friendly Version?

[IngramJames]

This stuff is almost exactly how they caught the BTK killer

I think it's great that finally, we will be able to frame people we don't like with the greatest of ease. Just user their printer to print something illegal, or burn a CD on their PC!

A new crime, anyone? "Breaking And Entering With Intent To Print"

Re:Conspiracy math

[bogado]

This is a real concern, matching a forged dolar with the printer is quite ok in my opinion. But matching a person who is printing those anti-goverment posters is a little more concerning. Maybe people could use some public printer to print out their gruntles against the goverment.

Anyway, I think that the customer should at least be warned about it in the manual. And the data should be easily decoded, by anyone, not just the FBI and the printer manufactorer. I think it is quite usefull to be able to know when did you made that copy of your work.

Unexpected historical benefit

[Ex Machina]

Of course, this might actually prove useful in the future for historians analyzing our garbage for dating our documents. Assuming, of course, that these tiny dots can survive for a useful amount of time.

Re:Who cares...

[timeOday]

don't buy one of those printers if you care about it that much.

Duh, that's why this whole printer fingerprinting scheme was impelemented in secrecy. It has been going on for years and only just now do we know about it.

To me that's perhaps the biggest issue. At one point this was supposed to be a democracy, now it seems we're sliding into acceptance of secret laws and practices, and a general acceptance that "they" are watching (without even knowing who "they" are). We used to deride "conspiracy theorists" for thinking this kind of stuff was happening. Now we know it is happening, so we just deride the conspiracy theorists for caring.

Re:Before...

[DjReagan]

"Just realize that 99.9% of the world doesn't give a shit about anything you do, and all that paranoia just slips away"

Oh, so there's only 0.1% of the world who is interested in what I'm doing?

I'm glad it works out for you, but 6 million people snooping around in my private life doesn't make my paranoia go away.

Re:Before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Great principle: grant any power, rest trust on incompetence. No way that could ever go wrong. The sound you hear is the foundations of a free society crumbling. But hey, otherwise the terrorists win, right?

Re:Printer Friendly Version?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you realize what cops do every day? They deal with people who are abusing their kids; or acting indignent because they got pulled over for speeding; or drunk and screaming obscenities in public places; or involved in horrible accidents and shootings. When they're not doing these things, they sit around WAITING FOR THESE THINGS TO HAPPEN. It's too bad that you had a run in with a cop. Lord knows, I have too. They're human. They aren't criminal lawyers and they don't necessarily know that it is or isn't illegal for you to photograph buses at an intersection. All they know is that it's suspicious looking and they're told to be on the lookout for suspicious looking people. Fortunately, there's a nice legal system in place to keep things from getting out of control and you winding up in jail for taking pictures. And yes, sometimes that system fails, too, because it was set up and is run by humans or messed with by politicians. But don't go telling me that cops are all out to abuse their power. They're just normal people doing an unpleasant job who want to go home at the end of the day and drink a beer. WRT the printer thing: I think it's highly unlikely that your boss or spouse is going to go analyze some dots on a printout and cross reference them with the manufacturer's serial number. It's even more unlikely that the government is going to use this against you, unless you do something to draw the attention of say, the FBI. If that's the case, you've got much bigger things to worry about than having a piece of paper traced back to you.

Re:Er, huh?

[brunes69]

very one of the 5,000 or so pieces of computer equipment I have unpacked over the last 10 years has had the serial number barcoded on the outside of the shipping carton.

Tak eoff your tinfoil hat. That is *not* the barcode scanned when you check out the item at your local PC superstore. They scan the UPC code, not the serial number code.

And yes, stores can be required to scan those S/Ns if the feds so desire, and it can be made to stick.

Sure, the feds can do anything they want... *if* they can get it through the lobbiests. Big retal has deep pockets, and they would push back hard against this sort of thing...

And *YES* I have worked in big retail, and I know for a fact that they do not track this kind of stuff currently. In an industry where they lose whole crates of merchandise daily during shipments, you think they can actually correlate a given serial number to a given consumer? Give me a break. They can't even keep track of what is on the shelf vs. what is in the warehouse. (Oh, the website says it is in stock, but we are actually sold out. Sorry, it must not have been updated).

Don't you think that a company that had such an advanced product tracking system would be using it to drive more business?

Conspiracy buts have way too much confidence in big business and the govenment. They aren't as bright and all-powerful as you think they are. Just like any other enterprise, the overwhelming majority of the people running thw show are idiots.

Re:Printer Friendly Version?

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

>point taken to the extreme but where do you draw the line

I don't know but after thinking about it for half a second a good place to start might be that this printer system causes no inconvenience to the user (AFAIK) whereas a house search would.

Re:Before...

[MooseTick]

I've placed service calls on printer purchased directly from the manufacturer(HP) that were still on warrenty and they didn't even show that we owned it, that it was still on warrenty, or where it was located. These were $4000 printers that were purchased 100 at a time. If they can't keep track of that I'm not sure how reliable you can track someone down who bought a Color LaserJet at Best Buy 3 years ago with a credit card.

If you registered it that may be a different story. Still, those same printers were supposedly registered and I continually have to provide contract numbers to have any work done. While that may be on file somewhere, it is unlikely that HP or the govt could locate that info.

odd

[BitterAndDrunk]

Isn't it considered best practice at this point to obfuscate credit cards in a one-way hash? I know for a fact that a certain vendor (rhymes with Storacle) had serious complaints regarding the storage of credit card numbers unencrypted.

They have since changed that practice, I believe. (there was an enhancement request logged almost 5 years ago to take care of it)

The more robust CRM/Order Management systems that have serialization tracking would allow you to associate a customer number (and consequently all customer data) with a product serial, but the CC# should be next to impossible to retrieve.

Best practices, and all that.

Re:Quit being clueless.

[arkanes]

With just the timestamp and the IP Address your PC used to communicate with the central server, you can be easily traced. It's easier if you are on broadband, slightly more difficult if you are on a service like AOL or MSN.

For what it's worth, AOL maintains extensive logs and readily cooperates with law enforcement. I suspect that MSN does as well. I briefly assisted in a fraud investigation (purchasing stuff via our website with stolen credit cards) and the perpetuator was dialing in from an AOL account. AOL was able to take the source IP address and a timestamp and provide his account and billing information, as well as the telephone number he called from.

My country right or wrong is WRONG

[Analogy Man]

Where do we stop using intrusive technologies.

• Felonious use of technology (e.g. counterfieter)
• Legal use by felon (e.g. mail from murderer)
• Illegal use as civil disobediance (e.g. printing document that is improperly classified secret for political reasons)
• Constitutionally protected but anti-establishment use (e.g. hand distribution of fliers of "Top 10 Reasons to Impeach Congressman Blowhard")

The "if you have nothing to hide" apologists for elimination of freedoms is a slippery slope to totalitarianism. Orwell would snicker!

Re:Before...

[Armour Hotdog]

Most of those $5000+ printers are bought by relatively large companies. I don't think companies have to keep a full log of what everybody prints.

Maybe not, but identifying the purchaser of the printer significantly narrows the search for the person who used that printer to generate the document in question. If it's owned by a business, they may be able to identify the specific user through print server logs (obtained via subpeona or simply "in connection with an ongoing investigation related to terrorist activity"). Even if no such logs are available, they certainly can identify those individuals with ready access to the printer in question and focus their investigative efforts accordingly.


*obviously*, if *you* bought the printer, then everything that this printer has ever printed was made by *you*

If the printer is owned by an individual, I'd imagine said individual would find himself confronted with the choice of naming names or becoming the prime suspect himself. In either case, the authorities have narrowed their search to a small group of people.

Re:odd

[PGillingwater]

Next to impossible?

Granted, it's not easy. But it's also not wildly difficult to use the constrained keyspace of a credit card to generate a dictionary of all possible hashes for valid credit cards (remember, the key space is even further constrained by check digits implicit in the numbers), and store that on a simple lookup table on more or more Blu-Ray DVDs.

Re:Before...

[Metrathon]

How many people buy a printer for cash?

If I was going to do some counterfeiting I think I'd use cash if I was actually going to *buy* the printer. Then, maybe I wouldn't go to the CompUSA where they know me...

Anti leaking

[JerryQ]

In the UK the immediate assumption would be that the quid pro quo for the printer manufacturers would be the contracts to supply to government agencies, so the next time an inconvenient government document was leaked to the press they could be straight on to where it leaked from.

Jerry

Class Action Lawsuit?

[markdowling]

Is there potential to sue the printer mfgs (esp. outside the US) because the printer is not doing its best to produce a faithful printout (i.e. adding extra information to the page not intended by the user, irrespective of the fact that it's hard to make out). I mean, people who wear blue Beatles specs must be driven nuts :)

That being said, if all the printer problems I had were a few yellow dots I'd be doing well...

Re:Before... (the Patriot Act)

[CyricZ]

Actually, most intelligent people know that the Democrats and Republicans are all cut from the same pile of shit, and have been for ages. They're not there to help out any regular American citizen. They're out to represent and aide their various business interests, be them the entertainment industry or the petroleum industry.

Indeed, that's one of the reasons that most sane people are so fearful of technology such as this. Your system itself is flawed, in that nobody is truly representing you, as a citizen. Companies can get away with this, and then others can get away with abusing such information. Were true conservatives or liberals in power, then this would never be allowed to happen, and the companies that did participate in this activity would be punished. Why is that? Because true conservatives and true liberals care about individual rights.

Re:Another Terrible Invasion of Nothing!

[mwillems]

Afraid I don't share your optimism.

First of all: there is an intrusion, a loss of freedom, even when the power is not abused. In the 60s, your average hippy could pretty much buy a car using cash and drive to San Franciscoi - now you need a ton of paperwork, legal docs, and so on. You can no longer buy a car using cash - not a new car anyway. Another example: in the 1960s the government did not know what I spent my money on. Now it does. That represents a serious loss of freedom even if the government does not curremtly abuse that new power. These losses of freedom may or may not be necessary, but they need robust discussion and debate before they happen.

The second point: these powers DO get abused. An example. During German occupation in WW2, the Dutch sent more Jews to the concentration camps, as a percentage of the population, than any other nation save Germany. Why? They had a very efficient tracking system that from birth to grave tracked everyone's address, race, relatives' addresses, and so on. Guess what - at the first opportunity, the new people in power abused that power and traced all Jews and sent them to their deaths. Interestingly, in the years leading up to WW2, the Dutch had a debate much like this one, and the consensus was that "if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear".

Examples abound: when you give away your freedoms you (a) lose those freedoms (and the freedom to buy a printer anomymously may not seem such a big deal to you - but it IS a freedom!), and (b) over time, they sometimes get abused: you can count on a certain percentage of this happening.

Michael

Re:Before...

[plj]

And what if the information used in tracking falls to the hands of a totalitarian government? Let's see what could happen in say, China:

Used to be like this:

<print>

      Free Tibet!
      Democracy now!
      Taiwan indepencence!

</print>

Official 1: Who printed this?! Track him down now!
Official 2: Sir, it's just an ordinary printout. There is nothing we can do.
Official 1: Damn!

But now, welcome to the brave new world:

<print GUID="......">

      Free Tibet!
      Democracy now!
      Taiwan indepencence!

</print>

Official 1: Who printed this?! Track him down now!
Official 2: Let's see. This has been printed with HP Color Laserjet 3700n, S/N xxxxxxxxxx. We got information that it was bought by cash from shop XYZ.
Official 1: Fine. Raid every building on that area and search for such printers. When you'll find those, check their serial numbers. Do not stop you find the right one!
Official 2: Yes, Sir!

Re:Printer Friendly Version?

[pla]

They deal with people who are abusing their kids;

...Or take that job upon themselves with creative use of the ever-popular "resisting arrest" claim. Clumsy kids, always going around breaking their own ribs while locked alone in a jail cell.


or acting indignent because they got pulled over for speeding;

Or driving while black. Or a personal favorite, driving on the wrong side of the road - On a lineless back road barely wide enough for a single car (the sort where you literally stop and one car pulls totally off the road if you meet another car coming the opposite way).


or drunk and screaming obscenities in public places;

Or ordered to step outside a bar, given a sobriety test, and charged with public drunkenness.


or involved in horrible accidents and shootings.

You mean like when a cop panics over a 2YO kid with a cap gun, and ventilates him? Or when they zealously chase a gas station drive-off at 110mph leading to three deaths over $30 in fuel?


It's even more unlikely that the government is going to use this against you, unless you do something to draw the attention of say, the FBI.

You mean like anonymously distributing a (legal) pamphlet critical of the wrong politician, who wants revenge and has convenient connections?



I appreciate what police do. They keep a bunch of unruly domesticated primates from killing one another.

But don't glorify them - They chose that job because they get to act the most like unruly domesticated primates, and justify it as part of the job. Politicians chose their job because they like power (or money, or both). WE all need to do our part to keep the police, and the government in general, in check.

Re:Legality

[fishbowl]

> Is it legal to do what the EEF did

I'm sure the EFF would *love* for the US Gov't to make a stink over this.

Freedom does not mean lack of accountability

[podperson]

There seem to be a lot of people who confuse *freedom* with *freedom to do antisocial stuff and remain anonymous*. These are not the same things.

Free speech is not free *anonymous* speech.

We all want cheap color printers. Fine. We don't want the world flooded with forged documents -- so we take some barely perceptable measures to curb that. Deal with it.

Re:My country right or wrong is WRONG

[1ucius]

The first one example (counterfeiting) is different than the others - its sensitivity is based on the act of producing the document itself, as opposed to the content of the document. Accordingly, it seems like you can cover libertarian concerns by limiting this to "printers and photocopiers that are good enough to produce a realistic fakes," perhaps even "and only when those devices are using the high quality settings." The very few documents that would matter for examples 2-4 can be easily cleansed by making a photocopy at the local gas station before mailing and/or printing with low quality settings.

The EFF document is, characteristically, a bit heavy on hysteria and thin on details, but at least suggests that this is limited to "color laser printers."

Re:Which printers? - found it

[peter1]

Ok, so maybe I should actually read/search first and then post later...

http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/list.php/ [eff.org]

Re:Freedom does not mean lack of accountability

[Moofie]

"Free speech is not free *anonymous* speech."

How do you figure? If I'm free to speak, but free to get hounded by the FBI/fired/audited by the IRS if I say something that the authorities don't like, that's a pretty thin kind of freedom.

"We don't want the world flooded with forged documents"

Says you. I don't really think that it's as much of a problem as you do.

"Deal with it."

Ah. That must be in the hidden text in the 10th Amendment. You know, the one written in invisible yellow dots.

Re:Printer Friendly Version?

[Moofie]

Right, because the authorities always take the suspect at their word. They never just want to throw any old person they can put together a threadbare case in jail for years.

Never happen, right?

Re:Printer Friendly Version?

[Moofie]

"Even if you should be able to carry box cutters on to a flight, what reaction do you think other passengers will have?"

I don't care. It's none of their business.

"I certainly would be very suspicious of someone carrying one on to a flight. In fact, I would be sleeping with one eye open."

You sleep however you want. Your sleep habits are none of my business.

"remotely linked to something that people are paranoid about at the time"

I shouldn't have to keep track of the things that you're paranoid about. You, on the other hand, have a handy list of things that I have a right to do. (That is, loosely speaking, almost anything that doesn't cause direct harm to my fellow humans.).

"but how far are you willing to go to ignore behaviour like that?"

Very far. I am not afraid of terrorists. I am very concerned about police states. Historically, police states are much more dangerous than wackos with box cutters/sticks of dynamite/RPG's.

"How do you filter those people out at check in?"

You can't. You also can't be sure you won't get run over by a crazyperson on your way to work. Your odds of being killed by a terrorist are vanishingly small wrt the odds of you being killed by a distracted motorist.

You don't have an inalienable right to safety.

Re:Freedom DOES mean PRIVACY

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you would be ok with the government installing cameras in your home, just to protect you from criminals that might break into your house.

How about if they install them secretly without your knowledge?

How about if they do it to make sure you arn't breaking any laws?

That's basicly what they have done here. They put in a way to monitor who prints any document, secretly, to make sure they can catch you if you break a law.

That's not Freedom. Anyone that can't see why that is wrong is stupid and naive.