[wplug] Printer tracking dots

John Lewis oflameo2 at gmail.com
Tue Feb 24 12:24:57 EST 2015


What printer does RMS use?

On 02/24/2015 12:22 PM, Justin Smith wrote:
> According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the US government has 
> convinced laser printer manufacturers such as Xerox to embed tiny, 
> imperceptible tracking dots into every printed page.  
>
> https://www.youtube.com/v/izMGMsIZK4U&hl=en_US&fs=1&[1] 
>
> The EFF sells a blue LED keychain that claims to reveal these dots. I 
> bought one, and it arrived yesterday. I tried it out on a test page from one 
> of our Xerox multifunction printers at work, and sure enough, the dots 
> were there. I then tried to see if there were any dots on pages from the 
> Brother inkjet printer I keep in my office, and there were none.
>
> If these laser printers had open source firmware, it would probably be a 
> simple matter to remove the offending code. This, to me, shows how 
> important it is for /every/ aspect of a technology device to be open source.
>
> There's your interesting thought for the day.
>
>
> *Justin Smith*
> GNU/Linux System Administrator
>
> /"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; 
> nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will 
> not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is 
> full of educated derelicts."/
>
> /-Calvin Coolidge/
>
> --------
> [1] https://www.youtube.com/v/izMGMsIZK4U&hl=en_US&fs=1&
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