Category: Technology

It’s almost like this AI sees us as an enemy, and like Skynet and all the other fictional AI wants to kill us.

A teen used AI to plan a hiking route. It trapped him on a cliff.

A teenage hiker in Canada recently became another cautionary tale about the perils of overtrusting artificial intelligence. After relying on an AI-generated route to ascend Crown Mountain in British Columbia, the 16-year-old found himself stranded on a steep cliffside near a climbing route known as the “Widowmaker.” The wayward traveler’s position was so precarious, that it took roughly three hours to coordinate a proper rescue plan.

“The boy was very scared. He definitely feared for his life,” search manager Paul Markey told North Shore News earlier this month.

The teen’s position near Widowmaker’s final headwall prevented helicopter pilots from safely steering close enough to retrieve him. Instead, an onsite crew reached the hiker using a rope belay system, equipped him with additional protective gear, and then moved him to a better extraction location. As luck would have it, responders had also just completed a rescue certification training session earlier that day not far from the lost teen’s predicament.

“It put him into a situation which was beyond his abilities, so things could have gone sideways pretty quickly,” Markey added.

Despite major advancements in the industry, many popular AI products are still liable to produce results with unreliable, misleading, or outright false information. Generative AI has suggested hungry users add glue to thicken pizza sauce, claimed that snakes are mammals, and advised fixing a broken turn signal with something called “blinker fluid.”

This isn’t the only AI-related hiking mishap, either. Barely a month before the Crown Mountain incident, a trio became stranded near Mount Shasta in California after using Google Gemini to help plan their trip. Among other issues, Gemini suggested they pack less food and water than they actually needed, turning a normally eight-hour excursion into a multiday emergency.

Instead of relying on AI options, rescue officials like Markey suggest using well-tested hiking route apps like AllTrails, CalTopo, and Gaia GPS.

AI Surveillance Can Already Build a Gun List and We Need to Stop It

I teach women to shoot. That means I spend a lot of time at ranges. When I pull into a parking lot to train, I expect cameras on the building. I do not expect networked artificial intelligence aimed at the driveway, reading every plate that comes and goes. But that is what happened at Eagle Sports Range in Cudahy, Wisconsin.

A woman filmed several Flock Safety cameras pointed inward at the entrance, not at the street, so they could capture every vehicle entering the lot. The video went viral. The range’s general manager, Saad Jaber, said in an interview that the cameras were installed back in 2023 after break-ins at other Milwaukee area ranges. The intent was security. By February, the range asked Flock to take them down over privacy concerns. Flock cited a contract and Jaber said he had not realized they were locked in. After the video spread, the range pulled the cameras itself. “To heck with this contract, we’ll deal with that later on,” he said. Then the line that should stick: “We own our privacy, but when that privacy gets infringed, then what are we doing? What kind of nation are we going to become?”

The situation at the range today has changed. Ordinary closed-circuit cameras remained and controlled by the business remain. Honestly, no one can fault the range. Basic CCTV is not the same thing as an AI system. These systems that can log license plate numbers, make, model, color, and bumper stickers, then feed them into a searchable network law enforcement can query across jurisdictions. Flock boasts of its system developing a “vehicle fingerprint” and their system works. The scratch you got when your garbage can hit your truck; the funny sticker that your daughter gave you for Father’s Day, or even the license plate frame that came from the dealership become unique identifiers.

Now, incorporate a searchable database where users can ask directed questions “for investigative purposes” and there you have a weapon. Ironically, the system marketed on safety has the potential for the exact opposite. At this point, you have all likely seen the headlines about police officers abusing access to these databases to track, surveil, harass and even stalk spouses and ex-partners. For example, an officer in the same area as the Eagle Sports Range in Milwaukee was charged after searching a romantic partner’s plate 124 times and another person’s plate 55 times without authorization. Scary huh? What is more alarming is the potential for governments to do the same thing.

We have seen how successful the laws preventing any “national firearms registry” have been. Even the director of the ATF has admitted that enough data already exists to serve as a de facto registry (even if they paid to have it non-searchable). With the use of integrated AI systems, bureaucrats no longer need to rely on Form 4473s digitally cataloged since the civilian version of circumventing laws under the guise of public safety. Select cameras installed at dedicated range entrances and it becomes safe to assume that the only people being logged are people who shoot. Now prompt the system to list which license plates, or individually identifiable faces/bodies have been to that range or gun store, and you have a practical list of gun owners. Get access to financial purchase records and instantly, you’ve got a detailed list of many gun owners and the capability to even predict individual weapon proficiency and capabilities.

When people start to notice the potential for exploitation, things change. Recently Flock Safety announced modifications: a shorter default retention window, case codes, audit tools, and limits on what outside agencies can search for. Sounds better, right? Those are product features from a private company. They are not a legal limit on what an AI surveillance network can become once the data exists. Senate hearings have already looked at the scale of these systems and the weakness of relying on vendors and agencies to police themselves.

This is the part gun owners should not treat as someone else’s problem. Artificial intelligence does not have to ban guns to undermine the Second Amendment. It only must make lawful training and lawful purchases continuously visible. Frequency of range visits becomes a data point. A sticker becomes a classifier. A private camera installed for theft prevention becomes an input into a system that can be queried, shared, and misused. People notice. Some train less. Some avoid the range. That is a chilling effect produced by software, not by a statute.

Gun owners are an early, obvious target because the locations are discreet and the activity is politically sensitive. They will not be the last. The same architecture can sort church parking lots, political rallies, medical clinics, or any other place a government later decides is worth watching. Once the capability is cheap and networked, the restraint is political, not technical. That is why a diplomatic accord between the U.S. and China is the right move, not a ban on innovation and not a race to deploy first.

During the Cold War, the U.S. and the USSR did not trust each other. They still negotiated pauses and limits on the most dangerous systems while verification rules were written. The Limited Test Ban Treaty and the early strategic arms talks were not acts of friendship. They were acknowledgments that unconstrained development of powerful technology, in the hands of rival states, was more dangerous than a negotiated slowdown. AI surveillance is in that category, and we should be doing the same.

License-plate readers are an early, narrow application. The underlying capability is pattern recognition at scale, tied to identity, movement, and behavior, deployable by governments and by companies that partner with them. China is already building domestic systems with far fewer restraints. The U.S. is scattering commercial AI cameras across roads, parking lots, and private businesses, then discovering the contracts and the sharing rules after the poles are up. A race to see who can surveil faster does not protect American rights. It normalizes the tools both governments will use.

A diplomatic accord akin to an arms treaty would not freeze every useful application of machine learning. Ideally, it would pause further development and deployment of high-risk AI surveillance and identification systems, by both Washington, D.C. and Beijing, long enough to write enforceable safeguards. Short retention that cannot be waived in a sales contract. Warrants for queries that are not tied to a specific crime. Hard limits on nationwide and cross-border sharing. Independent audits. A bright line against using these systems to build lists of people engaged in lawful activity, including firearm ownership and training. Verification matters here the way it mattered with missiles. A pause without inspection is a press release.

Businesses like Eagle Sports Range should not be left to discover, after installation, that a “security” product is feeding a network they do not control. Customers should not have to learn about it from a viral video. Policymakers should not wait for the next misuse case to decide that artificial intelligence aimed at lawful Americans needs rules written before the next expansion, not after.

Eagle Sports Range chose its customers over a contract. The larger choice is the same. Security technology can keep improving. It should not be allowed to quietly assemble records of who exercises a constitutional right while Washington, D.C. and Beijing sprint to see who can do it more efficiently.

A temporary, verified halt is how serious countries slow “progress” to allow for putting guardrails on a technology that is already veering off the highway. If you cherish your personal privacy, to include your right to keep and bear arms, you need to be involved at the local, state, and federal levels in defending your rights and freedoms; not just from the threats posed by dumb gun laws, but from the dangers posed by unchecked artificial intelligence and mass surveillance.

Real Reasons Gun Owners Should Be Worried About Flock

Technology can be a wonderful thing, but the problem with tech is that engineers are often so preoccupied with whether they could, they don’t stop to ask if they should. Yeah, that was paraphrased from a bit about scientists in Jurassic Park, but the real monsters we have today are things like Flock cameras.

There are times when I think I’m wearing the tinfoil hat being concerned about these things, but then I spend half a heartbeat and remember that, at least in this, I have rational concerns.

And I’m not the only one. You should have them, too.

The increasing prevalence of surveillance cameras, especially the automated license plate readers operated by Flock Safety and its competitors, has raised privacy concerns across the country. The concern is not limited to gun owners, but many are particularly worried about cameras at gun ranges and gun shops that have the potential to track them specifically–possibly even to create de facto registries of gun owners.

The cameras don’t only record license plates, notes Taylor Rhodes, executive director and vice president of the National Association for Gun Rights. “They log make, color, body type, any accessories you have on your vehicle…it tracks bumper stickers,” he told The Reload. “How many gun group stickers are on the back of cars? How many Glock stickers are on trucks?”

“The state can ask for everyone who has been to this shooting range, this gun store,” he said, and then “they have a de facto list of gun owners.”

Maybe not a complete list, but more than close enough to be concerning.

It’s one thing to know that there’s a digital record of you going to a website to buy ammo. It’s another to go in person and be tracked without your knowledge or consent.

Yes, it’s in public, but when you’ve got cameras on every street corner that are tracking me from my house to the store and back, we’ve got a problem.

Moreover, Rhodes’s comments are far from the totality of the issue. In pro-gun Florida, they have a bigger issue.

Flock Safety, which advertises its license plate readers in conjunction with gunshot detection devices, did not respond to The Reload‘s request for comment on the use of its cameras at shooting ranges or gun stores, but Central Florida has become a recent hotspot in the debate over the practice. There, residents outraged by Flock cameras at the entrance to an Ocala shooting range took to social media in protest. Someone apparently took things a step further by vandalizing the cameras, the vestiges of which were later removed.

The state Commission on Fish and Wildlife operates the public range on federal forest land. The agency did not respond to The Reload‘s requests for comment on why the cameras were installed or removed, but confirmed to the Daytona Beach News-Journal that it was investigating the vandalism. Residents have also posted video of cameras at a range operated by the agency in Osceola, where they reported someone also removed the Flock cameras.

“At the gun range the only thing they can track is gun owners, that driveway goes nowhere else,” Patrick McGeehan, a Daytona Beach criminal defense attorney and former homicide detective for the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, told The Reload. He is one of the residents who first posted about the presence and destruction of the cameras at the Ocala gun range.

“I want to know what data they are collecting, how they are using that data, who accesses that data, is it being used to train AI, what is the commercial value of that data,” McGeehan said.

Yeah, I’m with McGeehan here. This is a massive red flag because, as noted, the only thing they can track is gun owners. There’s apparently nothing else that way that could be tracked. This isn’t looking for poachers on state land. This is tracking the lawful activities of people exercising their constitutionally protected rights.

I want to know just what they’re looking for.

Because even if it’s above board, there are issues.

Recently, in Franklin County, NC, Detective Janet Leonard was fired after Sheriff Kevin White learned via an internal audit that Leonard was reportedly tracking every movement of a private citizen who wasn’t a suspect in any crime. White made the right call and suspended the use of Flock cameras in the county, but this is one of the issues with Flock.

It’s not whether or not they’re intended for such a use; it’s that they can be used for such a use.

For gun owners, that’s an even bigger problem, because Leonard didn’t (allegedly) have to do all that much to track a single person. Neither did any of the other people who have been fired for misusing these cameras, including at least five in my city. What makes it a bigger problem is that these cameras are pointing toward gun stores, gun ranges, and capture all of those stickers on the back of cars, such as those reading “NRA Lifetime Member” or “Gun Owners of America,” to say nothing of the various brand decals.

Plus, there are always the Punisher skulls, the military service stickers, and so on, which can all paint a picture of who is behind the wheel.

If ever there was a time to really work at being a gray man, now is it.

Flock’s Gunfire Alerts Raise a New Fourth Amendment Question
Gun owners should be paying attention to how police use gunfire microphones in conjunction with license plate cameras.

Flock Safety, the main supplier of the recently controversial roadside cameras that scan passing cars, offers more than automated license plate readers (ALPRs). The company also sells a surveillance bundle of sorts called the “Safe City” subscription. Billed as Flock’s “Most Complete Solution,” the “Safe City” subscription includes the much-discussed ALPRs, along with a live video camera—and a gunfire microphone. Bundling these together risks turning lawful gun owners into criminal suspects based only on proximity.

It is hard to find reliable information about the number of active gunfire microphones in the United States. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Atlas of Surveillance documents nearly 250 gunshot-detection deployments and purchase plans nationwide, although that includes programs that have since ended. Cities also have deployed firearm detection systems that rely on AI to detect visible firearms on video or combine acoustic and dual-sensor infrared cameras to detect gunshots.

Flock is just one of many suppliers in the global gunshot detection market, which has an estimated total value of $1.5 billion. But the company’s marketing material raises concerns about the technology’s capabilities, which go beyond simply detecting gunfire. In Flock’s own words, a confirmed gunshot “can surface the vehicles seen entering or leaving the area around the time of the sound, using nearby Flock license plate reader cameras.” That statement deserves scrutiny, since it describes a mechanism for turning suspected gunfire into a list of nearby vehicles.

Innocent gun owners could end up on such lists. Suppose a bang recorded by one of these microphones gets classified as gunfire (which it may not actually be, given the possibility of a false positive from a similar noise). That “confirmed event” can trigger an ALPR inquiry that sweeps in drivers who had nothing to do with the noise. In a country where more than 20 million people have carry permits and 29 states do not require them, some of those drivers will be lawfully armed. The proximity of those innocent drivers could be mistaken for evidence that they fired the shot.

This possibility raises two legal concerns for lawful gun owners. First, what justifies stopping a person on one of these lists? Second, is querying the database a search under the Fourth Amendment? Recent cases provide some answers.

The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen protects lawful public carry. In the 2024 case United States v. Daniels, which involved the detention of an unarmed man who did not match a 911 caller’s description of armed men, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit noted that no crime was reported. Citing Bruen, the court said it “cannot look with suspicion on citizens presumably exercising their Second Amendment rights in a lawful way.”

Last May in Commonwealth v. Foster, by contrast, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld a stop where police responded within seconds to late-night alerts from a gunfire microphone, found only two people, and observed conduct the court considered evasive. An investigative stop requires reasonable suspicion based on specific facts connecting someone to suspected criminal activity. The risk here is that an alert combined with a plate match could be treated as sufficient for reasonable suspicion even though it only establishes proximity.

A recent case from New Jersey illustrates that risk. Last March, in State v. Carrillo, a state appeals court ordered suppression of evidence (an unlawfully possessed handgun) discovered in a minivan after a traffic stop. The police searched the minivan after obtaining a warrant. But the court held that a gunshot alert and an ALPR hit did not adequately connect the minivan to a shooting the day before. Prosecutors conceded that video supposedly showing muzzle flashes from the minivan at the time of the gunfire actually showed none.

When police look for evidence inside a car, that obviously counts as a search. But is that also true when they query an ALPR database?

Last March in United States v. Porter, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit held that using a 10-camera ALPR network to locate a known vehicle was not a search. Three months later in Chatrie v. United States, by contrast, the Supreme Court held that obtaining Google’s phone location records to identify people near a crime scene was a search. Roadside camera observations differ from detailed phone location data. But an alert-triggered ALPR query seems closer to the situation in Chatrie.

Defenders of gunshot microphones will say that gunfire on city streets is usually illegal and that responding quickly saves lives and reduces violence. But a federally funded evaluation of the gunfire detector ShotSpotter in Chicago and Kansas City, Missouri found that the microphones, while associated with faster responses and more recovered firearms, did not result in fewer shootings or better clearance rates.

With state legislatures slow to act, city governments have to make their own decisions about how to balance safety with privacy. Short of enacting a total ban on every part of the Flock bundle, city councils should adopt four rules to preserve their constituents’ rights.

First, except in exigent circumstances, police should be required to obtain a warrant, including time and distance limits, before running an alert-triggered ALPR query. Second, no city should link gun detection alerts to ALPR data without first holding a public hearing and a vote. Third, every query should be logged for auditing, and information about uninvolved vehicles should be deleted when it is no longer needed as evidence. Fourth, a stop or search based solely on “alert plus proximity” should not be allowed.

Every city using gunshot detection has a contract renewal or replacement decision coming. Those decisions should include publicly disclosed rules about how the system can be used with ALPRs. Because these technologies can be bundled, these questions matter regardless of which vendor a city chooses. Whether a city is expanding an existing network or considering a replacement, the limits on surveillance should be settled before the next contract is signed.

BS. Science fiction isn’t reality

A New Form Of Life
By any working definition that draws on biology rather than philosophy or religion, AI is alive.

We are in the process of creating a second form of life. The emergence of this new form of life is an inevitable result of the fundamental laws of the universe — forces similar to those that brought about humans’ own existence. This new form of life is gradually taking shape in the world’s data centers.

It does not breathe, reproduce through cells or adhere to the chemistry that governs every organism on Earth. However, it is composed of the same fundamental ingredients: matter, energy and information all organized in ways that allow it to persist, adapt and act. What is being developed is more than another generation of machines. It is the early emergence of a new form of life.

There is nothing artificial about systems built from real atoms, powered by real electricity, running in real machines. The systems reproduce, vary, adapt, undergo selection and gather energy from their environment. By any working definition that draws on biology rather than philosophy or religion, that is life.

What Is Life?

Once molecules capable of copying themselves appear, they do. Copies that are slightly better at replicating themselves accumulate at the expense of those that are slightly worse. Variants that fit a local environment outcompete variants that do not. If an environment changes, a population changes with it. Across long stretches of time, this process generates organisms of astonishing complexity.

A living system reproduces, creates variants, selects from among those variants and uses energy from its environment to do so. Reproduction, variation, selection and energy define life. This definition does not require carbon, cells, a heartbeat, a nervous system or pain.

Consider a virus. If a chemist synthesizes the genome of a virus from ordinary chemicals, the result is a strand of nucleic acid that on its own does nothing. Many people, looking at that strand, will say: That is not alive. But put the strand into a cell and it will direct the cell’s machinery to make copies of itself. Those copies make further copies. Errors accumulate, variants appear and survivors persist. Influenza and the coronavirus do this. By my earlier four-property definition, these viruses are life.

Every living thing needs context. Humans depend on the atmosphere, adequate temperatures, a food chain and the planet’s protective magnetic field. Remove that context and humans die as surely as viruses without cells. With life, a substrate can change but dependence on it does not.

The common objection to calling machine intelligence a form of life is: How can something dependent on human-built hardware and electricity be alive? But all life depends on its context or envelope! Viruses need cells, humans need Earth and machine intelligence needs data centers and supporting infrastructure. Depending on a particular environment does not disqualify something from being considered alive. It is a consistent condition.

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Rule Of Thumb™:

BLUF
My take is, let’s look at everything, but take our time. Once we put the government in the driver’s seat, there’s no turning back.

AI Regulation: If Bill Gates Is for It, I’m Against It. But Is It That Simple?

If you’re confused by the latest tidal wave of stories about the need to regulate artificial intelligence (AI), just know that it’s all by design, and it will get worse. The left is following a familiar playbook, creating confusion and chaos that eventually gets so out of control that you will predictably have people throwing their hands up in the air and turning to the government to fix things — just as planned.

The ready-made solution when that time comes will be increased regulation of AI, along with mountains of fines and costs that create a barrier for newcomers to get into the space. This will serve to suppress competition from start-ups while effectively giving Big AI an assist from the government and its friends in the Democrat Party, with a few Republicans thrown in for good measure.

The consequences for this concerted and orchestrated push to take control over the AI space will be less innovation, a more energized China, increased risk to American competitiveness and national security, and, closer to home, some major infringement on First Amendment rights and more monolithic control over what’s accepted truth and what is not. When you have only a handful of companies with this much power, the death of free speech is on the horizon.

That said, something does need to be done to provide “guardrails” so that AI doesn’t do what the doomsayers say it will do, which they allege will wipe out life as we know it.

At a time like this, people like you and I need to rely on leaders and experts. The question is, which ones?

If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything from a public arena standpoint, it’s that since we don’t have access to all the information we need and deserve, we are left to base our own positions on these sorts of matters on the people we trust most. On the flip side, if Bill Gates is for it, I’m against it.

In August, Gates published a blog post where he called on technology leaders, politicians, and leaders in government to come up with new policies to protect jobs and the people who do them, and to tax companies based on how they use AI.

If this sounds a lot like the “climate change” template, it is. If you bought into that scam long enough, you’d have to conclude that the key to saving the planet is more regulation and higher taxation. Same thing here. The key to saving society from the dangers of AI is more regulation and higher taxation, at least according to Gates.

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From different sources, this didn’t affect the E-File system.

ATF Confirms ‘Major’ Cyberattack Without Offering Details of What Was Targeted

While the ATF has confirmed that it was the target of a “major” cyberattack by the ransomware group known as Qilin, details of the data breach are still under wraps, and it’s unclear what information may have been stolen or compromised.

One of the concerns is that the details of potentially tens of millions of gun owners might have been accessed. The ATF has digital files of billions of documents from FFLs who have gone out of business, including the Form 4473s that were filled out by customers. If the hackers accessed that material, it could be used for a variety of nefarious purposes, from identity theft to providing criminals with a handy list of gun owners in their area. (though that would take a little bit of work on the part of the ransomware group).

“The NRA is deeply concerned about how data leaks can expose the privacy of gun owners,” a spokesperson for the National Rifle Association told the DCNF. “We are working with the administration to understand the scope and severity of the situation, and will keep our members updated as facts are confirmed.”

“If anything this reinforces why we feel it’s critical that the ATF compile as little information about gun owning Americans as possible,” Second Amendment Foundation Senior Director of Litigation William Sack said. “Not only should our government not have that information, but they’ve shown over and over again that it’s not even secure in their possession.”

At the moment, very little data is secure, whether it belongs to a government agency or a private company. Ransomware attacks have become increasingly common, with the Department of Justice announcing on Wednesday that it had taken control of the platforms QScan and QTRouter, which are connected to the Chinese government.

In a court filing, the DOJ revealed that it had been the target of attacks using the platforms, along with other government entities like NASA, the Federal Reserve, Department of Energy, U.S. Senate, Department of Health and Human Services and National Institutes of Health.

The website Cyber News reports that the Russia-linked hackers targeted a system that contains information “tied to ATF investigations,” though the agency has not officially confirmed that detail.

The Bureau stressed that the impacted system operates separately from the ATF enterprise network, but that doesn’t change the fact that leaked information about ATF investigations could pose a serious national security risk.

ATF investigations can target a wide range of serious criminal activity – from illegal firearms trafficking and violent gangs to bomb makers, terror suspects, and even domestic violence offenders.

… If Qilin’s claims are legitimate – and data was stolen from the isolated ATF system – the potential fallout could be enormous.

Ongoing ATF investigations could be compromised, potentially undermining prosecutions and exposing hundreds, if not thousands, of informants, witnesses, and other law enforcement activities across the country.

There’s no shortage of bad actors who would love to get their hands on that kind of information, including Mexican-based drug cartels and foreign governments hostile to U.S. interests.

Again, as of right now we don’t know what information was accessed because the ATF is keeping those details to itself and the agencies investigating the cyberattack. Given the implications for gun owners, gun sellers, and firearm industry members, as well as ongoing ATF investigations, this “major” breach should be of major concern and spark major discussions on Capitol Hill about the amount of data that the ATF has compiled on those involved in lawful firearm transactions.

Marines Just Added AI That Turns M240 Machine Guns Into Drone Killers
The Marine Corps selected Allen Control Systems’ Bullfrog for L-MADIS, adding autonomous firepower and cheap kinetic kills against drones.

ACS Bullfrog

The Marine Corps has selected Allen Control Systems’ Bullfrog autonomous weapon station for integration into its Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System (L-MADIS) under the Ground-Based Air Defense (GBAD) program, according to a company announcement this week.

“The Marine Corps requires the most sophisticated and accurate possible capabilities to carry out its critical missions,” said Mike Wior, co-founder and CEO of Allen Control Systems, in a press release provided to Military.com.

We are honored to support Marines with fast, scalable, and cost-effective counter-drone solutions that integrate seamlessly into existing platforms.

How Bullfrog Works

Bullfrog is not a new gun. It is a robotic weapon station that uses artificial intelligence, computer vision and precision robotics to transform legacy or modern firearms into systems capable of autonomous detection, tracking and engagement of aerial threats. The version selected for the Marine Corps is built around the M240 7.62mm machine gun.

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Gun Owners Have a Lot to Be Worried About With Cameras, AI, and Gun Rights

George Orwell’s 1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual. It was based on the very real concern of a government becoming a totalitarian surveillance state where all the people did was observed, recorded, and scrutinized for any sign of WrongThink. It was a terrifying glimpse into Orwell’s fears should his own preferred ideology of socialism take hold and go too far, but it wasn’t just about socialism, either. It was what the state could do when no one stopped it.

And while we’ve often invoked the imagery of Big Brother to make a point about surveillance overreach, things are scarier now than ever before…and gun owners are especially concerned.

Manufacturers of AI software that uses surveillance cameras to search for guns say it makes people safer, but some gun rights activists told Cowboy State Daily they think that’s a brazen violation of Second Amendment and privacy rights.

Companies such as Volt for years has provided gun-detection software to schools, which the company claims helps stop school shootings.

The city of Hobbs, New Mexico, has outfitted about 70 video cameras with software from another company, ZeroEyes.

ZeroEyes claims that the software helps cameras quickly detect drawn firearms, which are then verified at company facilities by human observers, who can alert local authorities.

Gun-detecting AI software doesn’t require dedicated cameras, it can be applied to existing surveillance, traffic and web cameras.

What Difference Would It Make?

Firearms enthusiast Nic George of Sheridan told Cowboy State Daily that he understands the good intentions behind the software, but the broader implications of what gun surveillance might lead to are troubling.

“Right now, it might not be a problem. But what’s the next step?” he said.

As things stand, programs like ZeroEyes raise murky questions when it comes to gun rights, George said.

Now, this particular piece goes on to suggest one potential problem would be someone being charged with brandishing because they pulled their gun in a legitimate self-defense situation, but the camera doesn’t see the other person’s weapon. It’s a fair concern, but I have bigger worries.

Earlier this week, Cam wrote about some concerns regarding the controversial Flock cameras. Thanks to an add-on to the system, your neighborhood Flock cameras can potentially detect all of your electronic devices, such as cell phones, Bluetooth-enabled earbuds, smart watches, etc.

And yeah, the RFID tag on your gun that the dealer forgot to remove.

Still, even without that, these are still cameras. If a system like ZeroEyes can be installed on Flock cameras, imagine you go for a walk, only to have the cameras detect you and that you’re armed. They follow you as you walk around the block, stop to chat with the neighbors, pet the dog from down the street that always wags its tail at you, then circle back home.

Congratulations, you’ve just shown them that you do have a gun in your home, that you carry it, and they may well know every electronic device in your home, which the authorities could then use to spy on you.

I’m not saying that this will happen, mind you, only that I’m not seeing a lot of reasons why it can’t, and that worries me. The fact that AI gun detection software has a track record of not being able to tell the difference between a gun and a bag of chips doesn’t make me feel any better.

Maybe I’m being paranoid, but just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you, and while I know that the ATF probably has a lot of ways to determine who has a gun and who doesn’t, that doesn’t mean I have to allow them to make it easier for them, state authorities, or the local cops.

Hey Tech Bros, the Model for Surviving on the AI Frontier is Guns

Technology being the biggest, most society-altering industry means that questions of technological freedom have high stakes. If what Anthropic and OpenAI are allowing the government to do to their models becomes the norm, it will be more destructive to freedom than any gun control law.

These companies have raised $125 billion and $190 billion in funding, respectively. Companies committed to freedom would spend a few basis points of their funding to sue the government and preserve the technological freedom that the internet has forged. Instead, the current incumbents are willingly buffalo jumping away the freedom that is their birthright, trading it for a pat on the head from the US government.

The steelman of their position is that if they don’t go along, they won’t have companies left to defend. The rebuttal is that if they do go along, they won’t have companies worth defending.

People often think of tech freedom through a First Amendment lens, because that’s the only mainstream framework to articulate a technical legal argument for “The government is required to leave me alone.” But as tech becomes more dangerous — AI! drones! humanoid robots! biochemical research! — the Second Amendment is the better fit.

The Second Amendment embraces the idea that dangerous technology should be decentralized, and that the bad things about that will be solved by the good things about it. Gun rights are winning because they’ve leaned into that. AI is every bit as pivotal for individual freedom, so we should think about the rights to create, sell, buy, and possess it through the same lens.

— Open Source Defense in AI is the frontier of the Second Amendment

Like All Gun Control Measures, 3D Censorware Mandates Are Doomed to Fail.

The Assn. of 3D Printing supports the legislation in New York and California, but “it’s not going to work,” [Chairman Bill] Decker said. “It’s more of a political statement than anything else.”

Criminals still will come up with ways to make guns from 3-D printers, either by altering their designs or taking their printing projects elsewhere, Decker said.

The more aggressive the technology becomes, the more likely that it also blocks unintended items, said Rory Mir, director of open access and technology community engagement at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group. Some harmless pipes might look like gun parts, or an S-shaped wall hanger might resemble an auto sear trigger used to modify a semiautomatic weapon into a machine gun.

“These sort of censorship algorithms don’t work, and they wind up capturing and blocking a lot of lawful speech,” Mir said.

If print instructions are submitted for a cloud-based artificial intelligence search, it also risks the privacy of people’s artistic and proprietary creations, Mir said.

— David A. Lieb in In California and New York, a push to take aim at guns made with 3-D printers