There’s an old “Seinfeld” episode in which Jerry has his car stolen, but since he had a car phone (impressive tech back in the early 1990s) he decided to call the number to see if the thief would answer, which he did. After some joke-filled banter, Seinfeld asked the thief how he was able to hot-wire the car, as he was curious about the process.
“I didn’t cross any wires,” replied the crook, who was voiced by series co-creator and writer Larry David. “The keys were in it.”
Which brings us to this story about printer security vulnerability that grabbed headlines for all of about 30 seconds last week—an eternity in today’s news cycle. In general, legacy printers are cited as being especially vulnerable to security threats, unlike the more modern devices with robust, advanced features. But this week’s example skirts around even the best defense available on the market, because there’s no tech remedy against a printout being left sitting on an output tray for prying eyes to see.
Printing’s answer to Seinfeld leaving his keys in the car reportedly ensnared the State Department, and occurred during President Donald Trump’s historic Anchorage summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A document printout marked “State Department” appears to have covered a number of housekeeping items—a lunch menu, meeting times for the summit at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson, and mundane reminders such as how to pronounce Putin’s name and seating arrangements—that were found on an Anchorage hotel printer, reportedly left behind by staffers.
None of the information appears to have been confidential, with the possible exception of an event schedule that detailed what time President Trump would be entering given rooms. Generally, the comings and goings of the president and foreign leaders/dignitaries are kept under wraps until after an event. In this case, the documents were discovered several hours prior to the meeting. The phone numbers of staffers in charge of organizing the event were also listed—not quite to the level of national secrets.
News of the gaffe was broken after hotel guests shared the pages with, of all news organizations, National Public Radio (NPR)—the outlet perhaps most impacted by President Trump’s decision to take away taxpayer support from public broadcasting. (Editor’s note: NPR is also reeling from the loss of Ari Shapiro, longtime host of the outlet’s signature program, “All Things Considered.)
In the end, while the mistake was fairly reckless, the story was pretty much a nothing-burger. To top it off, the lunch never happened, despite a quality spread of filet mignon with brandy peppercorn sauce (yum) and halibut olympia, a green salad and crème brûlée that was planned. And hotel guests who viewed the papers had advanced knowledge that President Trump was gifting President Putin an American Bald Eagle desk statue.
As we all know, the cardinal rule is to never leave printouts on a shared device—this always leads to a testy note being left on the printer by an irate team member. And the business center of a hotel? That’s especially verboten.
Security matters. Don’t be the reason the IT guys chug Red Bull.
