List of Printer Manufacturers working with the Secret Service" | Hacker News Reader

List of Printer Manufacturers working with the Secret Service"

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32 pointspastr11 comments

It's very interesting because we already knew this list from tests that have been done that identified tracking dots on output from printers from these manufacturers.

http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/

https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...

It validates that there wasn't something that went unnoticed on manufacturers that don't employ tracking dots.

However, there are several printers who use tracking dots who it seems have done so of their own prerogative and not because the SS asked them to. Notably Dell, Epson, Lanier, Lexmark, NRG, Panasonic, Savin and Toshiba are doing it voluntarily or because of contact with some other agency.

Tracking dot free printers may be obtained from Samsung or Okidata, the two Korean companies. Clearly years of living under a military dictatorship and now being a free country have had an effect on what Korean companies are willing to do for government security apparatchiks.

When was South Korea a military dictatorship? [Oh, nm, learned something new today.]

Curiously enough, none of the Samsung's printer show the tracking dots as per the list at https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d....

Not sure if that means they do not track or they use some other means to track ?

FTA, the Secret Service replied to a FOIA request:

> ...we are enclosing a list of manufacturers that "have fulfilled or agreed to fulfill document identification requests submitted by the Secret Service."

Canon, Brother, Casio, Hewlett-Packard, Konica, Minolta, Mita, Ricoh, Sharp, Xerox

No Epson? Well that is odd.

It just means they have not been asked to identify an actual person for an actual case. I would not take this as proof that Epson (or any other company not on this list) printers are free from the ID dots.

How to build your own laser printer:

http://www.amazon.com/Build-Postscript-Laser-Printer-Bundle/...

Has anyone here built a printer before? I'd like to build one for Richard Stallman and his Lemote YeeLoong, and send it to him with the source code.

Nicholas C. Lewis posted a decent open source inkjet[0] on Thingiverse. He had a Kickstarter for his inkjet cartridge controller[1], which I later used for something silly[2].

0: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:8542

1: http://nicholasclewis.com/projects/inkshield/

2: http://eclecti.cc/hardware/semi-automatic-paintbrush

At least they aren't working with Scribd.

Is this new? I thought this has been a well known fact for some time.

Not Samsung?

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