----- Original Message ----- From: "David Dyer-Bennet" < : As to "so freaking what", most of the time it's pretty irrelevant; but : if I want to write an anonymous whistle-blower letter to my senator or : the GAO or somebody about malfeasance in the government department I : work in, it suddenly becomes pretty darned important! : : And given the abuses the government routinely commits with the police : powers it has now, I'm very much opposed to giving them more. : -- precisely - a print or a photocopy can reveal the origin of the item, and these days of manufacturing 'events' to justify actions, any paper trail could be used against someone. here's a nice one for you - you make a print of a kid playing down the beach for some parent and it turns up in some paedophiles collection - guess what? At least under new laws here in Oz, you'd be guilty of child sex offences! Bye-bye computer, printer, cameras. And you don't get them back even if you're found not guilty - and you'll have to rights to own such things stripped from you. Took a pic of a plane? A copy of a torn up print is found in the garbage.. the plane went down months later under suspicious circumstances - 'Gentlemen, we have a suspect!' A photograph reveals it's self to have been printed by you, the building in the shot has been the subject of numerous bomb threats.. black choppers are on the way ;-) maybe if we ignore it, it won't happen. No seriously, the governments of the world are once again scared of their citizenry and that's NEVER been a good thing. Laws are changing daily curtailing liberties and the most tenuous evidence is being strung together to build cases.. then laws being passed retrospectively to protect the faults in the laws or to justify flawed decisions. It is of concern to me and maybe others. A nice example occurred here some time back - all measuring devices in Oz are required to be calibrated and signed off by a government department referred to as Weights and Measures. An individual who worked for this department contested a speed camera ticket and queried when the camera had last been checked. It hadn't - it had never been checked, and under the law of the day the device could NOT be considered lawfully accurate. A few weeks down the track we have a new law (retrospective of course) saying that speed cameras are the ONE ITEM in Oz that measures something that does not need to be calibrated. Nice. At least now those who criticise KNOW that your printer may be embedding info in the print, if they'd rather, I could shut up next time I find something like this and they can find it out themselves. I still think it'd be a handy thing for photog's to be able to validate their prints with embedded data. I had in the past toyed with various dyes and the like trying to come up with something that revealed copyright infringement - something that would identify a scan or copy if not preventing such things. Photographers used to want such a method of IDing or protecting their prints.. not the case anymore? Oh well. There's a new law being proposed here in Oz at the moment, police are to have the power to 'shoot to kill' any *suspected* terrorist who may be running from them. We are not an armed country like the US, and police shooting are rare, but this will mean the law will grant police the right to kill people who are merely suspected of something - effectively they would be lawful government executioners! it really does worry me. k
