Rant

It’s worth watching; interesting.. insightful. But it’s very disturbing that they concealed the most important fact: how she was caught.

Most printers secretly print a concealed unique code (typically a serial number) on every printed page using small faint yellow dots. The naked eye overlooks them but under magnification they can be seen. Reality Winner printed the classified document from a shared office printer. Then she simply mailed the paper doc to The Intercept.

IIUC, the Intercept was not smart enough to do any further processing. They simply published an exact copy that was high enough quality that the tracker dots were reproduced. (really? Hard to believe). The leak was thus easily tracked to the shared printer used by Winner. Then it was trivial to narrow down to Winner.

The omission in the documentary is disturbing because that is the one fact that touches everyone. It’s a missed opportunity to inform consumers, who buy printers with an expectation that the printer will serve them - the owner. Printer makers have no legal obligation to surreptitiously fingerprint every page printed. They voluntarily decided to conspire against the hand that feeds them, the consumer, whose trust they should have lost.

Initially the EFF was tracking the models of compromised printers. Then they decided one day to end the project stating that so many printers do it that there is insufficient value to keeping track of them.

This is why I will not buy a color printer. No, it’s not paranoia (neither sensible paranoia nor crazy). It’s ethics. I have enough dignity and self-respect to refuse to feed my oppressors and buy something that is designed to deceptively work against me. Omitting the widespread existence of tracker dots from the video strips consumers of information about the insideous extent to which they are buying anti-consumer products.

The documentary itself is another instance of a supplier disservicing the paying consumer, by witholding useful information.