[boogies]

> The DEDA toolkit allows anyone to anonymize documents by removing the tracking dots at the software level

Sounds like the tracking tech is implemented in the proprietary drivers. If only the free software movement had filled its original purpose (freeing printer drivers¹) for more models…

¹https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/201cthe-printer-story201...

Edit: looks like it may be in the firmware on the printer itself, not drivers on computers, as h-node warns of tracking even on printers with full compatibility with blobless, FSF-endorsed distros eg. Trisquel GNU/Linux-libre: https://h-node.org/printers/view/en/2215/HP-DeskJet-2700-ser...

[rtkwe]

DEDA is for anonymizing post scanning as far as I can tell, so it still relies on whoever you're providing the documents to knowing they need to do it.

[pabs3]

Apparently DEDA has some downsides, and pdf-redact-tools/dangerzone are better options:

https://lists.inventati.org/message/20200308.154747.1b4d1245... https://github.com/firstlookmedia/pdf-redact-tools https://github.com/firstlookmedia/dangerzone

[grishka]

> looks like it may be in the firmware on the printer itself

One thing that has me baffled is why there's so much speculation and black-box approach when it should definitely be possible to reverse engineer those firmwares to directly get definite answers to all possible questions. Why does no one seem to even consider dumping the firmware from a printer and reverse-engineering it?