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.
To be clear, yellow dot encoding is done voluntarily by printer makers to ensure their printers cannot anonymously enable counterfeiting schemes. So yes, there is no legal obligation to do this, but only because printer makers don’t want Secret Service intervention. Basically, there’s no law requiring yellow dot encoding because they already do it. Black and white printers are exempt because they are inadequate for counterfeiting, but they are certainly capable of gray dot encoding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
It’s a good “cover for action”, considering most of the printers that have the stego are naturally incapable of achieving the high quality needed to counterfeit banknotes. And those that are high enough quality are artificially crippled to be incapable of producing an exact match on the colors used in banknotes. Printers are generally lousy at matching colors. IIRC, Epson supplied software that would alter the photo displayed on your screen to best match what the printer could do, because demanding that the printer precisely match the source color is unrealistic.
Self-regulation out of fear of regulation is a tough sell. What regulation do they risk if they don’t self-regulate, other than the very same outcome: tracker dots?
Like a lot of surveillance, there is the cover story and then there is the real reason.
Nonetheless, I appreciate the comment... it’s always good to be aware of the /official narrative/ regardless.
Color printers weren’t good enough for high-quality counterfeiting when Xerox introduced the encoding in the 1980s, and they’re less capable of it now that bills are improved, but counterfeiting doesn’t stop being a crime because the fake bills suck.
Also, if appeasing the Secret Service isn’t the real reason, why aren’t black and white printers printing gray dot codes? Since yellow dot encoding was introduced, the vast majority of office documents were churned out on BW printers. Seems like a big miss for mass surveillance.
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.