> meant to track back to you if you use the printer to counterfeit money...
Lol, because a $100 printer from Amazon can just pop out sheets of cash, even though they don't have any color shifting ink, no way to do the lithograph printing.
I think these were developed before authorities realized how much power online (dis)information would have--it was all about trying to lock down speech and publication freedom, turning household printers into government minders.
I was going to mention that although I didn't remember if it was conclusively proven to be that. I think the bigger issue is that she printed it on an agency printer so they were easily able to get the list of everyone who had printed it (not many) and work from there.
Certainly, the NSA could put firmware on its own printers (as could any organization that needed it) so that is no justification for putting it in all printers with no notice to the user.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code