Comment by kibwen
8 years ago
Third possibility: that she suspected she'd be caught regardless, and decided that releasing this specific information publicly was more important than her personal freedom.
Fourth possibility: that the NSA did use the forensic marks in question to identify her, and fabricated a parallel construction in order to avoid acknowledging the existence of said marks.
(But still, most likely this is Hanlon's Razor. What's there to be suspicious about?)
> order to avoid acknowledging the existence of said marks
Not likely. It's been common knowledge for a long time.
The EFF has been covering this for a while, and in 2015, released a list of printers that do/do not display tracking dots [1].
[1] https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...
Yes, it's been well known for years to anybody who wants to know, but staying quiet still appears to be working very damn well for the NSA - right here you have a leaked NSA document where both the leaker and journalists failed to redact the dots.
The reporting on this everywhere besides tech sites has completely left this part out. Its not common knowledge to a lot of people.
Do you mean tracking dots in general? They've been mentioned in mainstream media, it's just that nobody cares.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/technology/personaltech/24...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10...
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MICs are usually mentioned in the same sentence that also explains why you can't print nor scan money.
The big Wikipedias have long articles on it with many sample images: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography
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I was just speaking to a co-worker about this and they didn't know about the dots. Anecdotal as always, but we shouldn't take for granted that everyone is aware of this.
Not that common, and intelligence institutions often have policies not to acknowledge things that are known to be true. I think that not discouraging people from mailing printouts when they don't want to be identified is a good enough reason to pretend that they didn't just read all the info they needed from the printout itself.
Firstly, you can't use Hanlon's Razor and NSA in the same sentence.
Secondly, often assuming just a tiny bit of malice can account for layers and layers of stupidity. Occam's razor is sharper :)
Can you use Hanlon's Razor and FSB in the same sentence? Maybe The Intercept's opsec is perfectly fine as long as your leak doesn't involve Russia.
The Intercept was conceived as a more pro-left-wing alternative to Wikileaks, so I doubt it. They are exactly as biased as Wikileaks, but in the opposite direction.
I think it is a good thing; truth is discovered in the clash of opposing forces.
Five: someone wanted her out and framed her.
Six: she was a weak security link and someone used her access details without permission.
Seven: someone with sysadmin privileges sent mail from her account, having printed the document from six accounts and only managing to get to "her" printer before loose documents were destroyed.
Eighth: It's a counter-intel operation and her identity isn't even real.
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