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Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

> a unique identifier into every image you create

Printing (even text) is also a risk: It's very likely your printer is secretly adding marks to the page that contain its serial number and the current timestamp. [0]

Meanwhile Microsoft (and Apple) have "telemetry" harvesting those serial numbers of all internal and external devices you've ever had connected or reachable. Then they link them to your MS/Apple account, IP addresses, and the extended social-graph of all computers that were ever in the same room or shared the same bluetooth speaker.

In short, your "anonymous" flyer critiquing The Regime and depicting Dear Leader as a clown could lead thugs straight to your door. Or to the door of whomever you're staying with.

[0] https://www.eff.org/issues/printers

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> It's very likely your printer is secretly adding marks to the page

It's most likely how the FBI caught NSA leaker Reality Winner:

> Both journalists and security experts have suggested that The Intercept's handling of the documents, which included publishing the documents unredacted and including the printer tracking dots, was used to identify Winner as the leaker.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner

Yeah - these criminal agencies use this to protect their billionaire buddies on top. The Epstein network must be really huge. I always wondered how one or two person can meta-coordinate +5000 underage girl and their +10000 customers. That never made any sense to me, yet suspiciously enough only Ghislaine is in prison. That does not add up.

There isn't just one Epstein network. There are many similar networks.

This seems like something that could be confirmed by reverse engineering a printer’s firmware? Surely someone has done that?

It is confirmed and the algorithm has been reverse engineered, though not by looking at firmware

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

Seems like the algorithm is simple enough that they did it just by looking at some prints

No need to reverse engineer, printers are required to do this for decades.

You'd still need to reverse engineer it to build a better firmware without this anti-feature.

And the reason why it refuses to print this B&W document when yellow is empty.

You don't need reverse engineering if it's publicly known fact for 20+ years, telemetry just identifies you. 20 years ago, you would need to find the printer.

>Then they link them to your MS/Apple account, IP addresses, and the extended social-graph of all computers that were ever in the same room or shared the same bluetooth speaker.

Did it get revealed that Apple did that? This is news to me

and then in few years a new mono-mustachioed or mono-browed leader will emerge who declares memes a blasphemy punishable by death and will call up all the telemetry gathered to punish all involved.

"I don't worry because I have nothing to hide, based on my perfectly accurate perception of today's political and legal forces in my state and nation which will stay safely static forever."

You know a certain dictator denies access to the country they control based on whether visitors "like" them? They use a private militia, funded by stealing from taxpayers, in contravention to that country's laws, to target citizens who are not supporters of them. Some of those citizens get shipped abroad to foreign prisons by these militia. Others get shot in summary executions in the streets - the controlling regime covers it up with false media reports, and uses corrupt judges to evade scrutiny ... a certain software company support that regime, even acting against foreign scrutiny on their behalf.

Essentially all of that country's businesses that are close to the regime need to be considered hostile.

We don't need to wait a few years, the revolution already happened; the insurrectionists were freed. These companies paid their tributes, in dollars, to the regime.

Maybe next ML will be integrated into software suites to enforce that regime's lies? Most Western governments use such software, the distributers of which have already shown they'll act in the regimes interests against supposed allies...

I had assumed parent-poster was making a sincere but humorous point, as opposed to sarcastically dismissing the risks of a change in management, but I suppose it's ambiguous.

Good satire is often indistinguishable from fundamentalism.

Also known as Poe's Law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

So what you're saying is we should use linux?

Until it gets outlawed for not telling websites what age you are.

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