Big Brother is in your printer.

Beware what you print out from your home or work computer, the government is watching you and the corporations are helping them.

Ostensibly (and sensibly) this this technology is intended to catch counterfeiters. That's all well and good. The printers insert microscopic yellow dots into the document which identifies the printer of origin. Not just the brand or model, but the very machine. Surely, this will help the police catch and convict counterfeiters. But it also means that registering your newly purchased printer is to unwittingly put yourself on some kind of people-to-spy-on list.

The problem is, there is no oversight. No mechanism to prevent abuse. The feds can use this to spy on any American citizens for any imaginable (however unjustifiable, unconstitutional, or partisan) excuse. And given how much effort the feds expend chasing after U.S. citizens like the ACLU and Greenpeace, it's easy to see how this unregulated behavior will be used.

Make no mistake, this how Big Brother is created. It will not be a single overt legislative act with obvious mustached villains chanting tyrannical rhetoric. It will be many small, unnoticed back door policies, laws, and agreements (with corporate assistance) that add up to the government watching your every move--all under the guise of "protecting" you.

I, for one, don't need that kind of protecting.