Secret Printer ID Codes May Be Illegal In the EU

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "In response to a query from a member of the EU Parliament, an EU commissioner issued an official statement (.DOC) saying that, while they do not violate any laws, secret printer tracking dot codes may violate the human right to privacy guaranteed by the EU's Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. If you don't remember what these are, Slashdot has discussed the issue before. In short, most color printers print small yellow dots on every sheet in a code that identifies the printer and, potentially, its owner. The EFF is running an awareness campaign, and a couple of years back made a start on deciphering the yellow dot code."

Comments

Human Rights or European Citizen Rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

... secret printer tracking dot codes may violate the human right to privacy guaranteed by the EU's Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. I'm thinking that I would like to see a meeting between the EU's Convention of Human Rights & the EU's European Commission.

First topic on the agenda: biometrics for visitors.

Or was privacy only guaranteed to European Citizens?

Re:Simple enough fix

[KublaiKhan]

Could be useful in other ways, if you could incriminate someone else's printer by printing the right code...