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How Laws Restricting Tech Actually Expose Us To Greater Harm
An anonymous reader writes: Cory Doctorow has an article in Wired explaining why crafting laws to restrict software is going to hurt us in the long run. The reason? Because we're on an irreversible trajectory toward integrating technology with our cars and houses, bodies and brains. If we don't control the software, then at some point, we won't control parts of our homes and our selves. Doctorow writes, "Any law or regulation that undermines computers' utility or security also ripples through all the systems that have been colonized by the general-purpose computer. And therein lies the potential for untold trouble and mischief.
Code always has flaws, and those flaws are easy for bad guys to find. But if your computer has deliberately been designed with a blind spot, the bad guys will use it to evade detection by you and your antivirus software. That's why a 3-D printer with anti-gun-printing code isn't a 3-D printer that won't print guns—the bad guys will quickly find a way around that. It's a 3-D printer that is vulnerable to hacking by malware creeps who can use your printer's 'security' against you: from bricking your printer to screwing up your prints to introducing subtle structural flaws to simply hijacking the operating system and using it to stage attacks on your whole network."
Code always has flaws, and those flaws are easy for bad guys to find. But if your computer has deliberately been designed with a blind spot, the bad guys will use it to evade detection by you and your antivirus software. That's why a 3-D printer with anti-gun-printing code isn't a 3-D printer that won't print guns—the bad guys will quickly find a way around that. It's a 3-D printer that is vulnerable to hacking by malware creeps who can use your printer's 'security' against you: from bricking your printer to screwing up your prints to introducing subtle structural flaws to simply hijacking the operating system and using it to stage attacks on your whole network."
Start with copyright and patents - these are by far most harmful regulatory areas that hold back our progress.
Still, not all regulation is bad. We could use more rules safeguarding our privacy. Presently, it is 'loot and pillage' with every Dick, Tom, and Harry from the Silicon Valley trying to insert themselves in the middle and start tracking you.
Tin foil just won't do it anymore.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Unlike making your own money, it is perfectly legal (in the US anyway) to make your own gun, 3d printed or otherwise. Selling it may be illegal, but it's not like there's gangs toting 3d printed guns roaming the streets just yet.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
With my Printrbot, I have three steps to start printing. First I design what I want using something like OpenSCAD or download the design from somewhere online. Then I have to run it through software like Cura to turn it into something that the printer can actually use. After that I can send it to the printer for printing. Remember that the printer is really just a slightly beefed-up Arduino - it's a pretty simple device. If you were to integrate the anti-gun code into Cura the same way that anti-counterfeiting is in copiers you might have something.
Block all home-made designs and do-it-yourself makers?! That's where the potential of 3d printing revolution lies!!! Required "signed" documents only and you cripple that.
Besides, we've seen these signature certificates compromised time and time again (SSL, code signing, et al.).
Neither the science nor technology is the limiting factor to making an atom bomb. Both are pretty well known and easily accessible (The original a-bombs, fat man and little boy, were built back in the 40's. The technology is archaic). The limiting factor for a nuclear weapon is the pay load. Weapons grade plutonium and Uranium are not easily accessible.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
I'm not onboard with this reasoning. Yes, deliberately placing backdoors in software is security-undermining and stupid. And any unenforcable legislation is bad legislation.
But I not all restrictions on technology are unenforcable or bad. It is generally illegal for private individuals to make bombs. Yes, this means that the only people who make bombs are criminals, but only because you have changed the semantics to make it so. There is still less bomb-making overall by dint of bomb-making being illegal.
I don't know if there is a correct legislative solution to the problem of 3D-printed guns or not, but we should not assume there cannot be one. The specifics of the technology are relevant.
You're not supposed to control your appliance! If you would, you could not only fix them instead of replacing them, you could find new applications for them instead of buying another, specialized, one. And the maker could not at will end its life so you'd be buying the next one, bigger and better than your old 6 month old ancient garbage.
It's not a bug. It's a feature.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What security? The security of its maker against your outrageous idea of actually using something you buy the way you want?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If it stopped at gun printing... but you know, we have this tech in place to keep people from printing guns, why can't we keep them from printing those trademarked (or patented, whatever) car parts? There's a business to protect here!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No "bad guy" is going to waste time and money printing an expensive but soft dangerous gun that can fracture. those hobbyists that make guns use time-honored techniques and you can legally mail order a pistol barrel for $100 - 150
Very inexpensive guns are plentiful and robust enough for firing dozens of rounds without of failure. the bad guys will use those if on a budget
No, but 3d printers need some input. Only allow corporate, sorry, government approved input and we're good to go.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The Bill of Rights is a list of things the federal government isn't allowed to do. It doesn't put any limitations on you, me or Dice. You and I can do bad things, but we can't violate the Bill of Rights because the B of R is a set of restrictions on the feds.
Therefore, ONLY big government can violate your Constitutional rights. Businesses can make you mad, they can provide'poor customer service, but only government can violate your Constitutional rights. The reason for this? Because only government can send men with guns to enforce their will upon. Comcast you can simply cancel, and get Dish or Verizon instead.
How do you function from day to day with reasoning like this?
Bombs by design are indiscriminately destructive, demolishing everything in every direction. The intent is to destroy. Guns are very focused and have very particular intent. This makes them excellent for self defense, like I want to stop this person from robbing me so I aim and shoot.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
That's right.
If we don't control the software, then at some point, we won't control parts of our homes and our selves.
"Dear Customer:
We are now charging a small monthly fee for the use of your Home Software. It will be due in 30 days otherwise your heat and hot water will be turned to default levels and your air conditioning will no longer function.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Your Home Automation company."
And you can bet your ass that they'll have lobbied Congress to make that completely legal.
All it would take it a regulation that 3D printers can only print signed documents,
So last weekend when I modeled and printed a replacement shelf support bracket for one that had gone missing, I'd be out of luck?
(Yeah, it probably took longer to model and print it than the part was worth ... but now I have the model if I need it again, and I saved myself a one of time driving around to hardware stores looking for an exact replacement, or the expense of replacing them all so they matched. And I needed the practise.)
What's next, only allowing 2D printers to print signed documents to prevent copyright infringement? Or prevent samizdat?
Because we're on an irreversible trajectory toward integrating technology with our cars and houses, bodies and brains. If we don't control the software, then at some point, we won't control parts of our homes and our selves.
Last time I checked, humans today can't easily tinker with their own bodies and brains, they have plenty of known bugs and vulnerabilities, and many methods of altering their function are heavily regulated if not illegal.
While I support the author's idealism, what do you think will happen in this cyborg future when software can be physically addictive or kill you or change your personality? People have always been willing to give up a certain amount of freedom for a certain amount of security, and they will continue to do so.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
He's the sort of mega-evolved Bennett Haselton. Or Bennet on steroids if you prefer. A lot of obvious waffle and no real clue about anything.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
I could adapt a bomb for self-defense. The bomb is wired to a heartbeat sensor. With a big warning label across your chest and back, it might make people think twice about shooting you.
Sure, there are absolutely differences between regulating bombs and regulating guns. That was my point - the virtue of legislating technology is highly dependent upon the specific technology being legislated. The article and OP are arguing, as far as I understand, that all attempts to legislate technology should be assumed to be harmful.
No bad guy in the US would. It's easy enough to get one legally there in most states, and the black market is full of stolen guns. It's a lot harder in most of Europe - if I wanted a gun I couldn't get one legally, and I couldn't just ask Dodgy Dave down the pub to pick one up - access to illegal weapons requires a certain level of criminal connections beyond those available to the typical street thug or youth gang. That's why our youth gangs use knives to do most of their murdering.
"Because we're on an irreversible trajectory toward integrating technology with our cars and houses, bodies and brains"
Cars and houses sure, but bodies and brains? Speak for yourself there pal, I'm not having anything electronic inside me unless its absolutely necessary such as a pacemaker. There's no way I'd have the kind of trivial consumer tech implants so beloved of sci fi writers. It might be some peoples fantasy to be a cyborg but its not mine.
There are several guns that have been made using 3D printers, except for the firing pin. Sure they were parts that had to be assembled, but they were still guns printed by a 3D printer non the less. Now if you want the entire gun printed in one shot fully assembled, that is currently beyond the capabilities of the designs and technology for a few reason, but it's a temporary situation that people are trying to rectify for many reasons that have nothing to do with guns.
Of course, yes, the current crop of printed guns are total crap and it's cheaper, better, and faster to make a saturday night special with the tools you probably have in your garage.
Thats the start of the problem. People control the software. Like with guns, is people that is the one that kills, abuse, take advantage or use it for their own ends, giving them more tools to control our life is letting not only the saint, pure and morally perfect and responsible ones to do so, but all of them, at all levels. People is not perfect, either the one that decides what the software should do, the ones that actually does that, or the ones that in the end have the capabilities to control them, and in that way, you. You know how police can behave already, give them and people in higher more control, and that won't stop them to misbehave, just give them new ways to do it, with more broad impact and the possibility of doing it without consequences nor leaving a trace.
And if not bad enough the people with their own interests, biases and corruption in the "right" side of the controlling that software, it is not perfect, and you have vulnerabilities, design faults, leaks and plain idiocy at the hour of deciding who can control that software that could let not authorized people to do that control too. And they can do pretty bad misuses too.
And you are in the center of it, not knowing, not having a warning, not having any possibility of control, In some moment shit will happen because of this and you will be dead, without savings or property, working as a slave or maybe worse consequences. And maybe, not even realizing that all of that already happened.
Ah, another piece written by a person unable to look past their own subculture. Devices and software are built and marketed around the priorities of the mass consumer, NOT the technical elite.
Cory Doctorow has an article in Wired explaining why crafting laws to restrict software is going to hurt us in the long run. The reason?
Because we're on an irreversible trajectory toward integrating technology with our cars and houses, bodies and brains. If we don't control the software, then at some point, we won't control parts of our homes and our selves.
The technocrat in every generation sees himself as the undisputed, never-to-be-questioned, master of an irresistible force of nature. It stings when law and society intrudes to set some boundaries of their own.
Perhaps so! I wasn't arguing about the virtue of this specific theoretical legislation, I was taking on the broader argument made by the OP:
I don't believe this is necessarily true. Will someone find a way around the gun restriction? Sure, some number of users will always want to hack restrictions away from their devices. But will having the gun restriction in place make the 3D printer more vulnerable, from a technical standpoint, to being hacked? I don't see how. Slashdot filters out various HTML tags from my replies - I don't think this filtering mechanism makes Slashdot more or less likely to be hacked. Doctorow is making a jump from "bad guys will find a way around that" (probably true) to "makes your unit more vulnerable to hacking." To me, this seems like a leap.
But perhaps there is some technical aspect to gun-design-filtering that I am unaware of?
I really don't understand the hype that goes along with 3D printed guns. You can get safer (for the operator), longer lasting, more accurate guns with less expertise by making guns the old fashioned way. A gun is a good way to show off that a 3D printer can print some interesting things, but a 3D printer is probably the last piece of machinery you'd need if you wanted to create a good gun.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The little guys that hack and crack are a bit of an issue. But if we get aggressive and keep those who make small efforts from bad acts it will be a much more desireable place for big money to start committing computer crimes. Imagine a drug cartel that can spend a few hundred million dollars getting dedicated to draining bank accounts or running up false charge card bills. Think of it like smuggling heroin. Organized crime can smuggle heroin but individuals have very little chance of surviiving such an effort. I have know to couple who went to Columbia to buy cocaine. One saw her husband killed in front of her eyes as the locals stole their money instead of completing the deal. The other couple got robbed and ended up streaking through the counrty side completely nude and lucky to be alive. Yet orgaized crime brings it in by the tons. And just maybe our government is still involved in importing coke.
All and all, it is interesting watching the 3D printer market evolve. Other than the issue of currency copying when color inkjets became cheap, there has been no DRM or demand for it linked to documents. Ink cartridges, yes, but not actual preventing of documents being copied.
Other markets, not so lucky. For example, all the fighting and wrangling about MP3s, which resulted in casualties (for example, Diamond won... but that was a Pyrrhic victory.) Video pretty much was a victory for the DRM brigade [1].
3D printing looks like it is going the way of 2D printing, except for this "OMG, GUNS!" drivel [2]. I don't see an RIAA-like entity pushing a SDMI initiative for 3D printing, nor do I see an interest by the Powers That Be in forcing signed documents (which is actually astounding... I would have been almost certain that there would be some type of standardized DRM system by now, similar to how CarveWright DRM protects their software from computer to encrypted memory cartridge to the actual device.)
Now, when 3D metal printing gets widespread and inexpensive, the ability to make sintered Iconel items will be quite useful, as opposed to plastic pieces which have limited uses. For example, one make of RV door handle has had issues with breaking. If just the part that breaks is replaced with a high grade sintered Iconel, it would help immensely.
[1]: A victory as in one in the US either has DRM encumbered tracks, DRM encumbered media, or technically violates the DMCA in de-DRMing stuff like DVDs.
[2]: I have never understood the insane overreaction about 3D printed guns. One could carve out the same thing out of a chunk of plastic, mold something out of clay and fire it in a kiln, whittle it out of wood, or many other ways to make a unsafe, unstable zip-gun, that it is pointless. In countries where guns are banned, ammo is banned as well, so making a .22 LR firearm in Japan or England is pointless... because there are no .22 rounds to be found in that neck of the woods [3]. Of course, there is the fact that in other areas of the world, real guns are likely less trouble to find and procure than a computer, a 3D printer, a good amount of filament, and trying to cobble together a prototype which likely will go kaboom in the hand, rather than bang, out the barrel.
[3]: Technically, there are no .22 rounds to be found in this part of Texas either... but that is due to the insatiable demand, not a ban.
A key component you're missing - we aren't the owners or operators of /.
/. could prevent us from typing those HTML tags into our browser anywhere once we've visited the page once.
A better analogy would be if
Imagine the kind of software necessary to enforce such a measure upon end users' computers against their will, and you're a lot closer to understanding Doctorow's point.
I'm pretty sure that's the business model embraced by Lowe's store-brand home automation gear.
What's a bomb? Seriously. An explosive device remotely explodable can be used in mining, or as a weapon. The exact same device.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I'm sure that you think you have a point, but I haven't a clue as to what it is. Even as a troll this is sub-par. If you're trying to be serious you really need to think more about how to present your argument.
You are, I think, responding to the claim that you aren't noticing that many small changes can yield an important difference. What you intend your response to mean I find opaque.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
It must be rough for those that rejected Stallman as "too extreme", catching up to where he was in the 80s.
See that "Preview" button?
Yes/No. When you can build stronger materials under computer control, then computers allow you to build smaller/lighter airplanes.
OTOH, it isn't the computer itself that facilitates the improvement, its the computer as a part of an improved process, that couldn't be improved (that way) without the computer.
So. Currently 3D printers are toys. Did you ever even see the Sinclair computer? (I forget its model.) It was a toy. But that didn't make it totally useless, and other computers were not only much more useful, they became both more useful and smaller and cheaper over time.
P.S.: There *do* exist 3D printers that aren't toys. They also aren't cheap, and the ones I've information on aren't small. But different models can print in Titanium, Aluminium, Concrete, etc. I don't know whether they all require hand finishing, I expect so. OTOH, this is early days yet.
Do you know how long the laser was called "The development looking for a use?" It was over a decade. Of course, the original lasers were big, expensive, and difficult to use. They required specially polished rubies, cryonic conditions, and they only worked on microwaves. They were also called masers, but that word has dropped out of existence, so now we have uv lasers, ir lasers, green lasers, and for all I know X-ray lasers.
I doubt that CNC machines will ever drop out of use. I expect that they'll continue to become easier to use. But they won't be used for small runs for much longer. Already Car companies use expensive 3D printers to print their design prototypes, and I'm sure there are many uses I haven't heard of.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
nonsense, a crook can just steal a legal gun in Europe. Been done many many times
I would expect in 20 years we'll have much deadlier weapons than the explosive powered projectile ones we've been using for 600 years
Sure, progress can change the game in a decades, but in the here and now it is ridiculous to speak of the tools of these hobbyists making yoda heads as possessing the means to increase firearm crime.
Word "maser" hasn't dropped out of existence, they are still around in precision time keeping applications and in medicine.