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List of Printers Which Do or Do Not Display Tracking Dots

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586 points prawn | 3 comments | 06 Jun 17 22:12 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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nathanvanfleet ◴[07 Jun 17 02:02 UTC] No.14503161[source]▶
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.
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cm2187 ◴[07 Jun 17 07:41 UTC] No.14504380[source]▶
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.
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lb1lf ◴[07 Jun 17 08:19 UTC] No.14504527[source]▶
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.)

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Consultant32452 ◴[07 Jun 17 11:58 UTC] No.14505506[source]▶
The Stasi would've likely loved these tools, but I'm not sure they're necessary. The point of the Stasi behavior was to instill fear in the masses, to turn neighbor against neighbor. The fact that the average citizen today is hardly even aware of things like printer dots means it's serving a different purpose.
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1. lb1lf ◴[07 Jun 17 12:16 UTC] No.14505638[source]▶
Then again, it could be argued that the need to instil fear in the masses arose precisely as they didn't have the resources to scrutinize all the people all the time. (

So they needed to make sure all the people expected to be under surveillance all the time, to keep them from doing anything undesirable (to the state, that is) while not being watched.)

IIRC the Stasi had a hard time connecting the dots (pun not intended) as the massive data sets mostly existed on file cards.

Today's problem is somewhat different: You've got loads of data, you've got the means to rapidly search and index it - but still, for some reason or the other, massive data collection doesn't appear to lead to much by way of desirable (to the populace, that is) results - actual terrorists apprehended, actual conspiracies unearthed, etc.

A cynic would assume that means the data is collected for other, more nefarious purposes. Cough.

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2. unholythree ◴[07 Jun 17 15:28 UTC] No.14507209[source]▶
I agree. Without moralizing on the motives, it seems like the objective of establishing an institution like the Stasi is control. If you can have that control with a velvet glove and spare the resentment so much the better.
3. ◴[07 Jun 17 16:06 UTC] No.14507499[source]▶