Justice Department officials are turning to the 3D-printing industry to help stop the proliferation of tiny pieces of plastic transforming semi-automatic weapons into illegal homemade machine guns on streets across America.
Archived version: https://archive.is/FzBzV
“Law enforcement cannot do this alone,” Monaco said during a gathering in Washington of federal law enforcement officials, members of the 3D-printing industry and academia. “We need to engage software developers, technology experts and leaders in the 3-D-printing industry to identify solutions in this fight.”
Good luck with that, it’s basically impossible. The best they could hope to do is have commercial printing services watch for and refuse to print the devices. Anyone can look up the patent for a Glock switch and design and print one themselves. It can’t be blocked on the printer level because that would require the printer to be a lot smarter than they currently are, and any such blocking could be bypassed by building a printer from scratch (not easy, but totally doable).
And it would require all printers to be closed-source, else people would just patch out the “is this a glock switch?” check.
The anti-counterfeiting EURion constellation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation) works because most printers are made by a handful of established companies. 3D printers, on the other hand, are made by dozens of tiny companies, many of whom are Chinese companies buying similar source parts and adding their own touches, and those companies don’t give a shit about American law beyond the bare minimum to make a sale.
Sounds like they are trying to crack down on people trying to print bump stocks or something. Truly sounds like a damn stupid sisyphisian task that can be used to survail what is being printed on common printers.
There are small modifications that can be done to convert guns to full auto. Glock switches and auto seers, or what not. The idea of usi g this to spy on printers is frustrating.
Yep. Plus, what measures would be required to defeat basic printer blocks? Could it defect differences in tolerance? What if you redesigned an internal part to make the overall print slightly different? It an endless task that doesn’t seem like it will be very useful for anything other than random surveillance.
probably some sort of comparison list of shapes that it can’t produce. like how photocopy and printer manufacturers make it so you can’t copy legal tender
Yeah, but when you are doing that you are basically just comparing to what it can’t be. This would be looking at any possible way to design a mechanism to (for instance) turn a semi auto to a full auto, which is to say having something that can independently look at stuff, automatically redesign them in all of the unexpected ways, and ban those from ever being printed.
I think at best they’re going to be playing a catch up game at all times. it might be nice and easy for printers that are connected to the internet and can get regular updates, but it doesn’t take a genius to airgap his printer
people are making those out of plastic?
3D printers are no longer limited to a single plastic. They can use wood, metal, carbon fiber and even organic materials these days.
