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With 3D Printer Gun Files, National Security Interest Trumps Free Speech, Court Rules (arstechnica.com)
A federal appeals court ruled this week against Defense Distributed, the Texas organization that promotes 3D-printed guns, in a lawsuit that it brought last year against the State Department. In a 2-1 decision, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals was not persuaded that Defense Distributed's right to free speech under the First Amendment outweighs national security concerns. From an ArsTechnica report: The majority concluded: 'Ordinarily, of course, the protection of constitutional rights would be the highest public interest at issue in a case. That is not necessarily true here, however, because the State Department has asserted a very strong public interest in national defense and national security. Indeed, the State Department's stated interest in preventing foreign nationals -- including all manner of enemies of this country -- from obtaining technical data on how to produce weapons and weapon parts is not merely tangentially related to national defense and national security; it lies squarely within that interest.'
They act as if these are nuclear or biological weapons. There is no compelling interest in keeping plans for primitive 3D printed guns away from anyway, and there is no possible argument that there is.
This is nothing new, Philip Zimmermann was receiving similar threats during the first crypto-war so published the source code of PGP in a book (https://www.amazon.com/PGP-Internals-Philip-R-Zimmermann/dp/0262240394/) and more or less dared the feds to ban a book.
He won.
(this is the short version).
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Print the code for the lower receiver in a book.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
because the State Department has asserted a very strong public interest in national defense and national security
It's nice when people express an interest in my life, but when they start demanding information it gets creepy, and when they start using it as a justification for violating my rights it has become abusive.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
The CAD files for many guns are already available and have been for years, and you can use a CNC to make actual guns that aren't crappy plastic one shot wonders.
a CNC is is almost the exact same machine as a 3d printer, same price range, same software just requires a bit more practice to get working right.
Improvised firearms are simple to make with little skill, see the Royal Nonesuch YouTube channel for proof.
The blueprints for the Colt AR-15 have been available on the internet for years, it's just that taking those and producing an actual firearm has been difficult.
I'm not so sure it's about the proliferation of firearms as much as it is an effort to control our society by denying them access to information. It has been proven time and again that ne'er do wells *DO* obtain firearms illegally.
If you read the Constitution, specifically the actual text of the 1st and 2nd Amendments, they do not specify any restrictions on speech or bearing arms.
None at all.
The courts have pretty much taken it upon themselves to make law, so why do we bother voting. :-P
Those people who are always worrying about "activist" judges should look at this case.
It appears to me that the court has used a completely made-up "national security exception" to override a clear constitutional right.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
National Security > Constitutionally Protected x (Free Speech + Gun Ownership)
But
Constitutionally Protected x (Free Speech + Gun Ownership) = Trump's veiled threats against Clinton
Insanity achievement unlocked!
Is this any different than the thousands of plans online to make guns?
There are many websites hosted in the U.S. I can visit right now and download templates, .pdfs and instructions on how to manufacture my own guns.
It also isn't illegal in any way to make a gun (For personal use) as long as the end result does not violate federal, state or local laws.
As far I'm concerned, the only difference is the file format, so I expect this will get overturned.
Also, as others have mentioned, Zimmermann. To think we used to have illegal math in this country.
...because, no matter how closely I scrutinize the text of the First Amendment, I can't find this "national security" exclusion they're talking about.
Not to mention that their excuse for overriding the First Amendment is ludicrous. I don't believe that they actually believe that publication of 3D printer gun files actually puts the security of the nation at risk; they're just grasping at straws to support a predetermined conclusion.
The government really is out to get them, by any means including corrupting the rule of law to do so.
Banning means of obtaining personal weapons (like the one used to stop Minnesota Stabby) is clearly not a national security issue, indeed the prevention of means to allow law abiding citizens to acquire guns is far more clearly against the interests of the people - fewer guns mean more rapes, mean more crime, mean more violence against the weak and elderly.
So we see from this ruling that "national security" has nothing to do with the interests of the people, only the government.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
These files are in the open. The are publicly available to anyone who wants to look. I found several in minutes.
This ITAR issue is prior restraint...trying to put the genie back into the bottle. It reminds me of the silliness in trying to get people with security clearances to not read the Snowden files.
It is public record. Subjecting it to ITAR at this point simply makes it glaringly clear just how incompatible ITAR is with Constitutional principles.
'Ordinarily, of course, the protection of constitutional rights would be the highest public interest at issue in a case.'
I guess they didn't consider the last 65 years of history where the exact opposite has been true with regard to National Security (the gigantic black rug that everything not intended for public scrutiny - and yes that includes corrupt and illegal programs - goes).
We all know how easy it all is.
Most people are too encumbered to actually build anything so it doesn't matter.
The reality is you can just say hey, get a lathe, get some lead, get a fire, get some gun powder and some basic metals then wax cast what you want and do what you want.
Face it. People are idiots.
All these cases and what not are just thieves stealing money from good people. Whoever made that fucked up and joined to make this case for the money they would pay. They being the courts and the cops, the person who made that being now verbally dead. Infinata tristeza. Why I can't answer, I guess they are worried about something they can't or won't explain.
I can say, if they ruin their language they die quicker.
It's not like people who don't even count don't know how to make a bow and arrow. We all know that can kill just as easily as a 3D printed gun. This is basically money rape of a 3D printer kid.
Fuck you people.
You can't print cartridges, mercury fulminate, lead, barrels with plastic printing machines. They cost more than an actual gun and take long time to finish.
If 3D printing guns was such a fucking good idea why don't the military print everything they need with this shit method.
Get a fucking clue you old fucking geezers.
under the same banner as shouting fire in a theater? It's long since been agreed upon that the gov't can put reasonable restrictions on free speech. At this point we're just arguing over the definition of 'reasonable'. Preventing the existence of completely untraceable guns and the tech to make them seems 'reasonable' to me.
You can argue that point, you can even argue that I should be able to shout fire in that theater. But it's not fair to call the judge "activist" or declare the issue settled. In fact, at the moment it's pretty well settled against your line of reasoning.
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When are these fuckers going to learn that National Security as defined by a secret tribunal does NOT overrule the constitution. I think we need to broaden the definition of treason to include any act that unlawfully and deliberately undermines the good faith enforcement of our constitution.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Ignoring two of the amendments in the bill of rights in the same ruling? Impeach and disbar those motherfucking shysters.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
And the ever increasing stupidity of our courts marches on unabated. "National Security" for some simplistic firearms plans? I suppose for their next decision they'll rule that the design of coffee makers is a national security interest because it helps keep our enemies awake. Far more advanced firearm plans have circulated the globe since the end of WWII let alone a simple 3d printed gun.
Here I was thinking that national defense was the purview of a different department... The name escapes me at the moment.
... from obtaining technical data on how to produce weapons and weapon parts is not merely tangentially related to national defense and national security; it lies squarely within that interest.'
This is a completely bogus argument. This has nothing to do with National Security, this has everything to do with control. There is no mystical "secret" into how a firearm is put together. Any halfway competent person can disassemble one and have a pretty good idea what parts can and cannot be made of plastic and a few prototypes later have a working weapon. This is essentially what Defense Distributed did. Basically this is the same argument that was used against PGP when it first came out that "no one outside the US can make advanced crypto" which everyone (but the US government apparently) knows is not true.
This discussion is important yet irrelevant. In the last week.. another Islamic Jihadist nutbag located in the greater New York area didn't need 3d-printer models to construct a gun-of-mass-destruction. Nope.. it was a few pressure cookers you can buy without a permit or any investigation along with some other materials you can get from your local hardware store. Only by the grace of God no citizens were killed.
In Minnesota another Islamic nutbag went old-school and used a kitchen utensil in an attempt to kill as many U.S. citizens as he could.. all while purportedly wearing garb that identified him as mall security. If not for the grace of God (read a good guy with a gun) more may have been injured or killed. Should we ban 3D printer models for a knife?
What 3d-printed model allowed Timothy McVeigh to kill 168 U.S. citizens? Thoughts? Reflections? Nope.. nothing.
When will the millions of sheep understand that terrorists don't care about legislation or laws or restrictions it only makes them think a little before they find a new plan that allows them to wrought their hate on the innocent.
Peace out.
Move on. His ruling is unconstitutional. Period. It violates both the first and second amendment. Period.
The real problem is that people are allowed to distribute 90% receivers without serial numbers in the first place, not that somebody made a cheap CNC machine to turn them into finished receivers. Fix the real problem, control the receivers just like finished rifles! What we currently have is a loophole that allows any decent machinist to create untracked weapons. Althought personally, I thought the whole thing was a honeypot designed to get the contact info for crackpots and terrorists in the first place; if it wasn't I might have ordered one.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
... the court is going to unring the bell? It's like they never heard of warez...
I haven't read the opinion, but did the court say that because non-Americans might do bad things, it's ok to strip Americans of their rights in order to prevent non-Americans from doing bad things?
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If a terrorist was going to bother to make a gun, why wouldn't they use 150 year old methods rather than 3D printing one?
Aside from very underpowered calibers such as .22 or .380ACP, to have an entirely 3D printed gun that fires a normal standard self-defense or carbine round requires laser sintered metal process, plastic doesn't work without significant risk of explosion.
AK-47 variants on the black market can be had for $250 to $600 in various parts of the world. Not seeing any reason a terrorist would even stoop to wasting the time to make a gun.
that they'll even sacrifice the first amendment to do so!
... In a country wher it is legal to build your own gun (as long as you do not sell it) is it ever questionable that you should not be allowed to 3D print one?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I do agree that 3D-printed guns are related to national defense and national security, it's not in the way the court is asserting. 3D-printed guns are an important component of ensuring the people have access to arms to national defense and national security. Granted, the state of the art isn't very good compared to traditionally-manufactured arms, but you have to start somewhere.
NYTimes published full manual on making an atomic bomb in the 80's. That was deemed protected speech despite the fact that the non-proliferation treaty was more than a mere piece of paper at the time. Certainly that endangered national security. Dissemination of source code for all crypto is also considered protected (although not dissemination of compiled code). This seems to go against the standard that blueprints for making dangerous apparatus is protected. Considering that possession of a printed gun itself is protected by the 2nd amendment, how is this more dangerous than printing nuke manuals?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
That ALL sitting members of the US Supreme court, are in fact traitors to this nation... They just violated "Shall not be infringed" pretty directly. Knowingly. Aka... Treason.
Making semiauto or single-shot firearms for personal use is 100% legal in the US but a plastic gun that will blow up in your face after 20 rounds is teh evilz....
PDF books containing blueprints for real zip guns and submachine guns you can make in your basement like the Sten Mk II are ok.
PDF books containing plans and construction guidelines for submachine guns you can construct from materials at the hardware store are ok.
The Anarchist Cookbook is ok.
There is even court precedent proving that these were all considered free speech. If "duh terrists" and foreign nationals are a concern, then simply block all non-US traffic to download the materials and throw up a disclaimer citing arms export restrictions. If they manipulate a proxy to get it from abroad they've committed an act of cyberwarfare and subverted your security. Not your problem.
and not the foundation of the legal theory. Put another way, if I say out loud how nice it would be if somebody would shoot an enemy of mine when I know damn well someone in the audience is going to do it that's not "Free Speech". Should it be? I'm pretty sure the answer is 'No'. You don't get to incite people to commit crimes. But it's still speech. You're either going to draw the line or your not. But at some point I can probably find something abhorrent enough to you personally to get you to draw that line.
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Even when something is classified, doesn't it become free speech once it's leaked? Otherwise we'd all be in trouble for copying Snowden's leaked docs. Aside from that, these plans for making weapons weren't even classified in the first place. SCOTUS has to overturn this, or it seems like game over for liberty in the USA, or entry into some sort of Twilight Zone where you have to submit everything to DoD just to make sure it's not going to be classified.
The judge's basic assertion is that "these newer laws trump the consitution", and legally speaking, that's backwards.
The first time this opinion is strongly challenged should be intereting.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Congress is empowered to regulate international trade via the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, and thus there is no Constitutional right to free foreign trade.
Speech can be freely exported, provided that - for instance - it's not in a form that can be construed as technical information in munitions design, test, and/or manufacture. Therefore, Defence Distributed set themselves up to lose by fighting for the right to export CAD files specifically intended to crank a firearm, however half-assed, out of a 3D printer.
It doesn't matter whether the horse is out of the barn. A g-code file describing an AK-47 to a laser sintering printer is controlled despite the presence of AK-47s in the international arms marketplace. Congress intends to control trade in munitions, much as Congress also intends to limit murder. Acts regarding both are still valid, even when flouted. So absent changes in the law and/or resulting regulations, DD and their ilk will continue to have problems publishing such material if it can be readily exported via a computer network.
Uh, who exactly are you arguing with? I made no statements for or against any political position here. I was only posting to point out the quote that the first person you were replying to was likely referring to, rather than the one you quoted.
Of course the announcement would come from them.
>> National Security Interest Trumps Free Speech
Trump detected !
aaaaaaa
Information that is an actual threat will get banned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Schiff#Case_regarding_The_Federal_Mafia
How is this unexpected or even considered to be the wrong decision?
There are thousands of liberty-minded individuals moving to New Hampshire who want freedom and to end government. It's that simple. New Hampshire didn't even have a state police until fairly recently and it still doesn't have mandatory car insurance. The world doesn't end just because you don't have government do everything for you. We should end government schooling, we should end social security, we should end the state police. We should simply get rid of it all. Most laws are written by corporations and industries for the purpose of funnelling money into the pockets of the rich. We if we open the boarders, get rid of the taxes, and eliminate the burdensome regulatory BS that prevents new businesses from being started to compete with the entrenched monopolies we'd do much better. We don't need the state and more 3d printed guns can only ever help end it and put the people back in charge of their own lives.
If a terrorist wants to print a gun, is he going to mind that he is breaking the law? This law doesn't protect us from terrorism. Once the capability to print guns is there, no amount of legislating is going to prevent anyone from getting some gun designs form the black market, or from the internet, or even design their own. Pandora's box has been already opened.
What I find most troubling is that the vast majority of gun owners are being penalized in a failed effort to control the violence problem in the urban cesspools of America....those very same concentration camps of poverty and violence that have been controlled by the kleptocrats for generations. They take zero accountability for this complete and utter failure and continue to blame the tools used by the criminals bred in their failed political petri dish. The whole "national security" issue is simply a bunch of hand waving to take the attention away from the stark reality of their failure in their own back yard.
And now you expect me to trust that that same incompetent and power hungry lot to not spread this disease to my little corner of the country? No thank you. I'll be hanging on to my firearm and my Constitutionally guaranteed rights, thank you.
I see a lot of comparisons here to the battle Phil had with PGP some time ago.
In this case, it doesn't really matter if it's won or lost for Distributed Defense. The larger issue is watching our Government waste potentially millions of taxpayer dollars in a futile attempt to put the proverbial genie back into the bottle, and should be thoroughly investigated as Fraud, Waste, and Abuse.
It's quite blatantly a futile effort. Whether it's tomorrow or 20 years from now, rest assured the documents they are attempting to secure will be available online, and likely with minimal effort. This is made even worse with the current Streisand Effect of shining a spotlight on the data you're attempting to hide from the masses.
Cite national security, terrorism, or any other BS excuse; bottom line is you can't put the genie back in the bottle, and it's costing taxpayers.
But nobody is going to stop me from making a .357 Mag out of LEGO bricks!
Tyrant play-book 101.
Step 1: Register guns
Step 2: Outlaw guns
Step 3: Confiscate guns
Step 4: Let the killing begin
The script is always the same..... Just never thought I would see the US following that play-book...
A Fort Myers home was raided by law enforcement Wednesday morning with Lee County deputies and Department of Homeland Security agents coming in and out, according to neighbors.
Other neighbors told us the twins work in online marketing. We found they started an online forum for 3D printing discussions.
http://www.nbc-2.com/story/33154317/homeland-security-deputies-raid-fort-myers-home
The DOD and State Department has a much more adversarial relationship; so, I disagree with that.
Tim S.
Of course the announcement would come from them.
Roland Freisler would be proud of that judge.
But in this country of Freedom, this courts rullings are invalid, unconstitutional, and not withstanding. Our constitutional rights are not subject to Congress, or the President or the Courts or the States or Cities, or any other entity.
We will not comply with any court trying to hinder and thus infringe on our Constitutional rights of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, or 9th Amendments. Everybody can and should manufacturer your own weapons, without serial numbers, without registrations, without any sort of "permit" (to exercise your rights). And release the plans and manufacturing process into the public domain.
They act like its hard for bad guys to get guns.
Go find any inner city gang. Show them your "shocked face" when they have a gun without a permit.
Honestly, I think gun ownership is a right (You may want to peruse the Bill of Rights if you disagree), but I also want gun owners to be responsible citizens, who will take care that their gun doesn't get found by a small child (locks work), and will learn to shoot so if they need to use the gun, they should not be a major source of danger to bystanders.
So, to me, the argument about 3-D printing the guns should be that if you have one without the proper permitting + so forth, for your state laws, you get fined. I see that they would want to consider the company who told you how to 3-d print the gun, as some kind of accessery, but I dunno, thats gonna be hard to do without intruding on Free Speech.
It's an area between Pakistan and Afghanistan with a town famous for their gunsmiths. With little more than hand tools, they make surprisingly good copies of whatever weapons they can get their hands on to reverse engineer, from British Martini Henry rifles to Avtomat Kalashnikov variants. A single shot .22 'Liberator' is like a drop in the ocean for the global arms trade. Any black marketeer with a decently equipped machine shop can turn out modern firearms and any crooked military armourer can redirect or "lose" shipments of pistols, rifles, grenades, etc. ITAR has no practical use, except curtailing Americans' constitutionally protected rights.
What the f-nheimer! Isn't that one of those gosh-durn things in that there Bill o' Rights?
I have said it before and I will say it until I die:
IF WE DON'T START CLASSIFYING OBJECTS AS SALABLE ITEMS AND KEEP INSISTING ON SOME STUPID FREE SPEECH ANGLE, WE WON'T HAVE THE OBJECT OR THE SPEECH.
Let it go, a-holes.
The Age-old cry of the oppressor
Yes it is ridiculous, but it is also trivial to comply and legally make those plans available to 300 million Americans. Just label the files with the appropriate export control warnings and have down-loaders agree to the restrictions via the type of click through legal agreement that many software downloads have.
We went through this with encryption software and even web browsers that supported https... ITAR could have broken the Internet except people figured out how to comply and in their compliance show how silly the regulations actually were. The criminal act is in actually sending the files to a foreigner. So you just need to have someone state they are a US citizen and they agree not to export the files to a non-US citizen. Keep a log of downloads in case any downloader chooses to commit fraud and makes an unauthorized download.
Just comply with the bare requirements and then fight on the stronger grounds that the legal restrictions don't actually de facto prevent export, but that further restrictions on publication and distribution would indeed prevent the lawful distribution of the files to American citizens.
I think they want to take it all the way up to the Supreme Court, no half-measures.
So they want to lose big and take our Liberty with them? Thanks a lot?
Better to at least establish through practice the right to distribute these technical plans to Americans with the least possible amount of red tape (a EULA checkbox before download that says you are a US Citizen or Resident and will not export to citizens of other countries) and then fight for reasonable regulations on export. They should do this now, on their website, right now if they are at all serious about this issue.
The courts are not going to accept a prior restraint argument if there is not even the slightest care or check on whether the files are being requested by foreign sources.
Encryption was hard enough and technically web browsers and other software with encryption could still be export controlled, but actual weapon plans and schematics are going to be a bridge too far. And at least with encryption software there was a letter of the law attempt to comply export regulations. The court is going to have little appetite to go into the degree of lethality of the weapons in question to establish some higher threshold for exporting weapon plans abroad.
This case is overreach with all risk with the only hope being that the courts rule against this case more narrowly to allow them to fall back on the methods and procedures for export control that I suggest be applied.
Instead of establishing a file sharing community where amateur gunsmiths were actually sharing plans and making improvements to weapon designs and making some responsible efforts to make sure that people posing as foreign nationals at a time of ISIS weren't given weapon designs, this entire effort has been an immature attempt to put the cart before the horse that has been destructive of efforts to maintain 2nd amendment rights.
Somebody else please set up a marketplace for pistol, rifle and shotgun designs and schematics, put up the EULA to keep out foreign nationals and let's give them attention and praise for actually furthering the science, art and engineering of pistol, shotgun, and rifle design. And if that new website is sent some cease and desist letters threatening them, then let's support them, because then at least we can possibly win and protect the essence of the 2nd amendment which protects Americans right to keep and bear arms, not the rights of people in other countries.
I read through a lot of comments here but didn't see this thought yet, so I apologize if it's a repeat:
This ruling means that there is no such thing as free speech anymore. The first amendment is null and void. Why? Because if something becomes illegal to say on the basis of "national defense", then the government just needs to define more and more things [that they don't like] as a danger to national security/defense. That line is arbitrary, and the courts seem to always agree with the Executive and/or Legislative branch when they place something in the national security bucket.
If SCOTUS doesn't overturn this, then the day will come when speaking in a way that disagrees with the President will land you in jail because the Federal Government will have defined that as treachery and a clear danger to the security of the State. You see, what you said "is not merely tangentially related to national defense and national security; it lies squarely within that interest."
The whole freaking point of the 1st Amendment was to have the right to say things that the Government squarely disagrees with. If we've lost that, this country is legitimately doomed.
Here are the files. As if the ruling this court pinched out is going to make the files disappear.
Guns are like $5 in the USA, who cares?
It's over 300m, last estimate I saw was 350m. I like it when people bring numbers into this argument because people often forget the scale of this issue, and they also forget to compare numbers from various sources to look at the big picture.
1980:
Population - 220m
Guns - 175m
Homicides 23,000
2014 (2015 FBI crime stats are _still_ not released..)
Population - 320m
Guns - 350m
Homicides 14,000
For all of the whining about guns not making people safer, that more guns equals more murders/crimes, etc, an actual look at some basic data very very strongly suggests otherwise.
the world is awash in weapons that we produce.
This looks like a move protect profits more than anything else.
Except, it wasn't Rumsfeld who went before the U.N. to sell the invasion of Iraq, but Colin Powell. And after him and Rice, Hillary and Kerry sure sold the wars in Libya and Syria. And it's the State Department that sells hundreds of billions in weapons to friendly regimes, gives billions in military aid to Israel, and takes point in negotiations to maintain and lengthen the Pentagon's list of military bases while expanding NATO.
So I posit that disagreements between DOD and State are a) pure political theater b) like an old married couple who basically agree on everything, but argue about it anyway.