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3DPrinting
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All of this represents a deeply flawed understanding of how such "tracing" works. In order for this to accomplish anything you have to have both the printed gun part and the printer that made it already in your forensics lab, which means whoever you're trying to hassle has already been caught. This might help secure a conviction after the fact by being able to conclude that, yes, part A was probably printed on printer B. It absolutely will not allow any random beat cop to grab any random printed gun off the street and be able to proclaim, "Ah, yes. This was printed by Bob Smith at 123 Maple Street," or whatever hyperbolic fantasy these authoritarian types are always wishing for.
The risk here is cocksure but incompetent investigators inevitably generating a shitton of false positives and charging/convicting the wrong people just because they happen to own a 3D printer, and judges and juries believing them. This kind of thing already happens in established fields of forensics all time and if they couch everything in enough authoritative sounding language nobody who doesn't already know a whole bunch about the topic is going to be able to call them out on it.
Bingo, the goal is not to actually trace 3d printed guns, it's to add another piece of evidence they can slap onto the target of their investigation to improve the chance of getting a conviction. Whether the accused is actually guilty of anything is truly irrelevant to the intended purpose of these kind of things, they are in practice assumed guilty by the prosecution unless proven innocent. The point is simply to make a convincing case to a judge or jury.
Exactly!
The belief that forensics is reliable is unfounded. I don’t know the stat but last I remember reading it, it’s pretty low that they can prove anyone did anything. More murderers haven’t been caught than have.
There's also all the mess of slicer and printer settings. It would be interesting to give someone a collection of parts with different nozzle sizes, extrusion widths, pressure advance settings, temp settings, print speeds/accelerations, etc