Microdots in the Intercept NSA leaks expose printer serial and timestamp

This seems like incredibly bad OPSEC from The Intercept.

It's obvious that the leaker fucked up big time here and would most likely been caught just based on her own mistakes, but you'd hope that a publication with such a track record of publishing high profile leaks would make a better effort to protect its sources than sending watermarked documents directly to other government employees to confirm.

Really not sure if they'll be able to recover from this.

So I've been strugling a bit with how this went...

She downloaded/retrieved a document, then printed it, then scanned it again and mailed it to The Intercept? Some stories claim she was caught because access to the document was logged, others point to the dots and printer logging. But printing a document and then scanning it again would not make sense, would it?

>She downloaded/retrieved a document, then printed it, then scanned it again and mailed it to The Intercept?

I think that's just people misunderstanding the "mailed", it really means physical mail here.

>Some stories claim she was caught because access to the document was logged, others point to the dots and printer logging.

The legal paperwork claims that she was caught due to the audit logs and her previous unrelated communications with The Intercept. I don't believe there's any reason to doubt that, the dots probably didn't play a part there.

>But printing a document and then scanning it again would not make sense, would it?

The document was probably just printed and mailed.

More on the method: http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-intercept-outed-realit...

Per the other discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14494818

She was 1 of 6 to print it, and emailed the Intercept from her own work email address. Forensic dots weren't needed, she was just incompetent at covering her tracks.

I wonder how many other places in life have little yellow dots we haven't been told about.

Manufacturers who insert a RFID tag inside tires:

Michelin and its brand BF Goodrich: http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?269

Goodyear tires: http://www.rfid-ready.com/201202156319/goodyear-integrates-r...

Bridgestone tires: http://www.tirereview.com/rfid-today-tomorrow-yesterday/

Komho tires manufactured in Korea: http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?10880/2

Cooper tires: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8231060.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7443301.html

Continental tires: http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?8338

Pirelli tires: http://www.cnet.com/news/pirelli-microchipped-cyber-tyre-imp...!

According to this EFF article: 1. Social Media Monitoring 2. Automated License Plate Readers 3. Automatic Toll Readers 4. Surveillance Cameras 5. Biometrics 6. IMSI Catchers

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/6-spooky-ways-local-la...

Since 2007, all US passports have embedded RFID.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/personal-finance/claudia...

RFIDs in clothing are commonplace: http://www.whitewaycleaners.com/Uniform-Services/RFID-Garmen...