The "print and scan physical papers back to a PDF of images" technique for final release is looking better and better from an information protection perspective.

> The "print and scan physical papers back to a PDF of images" technique for final release is looking better and better from an information protection perspective.

Note that all (edit: color-/ink-) printers have "invisible to the human eye" yellow dotcodes, which contain their serial number, and in some cases even the public IP address when they've already connected to the internet (looking at you, HP and Canon).

So I'd be careful to use a printer of any kind if you're not in control of the printer's firmware.

There's lots of tools that started to decode the information hidden in dotcodes, in case you're interested [1] [2] [3]

[1] https://github.com/Natounet/YellowDotDecode

[2] https://github.com/mcandre/dotsecrets

[3] (when I first found out about it in 2007) https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/camp/2007/Fahrplan/events/197...

a better approach is to convert them to jpeg/png. Then convert that to raw BMP, and then share or print that.

A more modern approach for text documents would be to have an LLM read and rephrase, and restructure everything without preserving punctuation and spacing, using a simple encoding like utf-8, and then use the technique above or just take analog pictures of the monitor. The analog (film) part protects against deepfakes and serves as proof if you need it (for the source and final product alike).

There various solutions out there after the leaks that keep happening where documents and confidential information is served/staged in a way that will reveal the person with who it is shared. Even if you copy paste the text into notepad and save it in ascii format, it will reveal you. Off-the-shelf printers are of course a big no-no.

If all else fails, that analog picture technique works best for exfil, but the final thing you share will still track back to you. I bet spies are back to using microfilms these days.

I only say all of that purely out of a fascination into the subject and for the sake of discussion (think like a thief if you want to catch one and all). Ultimately, you shouldn't share private information with unauthorized parties, period. Personal or otherwise. If you, like snowden, feel that all lawful means are exhausted and that is your only option to address some grievance, then don't assume any technique or planning will protect you, if it isn't worth the risk of imprisonment, then you shouldn't be doing it anyways. Assume you will be imprisoned or worse.

I suppose I'd just save the pdf to tiff/png then remake back into a pdf from there to avoid printing and scanning?

if really paranoid, I suppose one could run a filter on the image files to make them a bit fuzzy/noisy

Why not just make screenshoot of every PDF page?

That'd be fun to make Section 508 compliant at mass scale.

Is there a multifunction B&W printer which prints and then automatically positions the paper on the scanner and scans?