[bshipp]

This is the worry. It seems like a really unnecessary privilege escalation.

[jeffbee]

It's because of the frankly idiotic idea of persistent print queues. If you want to have this artifact that survives a user session, then the print subsystem needs super-user abilities.

ChromeOS does away with the whole idea. There are no persistent printer queues or jobs. Artifacts of the printing subsystem have lifetime tied to the user session.

[funcDropShadow]

No, persistent print queues can be implemented without cups running as super-user.