I just don't think that serial killers are enough of a problem to mess with printing. Surely there are more effective ways to deter people from this sort of behavior.
I see where you coming from, but similarly I just don't think that a couple of microscopic yellow dots on my prints that carry the date and serial number are not a problem. It's not like I intend to forge anything.
The essay "I've got nothing to hide and other misunderstandings of privacy" is about this idea. The short version is that it's not just about your innocence, but about how your data can be leveraged against you.
Right, it feels like such things as being personally identified and tied to documents could never, when gestated by bureaucratic processes of third parties, possibly involve harm. And it's this kind of casual attitude of indifference which is exactly the mindset that the essay is intended to speak to.
To "catch a serial killer" you'd need each retailer selling printers to track the ID and model number on a receipt, to be submitted to a central government agency and saved in a database. This is not what's happening in your country either, am I correct?
Instead this ordeal makes it possible for the government agencies, who do keep track of their own inventory to follow the tracks of those, who decided to leak documents to the outside world by printing them on printers at work. Like the outing of the whistleblower, courtesy of a journalist at The Intercept.
When you want to forge something, or send your manifesto after serial killings ?
And what are you paying extra ? 0.01 USD per yellow ink cartridge, that is already wildly overpriced due to profiteering schemes ?
I'd happily pay that 0.00001% if that means a stupid serial killer gets caught once in a while.