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We can still stop California's 3D printer surveillance scheme

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Re: We can still stop California's 3D printer surveillance scheme

#101

Post by xeromal »

SoftTalker wrote: post #96
gorgoiler wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you. Over-enforcement absolutely needs to be penalized. One of my biggest weaknesses is refusing to let people get away with the kind of lazy thinking you encountered. Hands up if you’ve ever been told you can’t do something because of potential SOC2 audit non-compliance. Or it’s against GDPR. Or legal won’t allow it. Or it’s against IT security policy. Or just against “policy”.

Why do you suppose all those rules and policies came to be?

Fear of everything

Re: We can still stop California's 3D printer surveillance scheme

#102

Post by Ancapistani »

xbar wrote: post #74
RossBencina wrote: post #29

Let me get this straight. The USA has no gun control laws but legislators want to prevent people from making guns with 3D printers?

Unlike the downvoters, I'm genuinely curious: do you believe a narrative that the US has no gun control laws? Sometimes I wonder if that is what people outside the US think.

It’s what approximately half of US voters think.

Re: We can still stop California's 3D printer surveillance scheme

#103

Post by gorgoiler »

SoftTalker wrote: post #96
gorgoiler wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you. Over-enforcement absolutely needs to be penalized. One of my biggest weaknesses is refusing to let people get away with the kind of lazy thinking you encountered. Hands up if you’ve ever been told you can’t do something because of potential SOC2 audit non-compliance. Or it’s against GDPR. Or legal won’t allow it. Or it’s against IT security policy. Or just against “policy”.

Why do you suppose all those rules and policies came to be?

The rules are well intentioned. The policies stem from not standing up to bullies. In my experience:

1/ Some top-level authority writes down a rule saying “as of 2021, it is forbidden to have red pencils”.

2/ The authority might prosecute one or two cases, but most enforcement is largely farmed out to certification bodies: the lawyers, auditors, inspectors of this world.

3/ No auditor or auditee ever wants to be the first to fall foul of PNCL21 regulations. The expense one would incur of being a test case incentivizes every regulation to be widened in scope, unreasonably, to try minimize risk.

4/ Moreover, there is a purity spiral incentive as an auditor to maintain the illusion you know what you are doing and therefore justify your $500-a-day fee. No widening-of-scope is too much! No one ever got fired for buying IBM, and no one ever got fired for banning pink crayons “just to be safe”, even though no normal person would call them either red or a pencil.

Cylindrical graphite rods stored in the same building as red paint? Audit failure risk. Orange pens on your desk? Audit failure risk. Office within 1000 yards of a stationery shop? Audit failure risk. You are single, own a traditional twig-broom, and you like black cats? Audit failure risk, I say!

Re: We can still stop California's 3D printer surveillance scheme

#104

Post by SauciestGNU »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #60
deet wrote: post #10

Imagine if you couldn't buy a lathe unless it refused to make a baseball bat (which could be used for hitting people). Or if you couldn't buy scissors (because they could cut brake lines). Or if you couldn't buy a car (because it could be used to run someone over). And if all of those checked with the government before functioning. It's almost like maybe instead you should just ban the undesirable end action, enforce…

We used to ban the undesirable action! Then DEFCAD got that ban overturned, convincing the federal government that they have a First Amendment right to publish 3D-printable firearm plans. So now our choices are to allow widespread 3D printed firearms (which I and many others won't accept) or restrict the means by which they can be made. I genuinely do wish the DEFCAD folks had made different choices that would not ha…

I want to know how on earth restricting the publication of plans could be consistent with the first amendment. That's like prohibiting the publication of books with content you disagree with.

Re: We can still stop California's 3D printer surveillance scheme

#105

Post by sarchertech »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #82
simoncion wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...our choices are to allow widespread 3D printed firearms... Which parts of a firearm can be printed in a consumer-grade 3D printer? Be as specific as your knowledge permits. Of those that cannot, how much money does one have to spend in order to purchase a 3D printer that is capable of printing those parts that cannot be printed by a consumer-grade printer? Are you aware of "slam fire" firearms? If you were not,…

I'm aware of "slam fire" firearms and know why and how it's easy to produce them. They're much less concerning to me because their rate of fire is extremely slow. I don't know the details of what can be printed in a consumer-grade printer, not having performed firearms manufacturing myself, but I've seen things claiming to be pretty complete kits and it seems to me that most components should be possible. Barrels of…

You cannot fully 3d print an effective firearm on a consumer 3d printer. When people talk about 3d printing a gun they are almost always talking about 3d printing a single part—the lower receiver. Federal law considers the lower receiver to be a gun, and it is the part with a serial number.

A lower receiver is not complicated. It essentially just a quirk of the law that the ability to 3d print a lower receiver is useful to people who want to manufacture “untraceable” guns.

You could change the law so that barrels have to have serial numbers and accomplish nearly the exact same thing as completely banning 3d printers.

Also buying a kit, 3d printing a lower receiver, snd assembling an effective firearm is about as difficult as buying a kit to assemble an 3d printer and using existing open source slicers (or modifying a 3d printer to let you use an open source slicer).

And if 3d printers are as dangerous as the proponents of this legislation thinks they are, people would just hop across the border to Nevada and use a 3d printer there.

Re: We can still stop California's 3D printer surveillance scheme

#106

Post by SauciestGNU »

w4der wrote: post #16
tjohns wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then what, ban stepper motors? Don't give them ideas. But seriously, given that the 3D printer movement started out with people building their own printers from scratch and there continues to be a healthy open-source hardware ecosystem within the community, I can't see this stopping anyone. Unless you also make it illegal for 3D printers to print 3D printer parts...

But how was the first 3D printer made? Are they gonna ban CNC machines next?

These laws also apply to subtractive manufacturing methods like CNC machines. They just aren't as common in households so they don't get the headline space to grab our attention.

Re: We can still stop California's 3D printer surveillance scheme

#107

Post by WillPostForFood »

wat10000 wrote: post #80
WillPostForFood wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Lawsuits are part of the law, not thwarting the law. Refusing notifications and holds is inaction, the opposite of “actively.”

pedantic. You can use lawsuits, within the law, to thwart the law. You can do it knowing you will lose, just to cause delays, like Califorinia and the 9th circuit are ACTIVELY doing to slowdown gun control cases from reaching the supreme court where they 100% will be struck down. Refusing notification is an action.

Re: We can still stop California's 3D printer surveillance scheme

#108

Post by nostrademons »

b112 wrote: post #53
jacobolus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each congressperson's staff gathers all of the comments they get, counts them up, and reports back to the congressperson, passing along anything they think would be useful information; if you write a clear and careful letter about an obscure topic there's a decent chance the congressperson themself will see it. Congresspeople typically have local ties in their area and caring what their constituents think is their jo…

Not an American, but I've wondered about increasing numbers myself. Certainly, giving each representative fewer citizens to represent could help. I worry about the size of the bodies, however. Too big, and they become less wieldy. Maybe I'm wrong, but I wonder about other solutions. I was thinking of, for example, 10x the number, but each grouping of 10 has a representative, and they each give proxies on votes. Maybe…

They become more unwieldy, but that might be the point.

Re: We can still stop California's 3D printer surveillance scheme

#109

Post by gdiamos »

qwerpy wrote: post #98
gdiamos wrote: post #85

My kindergartner has a 3D printer. I got a call from the school principal. She said “another parent called and said your son 3D printed a gun and brought it to school”. I looked at the print history. It was a tiny toy mandalorian figurine holding a blaster pistol in his hand. I bought my son a bigger 3D printer and told him to stop playing with that boy.

> I bought my son a bigger 3D printer and told him to stop playing with that boy. I can't think of a better response to that situation. I'm going to use it when appropriate for my own kids when the time comes. Also - your kindergartner is autonomously searching for 3d printer models and executing prints at that age? That's awesome. Curious what 3d printer and what mechanism he uses to search and initiate prints.

He started with tinkercad and thingiverse.

I tried basic elegoo and bambu printers.

He can’t read very well but he likes dragging shapes around on a tablet.

He would ask me to find shapes using the search engines then he mixes them together or reshapes them.

I would add them to his history.

This is why I was surprised to hear about 3D printed guns. I was quite sure there wasn’t anything like that in the history.

It was a good discussion topic about why adults get so bothered by things that look like guns.

Re: We can still stop California's 3D printer surveillance scheme

#110

Post by NegativeK »

wolvoleo wrote: post #91

I'm glad I don't live in California (or America in general) but this is such BS. I don't think we will have much of this in Europe because guns are pretty rare here and so is ammo. We just don't really have gun problems except with organised criminals but they don't 3D print them, they just buy them. But anyway, 3D printing isn't rocket science. It never was and it sure isn't now. Anyone can build one in their garage…

It was partially completed lowers before this, and general machine tools before that.

I support gun control.

This feels like theater, not gun control.

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