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

Supposedly HP makes this snooping legitimate by making the renter explicitly consent to it. Balderdash! Massive surveillance cannot be justified by the manufacture of consent.

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