Big Brother IS Watching...

...and sometimes he's not the government (well, not entirely).

Many color printers encode their serial number and manufacturing code in the documents they print. These can be traced back to the printer which, if registered with the manufacturer, allows it to be traced back to the purchaser. Not a big deal, necessarily, if you're doing nothing illegal and your government isn't nefarious. It's that last part, what with House Republicans wanting to be able to examine, free of the restraints of existing privacy protection laws, our tax returns, that I'm worried about.

Update - More from Mark Leon Goldberg at Tapped.