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.
It stops being an effective crime that is significant enough to warrant disproportionate intervention with printer design. Someone who would use a SOHO printer to counterfeit banknotes isn’t going to the trouble of making paper that integrates colored fibers into the paper. Maybe lousy counterfeits will fool some low-grade vending machines and some kids will loot some candy bars. For me that’s not justification for fingerprinting every single printed page using ink that the customers pay for.
A gray dot is harder to hide than a yellow one. So they would have to spend more money to add surveillance to printers that are less profitable. Their cover for action would fall apart if mono printers did it. They would have to invent an excuse that’s a harder sell.
BTW, it’s worth noting that the whole industry of counterfeiting yields less counterfeit money than what the secret service spends on controlling it. It’s security theatre for the sake of reputation and integrity of the USD currency -- noting of course that tracker dots do not protect any particular currency.