[extropy-chat] Rapid prototyping makes police state more likely

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, Sep 25, 2006 at 07:00:22AM -0700, spike wrote:

> Humanity is facing an entirely new threat with the rapid prototyping.

I don't see how. Ability to build weapons hinges on availability 
of knowledge. I might be able to fab a rocket (but propellant and
explosive is still not an unregulated commodity), but this doesn't mean
I can write the guidance software.

As to improvising UAVs from off-shelf components (remote compressed
video and control via 3G is the last part of the puzzle that fell in
place recently), we could do that a decade or two ago. Nobody killed
one with an improvised UAV yet. In contrast to that Predator/Hellfire
combo has been quite popular with the blackbag job crowd lately.

While some very few hobbyists can produce quite advanced designs,
statistically they're overwhelmingly improbable to overlap with
killers.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
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