In hoary the files /etc/hotplug/usb/libusbscanner /etc/hotplug/usb/libsane.usermap are used to set these permissions. In breezy they are missing at the moment. I have put in a bugreport on this: https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12496 See also http://www.sane-project.org/README.linux -- kleeman