FOIA Request Shows Which Printer Companies Cooperated With US Government

New submitter Dave_Minsky writes "The U.S. Secret Service responded to a FOIA request on Monday that reveals the names of the printer companies that cooperate with the government to identify and track potential counterfeiters. The Electronic Frontier Foundation revealed in 2005 that the U.S. Secret Service was in cahoots with selected laser printer companies to identify and track printer paper using tiny microscopic dots encoded into the paper. The tiny, yellow dots — less than a millimeter each — are printed in a pattern over each page and are only viewable with a blue light, a magnifying glass or a microscope. The pattern of dots is encodes identifiable information including printer model, and time and location where the document was printed." Easy enough to avoid government dots; just don't buy printers from Canon, Brother, Casio, HP, Konica, Minolta, Mita, Ricoh, Sharp, or Xerox.

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Re:lol

[element-o.p.]

I haven't seen any actual reports on inflation, but I have been paying attention to prices, and I'd say it's definitely happening. Just a few examples, off the top of my head: I got my pilot's license in 1991 -- the same Cessna 152 I learned to fly in at $36 per hour now costs $120 per hour to rent; around that same time, I used to fill up my car for ~$1/gallon but it's $3.50 per gallon now; I'm into archery, and the arrows I used to buy for $4 each now cost more like $10 each; and houses in my city have gone from ~$150K to ~$300K. That's 200-300% inflation in 20 years. I know, I know, "anecdote, data, etc." but just about the only thing I can think of where prices have decreased is technology -- computers, hard drives, network gear, cell phones, etc.