The Secret Service (USSS) is doing themselves a service in secret. Apparently, they enlisted the assistance of some printer companies to put tracking dots on every page their color laser printers spit out. Ostensibly, it’s to track counterfeiters, but who’s going to stop the USSS from passing on data they collect to, say, I don’t know, the Justice Department, State Department, Homeland Security, the White House, etc. etc. Most consumers obviously don’t have color laser printers yet since they’re still pretty expensive, but how far could this go?
Theoretically, the companies behind HD-DVD and Blu-ray could encode a unique serial number into each disc printed (actually, they probably will do that) and then, with your internet-enabled player, send usage data to a central U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) server where the Department of Commerce will automatically track every disc in circulation to make sure you aren’t illegally making copies and giving them to your friends or sharing them on the internet. Would you put it past the movie industry or the government? I wouldn’t.
Today’s development should remind everyone that with the ubiquity of technology and the push to impose DRM on everything and everyone, it becomes exponentially easier for corporations and the government to secretly and surreptitiously keep tabs on you. Excessively paranoid? Apparently not.