List of Printers Which Do or Do Not Display Tracking Dots

It's scary that companies feel the obligation to do the government favors without any actual legal mandate.<p>(Because if they don't... who knows; their printer shipment could be delayed at customs, their accounting practices could receive extra scrutiny, there could be a witness that says the CEO was seen at the scene of that murder. Who says the US is not a police state?)<p>Also, why not get one of these yellow-dot printers and just have your printer driver add additional yellow dots to it? Then when you counterfeit money, the Secret Service will go after someone else. BRILLANT.

I'd rather have one of the printers listed as having yellow tracking dots and yank out the color cartridges.<p>Its easier to disable a security measure you know than praying there isn't a security measure you don't know.<p>There is still a chance of a redundancy but I believe it is somewhat lower - as normally companies would do the bare minimum to comply with a directive like this one.

I'd like to see a list of actual crimes solved or prevented through the use of these tracking dots.<p>Because I'm guessing that would be a fast read.

Can someone clarify for me:<p>1) Why do manufacturers do this? Is it for their own internal warranty control / tracking, or is there a broader federal mandate motivating this?<p>2) The dots are only useful in after-the-fact analysis, correct? If I print something and then there's reason to suspect me they can print something, compare, and verify, but there's no mechanism to find the initial document and find the printer, correct?

Does this apply to international printer models as well?<p>I'm actually a bit spooked by this and it must be illegal somewhere. Well done EFF for publicising this.<p>I won't be registering my laser printer any time soon.

Nitpick here, this is a list of color laser printers only.

If we know where the yellow dots go, just print a yellow rectangle over them.

By providing this list, they are making it super easy for the secret service to give the "no dot" manufacturers a call/visit (which is who asked for the dots to be on there in the first place if I am not mistaken).<p>They could always use the lego printer <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1397675" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1397675</a>