
Machine Identification Code - vishnuharidas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
======
captainmuon
I've posted this recently before: I believe that _your_ gear should be "loyal"
to _you_ , and do whatever you want, without spying on you or betraying you.
In my opinion, this should be a basic right.

You might counter: yes but why shouldn't we add this, if we can easily stop
people from counterfeiting money, leaking documents, flying drones in
restricted areas and so on. It's so convenient that we can stop this with a
bit of technology. We'll, it would be convenient if we could compell people to
testify against themselves or their families, or if we would open and scan all
mail, or require priests to report confessions to law enforcement. Yes, we
could reduce some crimes this way, but we deliberately chose not to. It's a
matter of weighting the interests of law enforcement against a basic feeling
of "trust" that you have inside a society.

~~~
beaconstudios
Fundamentally it's about the commitment to individual liberty as the highest
good. Something that's fallen by the wayside in recent years.

~~~
mnx
I don't think it ever was the _highest_ good. It may be argued that it has
moved around the hierarchy, and it may in fact not be at an all time high, but
there were always things which we (society) put above liberty.

~~~
beaconstudios
early American history strikes me as being punctuated by periods where
individual liberty was the highest value. The frontier/westward expansion, for
example. The constitution itself seems hinged on optimising for personal
liberty by balancing "freedom to" and "freedom from" liberties.

I always thought of personal liberty as the value from which other values
derive. For example, the law exists to protect our rights (the right to life
and the right to property being the most obvious examples) from bad actors.
Social welfare and socialised healthcare restrict the damage that personal
catastrophe and random chance can do to our freedoms.

------
motohagiography
There was a plot point in the film, "The Lives of Others," where the East
German police keep a registration and fingerprint of all typewriters, and find
a document written on an unregistered typewriter.

The precedents for machine identity go way back. The only difference is at
least here, you don't need a license or registration for a printer, albeit you
do in effect for a mobile device.

Remember to act surprised.

------
booleandilemma
Any competent bad guy knows to create messages composed of cut out letters
from various magazine headlines.

------
fghtr
See also

"List of Printers Which Do or Do Not Display Tracking Dots (eff.org)"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14501894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14501894)

and

"Why printers add secret tracking dots (bbc.com)"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505444](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505444)

~~~
Forge36
I checked the EFF page, it appears the list is no longer maintained.

------
sebazzz
I wonder how actual tracking works. They cannot know my laser printer at home
prints certain dots? They must know first that I may have done it, then get
printed paper to match the dots.

~~~
vishnuharidas
Once they have a printed paper, they can decode it and find out the printer
serial number. This serial number is included in the invoice that you received
when buying that printer, thus the printer company knows who owns a printer
that has a particular serial number.

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daedalus2027
This is neat: [https://github.com/dfd-tud/deda](https://github.com/dfd-
tud/deda)

------
undersuit
Well that's one way to link to a Git repo. The first source is for deda, a new
program to detect and overlay a block on the tracking dots.

