Re: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
From: Justin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Jan 10, 2005 7:35 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire .. Some gun accidents are suicides reported as such to avoid embarrassment to the family. I've heard this from other people, too--some in reasonably good positions to know how such things were reported. And there's surely some ambiguity between fatal accidents caused by doing something really stupid and intentional suicides. .. --John
RE: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
Justin wrote: I don't believe the article when it says that smart guns are useless if stolen. What do they have, a tamper-proof memory chip storing a 128-bit reprogramming authorization key that must be input via computer before allowing a new person to be authorized? And what's to stop a criminal from ripping out all the circuitry and the safety it engages? The 'stolen gun' problems most of the so-called 'smart gun' proposals are trying to address are the situation when a cop's own gun is taken from him and immediately used against him, or a kid finding one in a drawer. A determined and resourceful person can, given time, defeat them all. After all, a 'determined and resourceful person can build a gun from scratch with a small machine shop, and many do (its not automatically illegal). I link below to an absolutely bizarre proposal - apparently real and claimed to be existing in prototype - by an South African inventor to make an unstealable gun. Amongst other weirdness, it fires the specially manufactured cartridges by firing a laser into the glass-backed primer. As a result removing the electronics would make it unusable. You'd have to hack it instead. http://www.wmsa.net/other/thumb_gun.htm This is a typical example of what I meant when I said that 'smart gun' proposals all come from people with zero knowledge of how guns are used. I strongly suspect that the gun in the picture is a non-working prop. Peter Trei
RE: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
Justin wrote: On 2005-01-11T10:07:22-0500, Trei, Peter wrote: Justin wrote: I don't believe the article when it says that smart guns are useless if stolen. What do they have, a tamper-proof memory chip storing a 128-bit reprogramming authorization key that must be input via computer before allowing a new person to be authorized? And what's to stop a criminal from ripping out all the circuitry and the safety it engages? The 'stolen gun' problems most of the so-called 'smart gun' proposals are trying to address are the situation when a cop's own gun is taken from him and immediately used against him, or a kid finding one in a drawer. A determined and resourceful person can, given time, defeat them all. from the article: Guns taken from a home during a robbery would be rendered useless, too. That statement, in the OA, is not a quote - it's either something the author dreamed up, or (in context) BS fed her by a NJ cop So, we've established that a NYT journalist, writing on a subject she probably knows nothing about, will regurgitate any naively plausible bullshit she's fed. What else is new? My statement that there are a significant number of cops killed by their own guns, and a small but tragic number of people killed accidentally playing with improperly stored guns they find, remains true. These 'smart guns' could reduce that problem, but making them mandatory is a threat to freedom. The South African Smart gun... http://www.wmsa.net/other/thumb_gun.htm Totally useless. Failure modes and various other complaints: I laughed when I saw this (my first thought was How could anyone practice enough to maintain proficiency?) I was later appalled when I found a colleague using it as an example in a presentation on biometrics. I also strongly expect that Mr. van Zyl does not have a functioning device - this is vaporware of some kind. Peter Trei
RE: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
Justin wrote: On 2005-01-10T15:04:21-0500, Trei, Peter wrote: John Kelsey Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire By ANNE EISENBERG I just wonder what the false negative rates are. Seem like a A remarkable number of police deaths are 'own gun' incidents, so the police do have a strong motivation to use 'smart guns' if they are reliable. The NJ law specifically exempts the police from the smart gun requirement (which for civilians goes into effect in 2007 or 2008). Regardless, the legislature doesn't need to get involved for law enforcement to change their weapons policy and require smart guns. Cynically, I'm not the slightest bit suprised that the police are exempted: 'safety for the government, not for the people'. False positives may also present a problem. If the only way to get an acceptable identification rate (99%, for instance) is to create a 50% false positive rate for unauthorized users, that's reduces utilitarian benefit by half. A 1% false negative rate is too high. A 50% false positive rate is *much* too high. Smart guns are a ploy to raise the cost of guns, make them require more maintenance, annoy owners, and as a result decrease gun ownership. If it's combined with a rule to ban the transfer and/or ownership of 'dumb' (ie, reliable) guns, then it's also a backdoor gun confiscation policy. I'm afraid that they may get away with it. Here in MA, the only handguns which can legally be bought new are those on a fairly short list compiled by the State Attorney General which meet his arbitrary 'safety standards'. If I wanted, say, a Pardini (a very expensive special purpose .22short target pistol) I'm SOL. In fact, it's almost impossible for MA residents to participate in some of the shooting sports competitively, due to the AG's list. Peter Trei
Re: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
On 2005-01-11T10:07:22-0500, Trei, Peter wrote: Justin wrote: I don't believe the article when it says that smart guns are useless if stolen. What do they have, a tamper-proof memory chip storing a 128-bit reprogramming authorization key that must be input via computer before allowing a new person to be authorized? And what's to stop a criminal from ripping out all the circuitry and the safety it engages? The 'stolen gun' problems most of the so-called 'smart gun' proposals are trying to address are the situation when a cop's own gun is taken from him and immediately used against him, or a kid finding one in a drawer. A determined and resourceful person can, given time, defeat them all. from the article: Guns taken from a home during a robbery would be rendered useless, too. The South African Smart gun... http://www.wmsa.net/other/thumb_gun.htm Totally useless. Failure modes and various other complaints: -cannot connect to cellular network -cannot receive GPS signal -out of batteries -laser diode craps out -fingerprint scanner takes more than 0 time to use. -ammunition is more expensive -window in ammunition can be dirty or fogged, causing failure -any sort of case failure will probably destroy the electronics -will never be as small as subcompact firearms -if smartcard is stolen, gun won't fire (other smart guns use rings) -all the electronic tracing capability requires gun/ammo registration I'd almost rather have a taser. What assurance do I have that the circuitry won't malfunction and fire when I don't want it to? What if a HERF gun can not only render the gun useless, but make it fire as well? -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus 53
Re: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
On 2005-01-10T15:42:47-0500, Tyler Durden wrote: And we'll probably have many years of non-Smart-Gun type accidents...eg, Drunk guy at party put gun to his head and blew his own brains out, assuming it was a smart gun, or, trailer park momma gives gun to toddler assuming its a safe smart gun. Some gun accidents are suicides reported as such to avoid embarrassment to the family. Similarly, I think a few of the gun accidents involving real children, which are extremely rare to begin with, go like this... Son, why don't you take this gun and pretend to go shoot daddy? It's not loaded. Or, Son, why don't you take the gun, put it to your head, and pull the trigger? It's not loaded. I don't believe the article when it says that smart guns are useless if stolen. What do they have, a tamper-proof memory chip storing a 128-bit reprogramming authorization key that must be input via computer before allowing a new person to be authorized? And what's to stop a criminal from ripping out all the circuitry and the safety it engages? -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus 53
Re: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
On 2005-01-10T15:04:21-0500, Trei, Peter wrote: John Kelsey Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire By ANNE EISENBERG I just wonder what the false negative rates are. Seem like a A remarkable number of police deaths are 'own gun' incidents, so the police do have a strong motivation to use 'smart guns' if they are reliable. The NJ law specifically exempts the police from the smart gun requirement (which for civilians goes into effect in 2007 or 2008). Regardless, the legislature doesn't need to get involved for law enforcement to change their weapons policy and require smart guns. False positives may also present a problem. If the only way to get an acceptable identification rate (99%, for instance) is to create a 50% false positive rate for unauthorized users, that's reduces utilitarian benefit by half. Batteries go dead. Solder joints break. Transistors and capacitors go bad. Pressure sensors jam. This is not the kind of technology I want in something that absolutely, positively has to go boom if I want it to. For handguns, I'll stick with pure mechanical mechanisms, thanks. Smart guns are a ploy to raise the cost of guns, make them require more maintenance, annoy owners, and as a result decrease gun ownership. -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus 53
Re: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Jan 6, 2005 11:47 AM To: cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire .. Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire By ANNE EISENBERG I just wonder what the false negative rates are. Seem like a gun that has a 1% chance of refusing to fire when you *really need it* might not be worth all that much. Similarly, one that you can't get to work if you've got a band-aid on your finger, or a cut on your hand, or whatever, loses a lot of its value. On the other hand, a gun that can't be made to go off by your toddler is a pretty huge win, assuming you're willing to trust the technology, but a 90% accuracy level sounds to me like 10% of the time, your three year old can, in fact, cause the thing to go off. That's not worth much, but maybe they'll get it better. And the suspect struggles with cop, gets gun, and shoots cop problem would definitely be helped by a guy that wouldn't go off for 90% of attackers. --John
RE: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
John Kelsey Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire By ANNE EISENBERG I just wonder what the false negative rates are. Seem like a gun that has a 1% chance of refusing to fire when you *really need it* might not be worth all that much. Similarly, one that you can't get to work if you've got a band-aid on your finger, or a cut on your hand, or whatever, loses a lot of its value. On the other hand, a gun that can't be made to go off by your toddler is a pretty huge win, assuming you're willing to trust the technology, but a 90% accuracy level sounds to me like 10% of the time, your three year old can, in fact, cause the thing to go off. That's not worth much, but maybe they'll get it better. And the suspect struggles with cop, gets gun, and shoots cop problem would definitely be helped by a guy that wouldn't go off for 90% of attackers. --John A remarkable number of police deaths are 'own gun' incidents, so the police do have a strong motivation to use 'smart guns' if they are reliable. In New Jersey, there is some kind of legislation in place to restrict sales to 'smart guns', once they exist. Other types would be banned. (Actually, getting a carry permit in NJ is already almost impossible, unless you're politically connected.) This particular model seems to rely on pressure sensors on the grip. This bothers me - under the stress of a gunfight, you're likely to have a somewhat different pattern than during the enrollment process. Many 'smart guns' also have big problems with issues which arise in real life gun fights - shooting from awkward positions behind cover, one-handed vs two-handed, weak hand (righthander using left hand, and vice versa, which can happen if dictated by cover or injury), point vs sighted shooting, and passing a gun to a disarmed partner. There are other systems which have been proposed; magnetic or RFID rings, fingerprint sensors, etc. The one thing that seems to be common to all of the 'smart gun' designs is that they are conceived by people with little experience in how guns are actually used. To look at a particularly ludicrous example, try http://www.wmsa.net/other/thumb_gun.htm For a gun to work, it is just as important that it fires when it should, as that it does not fire when it shouldn't. A safety system which delays firing by even half a second, or which introduces a significant false rejection rate (and 1% is way over the line), is a positive hazard. When the police switch to smart guns, and have used them successfully for some time (say, a year at least) without problems, I'll beleive them ready for prime time. Peter Trei
RE: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
At 12:04 PM 1/10/2005, Trei, Peter wrote: For a gun to work, it is just as important that it fires when it should, as that it does not fire when it shouldn't. A safety system which delays firing by even half a second, or which introduces a significant false rejection rate (and 1% is way over the line), is a positive hazard. I'd rather not have to rely on a gun that's acting like typical Artificial Intelligence software - Out of Virtual Memory - Garbage-Collecting - Back in a minute - Tea? You mean Leaves, boiled in water? That's a tough one! - Low on Entropy - please wave the gun around and pull the trigger a few times Police have enough problems with situations where guns are too slow, such as a guy with a knife ten feet away, and ostensibly smart guns that aren't reliable are really bad. And slowly-responding guns just encourage cops to pull them out early and start shooting early just in case, which is the kind of thing most gun-grabbing liberals want to avoid. Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
And we'll probably have many years of non-Smart-Gun type accidents...eg, Drunk guy at party put gun to his head and blew his own brains out, assuming it was a smart gun, or, trailer park momma gives gun to toddler assuming its a safe smart gun. -TD From: Trei, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John Kelsey [EMAIL PROTECTED],R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED], cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 15:04:21 -0500 John Kelsey Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire By ANNE EISENBERG I just wonder what the false negative rates are. Seem like a gun that has a 1% chance of refusing to fire when you *really need it* might not be worth all that much. Similarly, one that you can't get to work if you've got a band-aid on your finger, or a cut on your hand, or whatever, loses a lot of its value. On the other hand, a gun that can't be made to go off by your toddler is a pretty huge win, assuming you're willing to trust the technology, but a 90% accuracy level sounds to me like 10% of the time, your three year old can, in fact, cause the thing to go off. That's not worth much, but maybe they'll get it better. And the suspect struggles with cop, gets gun, and shoots cop problem would definitely be helped by a guy that wouldn't go off for 90% of attackers. --John A remarkable number of police deaths are 'own gun' incidents, so the police do have a strong motivation to use 'smart guns' if they are reliable. In New Jersey, there is some kind of legislation in place to restrict sales to 'smart guns', once they exist. Other types would be banned. (Actually, getting a carry permit in NJ is already almost impossible, unless you're politically connected.) This particular model seems to rely on pressure sensors on the grip. This bothers me - under the stress of a gunfight, you're likely to have a somewhat different pattern than during the enrollment process. Many 'smart guns' also have big problems with issues which arise in real life gun fights - shooting from awkward positions behind cover, one-handed vs two-handed, weak hand (righthander using left hand, and vice versa, which can happen if dictated by cover or injury), point vs sighted shooting, and passing a gun to a disarmed partner. There are other systems which have been proposed; magnetic or RFID rings, fingerprint sensors, etc. The one thing that seems to be common to all of the 'smart gun' designs is that they are conceived by people with little experience in how guns are actually used. To look at a particularly ludicrous example, try http://www.wmsa.net/other/thumb_gun.htm For a gun to work, it is just as important that it fires when it should, as that it does not fire when it shouldn't. A safety system which delays firing by even half a second, or which introduces a significant false rejection rate (and 1% is way over the line), is a positive hazard. When the police switch to smart guns, and have used them successfully for some time (say, a year at least) without problems, I'll beleive them ready for prime time. Peter Trei
Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire
Ah... Book-entry to the trigger. The ganglia, as the man said, twitch. Whole new meaning to digital rights management. Cheers, RAH --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/technology/circuits/06next.html?ei=5090en=7ca4c9e3073fef12ex=1262754000partner=rssuserlandpagewanted=printposition= The New York Times January 6, 2005 WHAT'S NEXT Ready, Aim, ID Check: In Wrong Hands, Gun Won't Fire By ANNE EISENBERG HE computer circuits that control hand-held music players, cellphones and organizers may soon be in a new location: inside electronically controlled guns. Researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark are building a handgun designed to fire only when its circuitry and software recognize the grip of an authorized shooter. Sensors in the handle measure the pressure the hand exerts as it squeezes the trigger. Then algorithms check the shooter's grip with stored, authorized patterns to give the go-ahead. We can build a brain inside the gun, said Timothy N. Chang, a professor of electrical engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who devised the hardware for the grip-recognition system. The technology is becoming so cheap that we can have not just a computer in every home, but a computer in every gun. The main function of the system is to distinguish a legitimate shooter from, for example, a child who comes upon a handgun in a drawer. Electronics within the gun could one day include Global Positioning System receivers, accelerometers and other devices that could record the time and direction of gunfire and help reconstruct events in a crime investigation. For a decade, researchers at many labs have been working on so-called smart or personalized handguns designed to prevent accidents. These use fingerprint scanners to recognize authorized shooters, or require the shooter to wear a small token on the hand that wirelessly transmits an unlocking code to the weapon. At the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Michael L. Recce, an associate professor in the department of information systems, decided instead to concentrate on the shooter's characteristic grip. Dr. Recce created the software that does the pattern recognition for the gun. Typically, it takes one-tenth of a second to pull a trigger, Dr. Recce said. While that is a short period, it is long enough for a computer to match the patterns and process the authorization. To bring Dr. Recce's recognition software to life, Dr. Chang created several generations of circuits using off-the-shelf electronic components. He equipped the grips of real and fake handguns with sensors that could generate a charge proportional to the pressure put on them. The pressure on the grip and trigger are read during the beginning of the trigger pull. The signals are sent to an analog-to-digital converter so that they can be handled by the digital signal processor. Patterns of different users can be stored, and the gun programmed to allow one or more shooters. At first the group worked mainly with a simulated shooting range designed for police training. You can't have guns in a university lab, Dr. Recce said. The computer analysis of hand-pressure patterns showed that one person's grip could be distinguished from another's. A person grasps a tennis racket or a pen or golf club in an individual, consistent way, he said. That's what we're counting on. During the past year, the team has moved from simulators to tests with live ammunition and real semiautomatic handguns fitted with pressure sensors in the grip. For five months, five officers from the institute's campus police force have been trying out the weaponry at a Bayonne firing range. We've been going once a month since June, said Mark J. Cyr, a sergeant in the campus police. I use a regular 9-millimeter Beretta weapon that fires like any other weapon; it doesn't feel any different. For now, a computer cord tethers the gun to a laptop that houses the circuitry and pattern-recognition software. In the next three months, though, Dr. Chang said, the circuits would move from the laptop into the magazine of the gun. All the digital signal processing will be built right in, he said. Michael Tocci, a captain in the Bayonne Police Department, recently saw a demonstration of the technology. One shooter was authorized, Captain Tocci said. When this person pulled the trigger, a green light flashed. But when other officers picked up the gun to fire, the computer flashed red to register that they weren't authorized, he said. The system had a 90 percent recognition rate, said Donald H. Sebastian, senior vice president for research and development at the institute. That's better fidelity than we expected with 16 sensors in the grip, Dr. Sebastian said. But we'll be adding more sensors, and that rate will improve. Dr. Chang said the grip for the wireless system would have 32 pressure sensors. Now, in the worst case, the system fails in one out of 10 cases, he said. But we've already seen
