>Forget everything you think you know about criminals. Happening right now, technology is democratizing the very nature of crime—thanks to 3D printers. By 2025, most people will have a 3D printer in their home, so it’s time for law enforcement to understand the dark side of this evolving technology, before it’s too late.
>“Thieves are using 3D printers to create new forms of crime,” says John Hornick, author of 3D Printing will Rock the World. “Counterfeiters, drug dealers, black marketers, gangsters, terrorists, and other criminals will not be far behind. But officers can fight back if they understand the technology.”
>Available for interviews, Q&As, and bylines, Hornick can discuss:
>What law enforcement officers should now be looking for during a search or raid—the machines and materials that can make weapons, drugs, and other illegal items >Officer safety issues created by 3D printing >How new technology can lead to dangerously undetectable guns or bombs that don’t even resemble weapons—instead, they could look like soda bottles, hair brushes, or other everyday products >Why 3D printing can lead to counterfeiting on steroids—allowing the creation of illegal drugs and new types of trafficking >How 3D printing can be used to benefit law enforcement—including crime scene models, operations planning, and forensics
I know that Corey Doctorow's "Makers" had a gang of kids with 3D-printed guns, but has cyberpunk RPG/fiction really touched on makers besides "nanobots, meme" and "replicators lol"? The '90s cyberpunk novel Fairyland had the main character running a machine that made designer drugs, but I can't think of much else.
>tfw using a 3D printed carbon nanotube katana to slay the cops and end the government
Asher James
The thing is is that 3D printing is good for rapid prototypes and single use machines, but is too expensive and slow for large batches of anything. So it fits well in "this guy made a single shot gun he can bring through security because it's plastic" for cyberpunk, but not a whole lot else. It's just not a super viable manufacturing technology
Wyatt Jackson
WELL...aside from pooping the party on weapons consider.
drugs >no officer, thats just a little bear statue my partner gave me >complete with metal insert its both the storage and delivery system for some drug
Counterfeiting >modern printers are not precise enough to match tings perfectly, so skills are needed to finish the duplicates >some day it'll just be a matter of printing the right colors over a perfect copy pumped out by a better printer
Terrorism >print out a housing shaped like a crosswalk button >grenade goes into the housing >first (or random) person to press the button gets blown away instead of a safe crossing >works with any inane public item so no more "suspicious bags"
Smuggling >print an aerodynamic housing around contraband >throw or fire it from cannons over walls/borders >drop it via drone into pickup spot
by itself 3D printing is interesting, but on it's own it isn't as powerful a tool for criminals not yet anyway
Gavin Adams
you are conpletely retarded
Anthony Hall
or you know, the terrorist could just go buy a stuffed bear, inane public item, or aerodynamic housings
Liam Russell
...then what things would you do with 3d printing?
or perhaps metal or stone-printing?
Julian Ramirez
I can't speak for 3D printing in specific, but technology in general starts off really expensive but drops drastically in price as we get better at it. You wouldn't, for instance, judge the ultimate capacity of mp3 players by their earliest examples, which had a whopping 32MB of storage space for the inflation-adjusted price of somewhere around $350.
Thomas Diaz
Man, I remember those bricks.
>HOLDS AN ENTIRE ALBUM*!
>*10 mp3s at 128kbps compression with 3:00 duration each
It took a long time before it was more appealing than just burning CDs and using my Discman, and by that time, I was too old to be concerned with being able to listen to my music wherever I went.
Chase Cruz
Yeah, it's definitely getting better. But from the perspective of someone who works with it a fair amount (mechanical engineer) it's good for some things (user testing, rapid prototyping, weird geometries) but can't and probably won't replace typical manufacturing processes
Jordan Bailey
Watchdogs 2 had some stuff going on with 3d-printed guns, I think?
Benjamin Parker
Well, I still can't fit my entire music collection on the mp3 players I use, but c. 700 albums is a damn good start. And between my car and my mp3 player, I listen to far more music when I'm away from home (and my computer) than I do when I'm there.
I think the market for dedicated mp3 players is drying up as people increasingly put everything on their phones, but I have to say that I value the separation, not to mention the considerably longer battery life.
Dylan Powell
yeah.
and like a lot of tech things these days, what really works best is finding other people's designs on the net and modding them to do stuff you want.
yeah, there are some multy-shot 3Dp gun plans out there, but several governments have been working together to get them off the net.
its like that one website that showed you step-by-step how to build a guided cruise missile with off the shelf components(capable of of a 15 pound payload) that site is now not there anymore...
>but I have to say that I value the separation, not to mention the considerably longer battery life. what ticked me off was that the headphones I bought stopped working with the jack in my iPod (the plug-end didn't properly contact with the jack in the pod) so I have a perfectly good iPod but none of the ear-phones I have plug into it and that pisses me off something fierce...
Jeremiah Ross
>what ticked me off was that the headphones I bought stopped working with the jack in my iPod (the plug-end didn't properly contact with the jack in the pod) so I have a perfectly good iPod but none of the ear-phones I have plug into it and that pisses me off something fierce... Headphone issues seem to be the leading problem with mp3 players, at least once we discount outright physical abuse. But I've always been adverse to spending too much on something I'm toting around with me all the time and could easily get lost or damaged. Aside from a battery life that is a good bit shorter than some of the other players I've had (c. 8 hours), I'm a big fan of my Sansa Clip Zip, which I've had for like half a decade now and put through hell, and it's only now starting to die on me. I long ago destroyed the actual clip, but I've always just stuck it in my pocket anyway. But now, some of the buttons are becoming less responsive; I have to press them firmly, and sometimes more than once to get them to register. Anyway, I think it was like $50 when it was new, with some additional money going to a micro SD card, which can be used in whatever mp3 player I get next. I know that Sansa's cheapie Clip Jam is under $30, and while I understand it's a bit of a step down from my Clip Zip in terms of features (the fact that it's not Rock Box-able would be my biggest issue), it's hard to beat that price for an mp3 player that's not a piece of shit.
Evan Williams
>>>bump
Joseph Sanchez
>this thread again
3d printing is a meme, and always will be a meme. People have been saying it will spell the end of this or that or change that or this game for over a decade now. The precision isn't there.
If we're talking about some far future scenario where 3d printing ISN'T shit anymore, yes these things are theoretically possible.
But how the FUCK is 3d printing supposed to allow the creation of drugs!? IT'S PLASTIC JETS YOU MONG, NOT A CHEMISTRY SET
Bentley Martin
>Computers will never be small enough to fit in your average home! >You'd need a whole room for it, and anyway, what need does a regular family have of something that just crunches numbers?
Tyler Lee
There needs to be a practical need for it to drive down cost. All needs for 3d printing remain niche. Your entire reaction folder of smug bitches isn't going to change that, sperglord.
Nor do they explain how the fuck you "3d print" 'drugs'.
Colton Hernandez
You could maybe have something where you can change the composition by layer in order to tailor a high.
Still dumb
Juan Myers
You do know that 3d printing materials exist in a variety of forms already, right? Hell, I have one spool for mine that is 40% wood. It's not beyond reason that someday you could have XXXXX drug suspended in an edible material of sort and use it in a printer
Anthony Sullivan
Transmetropolitan touches on it.
One issue Spider meets a homeless guy with no legs who lost them shutting off a maker unit some crackhead was breeding disassembler nanobots in.
The whole building went grey goo and he was with the first response team; lost his legs wading through the stuff to shut the machine off.
Connor Wood
That's like saying plastic bag dispensers are dangerous criminal items because drugs may be distributed in them. Unless 3d printers can create drugs on their own it'll be the manufacture of drugs that will be the core thing targeted.
Kayden Morgan
>The precision isn't there. What? The precision of those lithographic ones are CRAZY good compared to extruders and the early repraps.
It's not molecular changing, like if you want to print working organs, that's still sci-fi. But they're working on that too. And that's what OP was talking about with printed designer drugs.
Cyberpunk used to be sci-fi you know.
John Powell
Bravo for keeping on point.
Bad way to lose your legs. You'd hope they would have some way to regrow them if they have nanotech. But ah, dystopia.
Isaac Phillips
They're certainly trying - they've already 3d printed pills of different shapes (which is good for differing absorption needs) and used the technology to vary dosages
It's not quite custom-making whole drugs from scratch, not yet at least, but it's certainly something - you could see instructions for regular drugs being modified for extra-strength dosages easily, and the people behind the technology certainly want to get it to a synthesis level eventually
Charles Howard
>By 2025, most people will have a 3D printer in their home What? Bullshit.
Camden Jenkins
Surprisingly yes.
The 1990 rpg TORG had a technohorror universe named Tharkold, which actually used 3D printers as part of automated factories called MakerMods.
In that universe, you could assemble a car or rifle in your basement, if you had a MakerMod and a NerveJack to use it. (Designing was done in VR, as was operating the machine.)
The raw materials needed were generally gathered by autonomous machines which scavenged for Ceramics, Metals, Hydrocarbons and Biochemicals to be used in the manufacturing process.
Nicholas Morales
>There needs to be a practical need for it to drive down cost. All needs for 3d printing remain niche. Dude, that is exactly what an idiot at IBM said about computers in the 70's.
