List of Printers Which Do or Do Not Display Tracking Dots

The Lives of Others, which takes place in East Germany and includes a typewriter which is not registered with the government; was one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. And it's ultimately the live we'll live as tracking technologies continue to get better.

When we start evoking the Stasi in a discussion about this surveillance, it always feels a bit like a Godwin point. But the reality is that all of this surveillance is exactly what the Stasi used to do and what the west was fighting the communist block for. If I had told people in the 80s that shortly in all western countries, all communications will be monitored, it will have become illegal to have any discussion that the government cannot eardrop on, the state will be compiling a file on every of its citizens and want to have a list of every book and article every citizen reads, they would have thought that the russians invaded us.

Pedantry mode: All of this surveillance is exactly what the Stasi _dreamed_ of doing.

(I fully agree with your point; however, I'd argue that the (relative, back then) lack of digital storage and communication made gathering of information much, much harder back then than it is now - even for the Stasi.)