Pixelated Semantics

Reversing into tomorrow

Print-outs from colour printers have been revealed to be carrying 'an invisible bar code [...] that contains the serial number of the printer as well as the date and time a document was printed.'

The research, from the EFF and reported in the Washington Post, focuses on Xerox, but has identified similar coding on pages printed from 'nearly every major printer manufacturer' ranging back at least 10 years. It reportedly reminds an EFF spokesperson '...of a program the Soviet Union once had in place to record sample typewriter printouts in hopes of tracking the origins of underground, self-published literature.'

The parallel with policing samizdat is another sign of the growing conservative tendency to take societies backwards into 'cold' wars and moral injustices of the past in the name of 'protecting' people from future 'terrors'.

It's not just printers, either. Reflecting on the oppression perpetuated during apartheid in South Africa, author J.M. Coetzee has told the Australian Book Review function:

'I used to think that the people who created [South Africa's] laws that effectively suspended the rule of law were moral barbarians. Now I know they were just pioneers ahead of their time.'

Item posted by AutoEditor at 10:18 am ::