HP invites customers to rent printers, with a contract that requiresthe printer to be reachable over the internet from HP, so it can monitorlots of things about what the renter prints.

Supposedly HP makes this snooping legitimate by making the renterexplicitly consent to it. Balderdash! Massive surveillance cannot bejustified by the manufacture of consent.

If we seriously want to stop companies from putting digital shackleson people, this sort of monitoring and control should be a crime. Itshould be punished with prison for the people who implemented it, aswell as with fines to, or dissolution of, the company.