Yeah I think it's basically guaranteed that this is what we would hear regardless of how they found the leaker. Maybe this method was used, maybe they looked at printer looks, maybe they looked at access logs to the document, etc. Regardless, they _say_ that the problem was The Intercept's handling because there is no way to verify it and it makes them look bad. Really this news should be taken with a grain of salt.
That said, the important thing for any leaker to do is to try as much as possible to obscure any links they have to the documents before handing them off to third parties even if those third parties are supposedly trusted (because once you hand the documents off, you are no longer in control).
>Really this news should be taken with a grain of salt.
Something I think is valuable in this leak is the fact that the general public will be better educated that in fact their printers are capable of tracking every single thing they print, and there is no really, truly, anonymous personal printing any more.
I hope the blahgosphere will pick up on this and that we see Stories targeted to the normals that explains these sorts of things to them. Grandma may not care too much about her phone being listened to (after all, it was always so, to her at least..), but if you explain to Grandpa that there is a secret code that will tie every single printed sheet back to his house-hold, well, that may raise a few shingles ..
That said, the important thing for any leaker to do is to try as much as possible to obscure any links they have to the documents before handing them off to third parties even if those third parties are supposedly trusted (because once you hand the documents off, you are no longer in control).