Bob Maxey <written_by@xxxxxxx> writes: > >>>They can trace the printer serial number through the distribution > chain to the final sale, most likely. This is what is done when a gun > is recovered from a crime scene, for example. Certainly they can if > the printer is in a big print shop (Kinko's or whatever). So saying > they can trace it to where you printed it isn't entirely wrong, though > it can be read rather misleadingly.>>> > > We are going off point. Sure guns have serial numbers. So you buy a > gun, something happens, you go off your nut, and you shoot > someone. Chances are, it will be traced back to you. If you are > guilty, you should be tried. If you decide to become a criminal, I > am not so sure you would use a gun registered to you. So you think printers should be treated the same as guns? > >>>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!>>> > > So write the letter and if you are scared, buy a used printer from the local Good Will, use the library printer, whatever. There are ways to protect yourself if you want to get the word out but you do not want to be fired. Whistle blower laws might protect you. And I, as a fairly sophisticated technology user, am in a much better position to protect myself than most. But I'm not concerned just with *me*; I'm concerned with our entire society. > >>>And given the abuses the government routinely commits with the police > powers it has now, I'm very much opposed to giving them more. >>> > > And what abuses are you talking about? Um, are we getting too far afield for this to be the right mailing list for the discussion? I'm talking about American citizens taken from their homes on American soil and locked up in detention camps for years without charges, American government officials arguing openly for torture, new laws making it illegal to investigate how something works, voting machines that can't be audited, designed and manufactured by a company whose president has promised to do "anything possible" to deliver the election to one party, organized "riots" of party staffers to *stop* the counting of ballots, state attorney generals arguging before the US Supreme Court that an attorney sleeping in the courtroom is providing adequate representation to a client on trial for his life, and so on and on and on. -- David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@xxxxxxxx>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
