Both journalists and security experts have suggested that The Intercept's handling of the reporting, which included publishing the documents unredacted and including the printer tracking dots, was used to identify Winner as the leaker. In October 2020, The Intercept's co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald wrote that Winner had sent her documents to The Intercept's New York newsroom with no request that any specific journalist work on them. He called her exposure a "deeply embarrassing newsroom failure" resulting from "speed and recklessness" for which he was publicly blamed "despite having no role in it." He said editor-in-chief Betsy Reed "oversaw, edited and controlled that story." An internal review conducted by The Intercept into its handling of the document provided by Winner found that its "practices fell short of the standards to which we hold ourselves".

[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 7 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Those dots are practically invisible if you have the printed copy, they're not going to be visible at all in a photography. Printers and their network leave a lot to logs behind, pretty sure they just check up the printed files of their network, found the document and who send the printer order and done.

[–] BreakDecks@lemmy.ml 15 points 8 months ago (2 children)

So you think tracking her down with forensic methods that objectively exist is farfetched, but accessing the print logs of every printer in America to figure out which one printed the document is realistic?

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It's cheaper and easier to look at the print logs. Most business computer and printer solutions tie every print to a user and log at least the name of every document printed

The hidden code is for court cases where they wish to prove which machine made the print, they're not very good for identifying which user printed something in a multi user environment

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