When the printer starts watching you
California’s 3D printer bill is not just about guns. It is about who controls the tools.
A few days ago, I 3D printed a small cover for a Phillips OneBlade razor.
It took about six minutes.
It cost a few cents.
The alternative was buying a whole package for around $16 CAD, plus shipping, packaging, time, waste, and the usual absurdity of modern consumer life where a tiny piece of plastic turns into a supply chain event.
That little print is the whole argument for maker tools in one example.
It is repair.
It is reuse.
It is local production.
It is less packaging.
It is less shipping.
It is less dependence on companies forcing you to buy more than you need because the one tiny part you actually need is not sold on its own.
This is why 3D printing matters. Not because everyone is trying to print something dangerous. Not because hobbyists are all secretly running underground factories. It matters because general-purpose tools give people back some control over the physical world around them.
That is why California’s AB 2047 should concern more than the 3D printing community.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is warning about the bill because it would require 3D printers sold in California to include software controls meant to detect and block firearm-related print files. On paper, that sounds like a narrow safety measure. In reality, it changes what a 3D printer is.
It turns a tool into a monitored appliance.
I am not here to defend illegal weapons. I do not want ghost guns floating around communities. I do not want people bypassing laws to make untraceable firearms. I do not want unsafe tools in unsafe hands.
Bad policy often hides behind the easiest sentence in the room.
It is for safety.
That sentence has carried a lot of surveillance into daily life.
It was for safety when platforms started asking for more identity verification.
It was for safety when companies normalized face checks for kids.
It was for safety when cars started reporting driving behaviour to companies that could feed insurance decisions.
It was for safety when cameras, microphones, location systems, smart devices, and cloud dashboards crept into places where they were never needed.
Every time, the pitch sounds reasonable at first. Every time, we are told the system will only be used for the dangerous edge case. Every time, the tool is built first and the limits are debated later.
That is backwards.
If a 3D printer has to inspect what you are making before it lets you make it, the printer is no longer fully yours. It becomes a permission machine.
That is the real issue.
The bill does not only touch people who want to print firearm parts. It touches educators, artists, engineers, small repair shops, indie filmmakers, cosplayers, accessibility tinkerers, students, inventors, and people like me who are using these tools for R&D, prototyping, repair, and practical problem solving.
This is where lawmakers often fail. They regulate the imagined misuse of a tool without understanding the lawful, boring, useful, ordinary work that tool makes possible.
A 3D printer can make a prop.
A hinge.
A bracket.
A cover.
A mount.
A sensor housing.
A custom adapter.
A repair part.
A prototype that never leaves your desk.
A failed experiment that teaches you something.
That is the point of a general-purpose tool. It is not supposed to know your intent. It is not supposed to judge your project. It is not supposed to phone home, scan your file, compare your geometry to a list, and decide whether your work is allowed.
An algorithm cannot understand context.
A shape can look like another shape.
A lawful part can share geometry with an unlawful one.
A prop can look like a component.
A repair part can trip a filter.
A research project can get blocked because a software vendor, a manufacturer, or some third-party standard decided it looks too close to something on a forbidden list.
Anyone truly determined to break the law will not be stopped by the consumer printer sitting on a desk at Best Buy. They will modify hardware. They will build their own machine. They will change files. They will use older tools. They will move around the system.
So who gets punished?
The people following the rules.
That is a pattern I have seen over and over in tech.
The people who care about privacy get more friction.
The people who want local tools get locked out.
The people who want open-source software get painted as suspicious.
The people who want to repair what they own get treated like criminals.
The people building useful things get buried under compliance written by people who do not build.
The EFF points out another concern with AB 2047: open source. This matters a lot.
Open-source tools are not some side hobby. They are how a massive amount of modern creation gets done. They let people inspect, modify, repair, preserve, and understand the systems they depend on.
I have used open-source tools for years. Three.js is a perfect example. We have used it, modified around it, built with it, and kept control because open tools let builders keep building even when larger platforms change direction, shut things down, or chase whatever trend will impress shareholders this quarter.
That is not theory to me.
I have watched entire industries get whiplash from platform decisions.
I have watched AR get hyped, buried, renamed, reborn, overfunded, underdelivered, and sold back to the public as if no one remembers the last cycle.
I have watched the metaverse, NFTs, blockchain, smart glasses, spatial computing, and now Ai get treated like magic words while the actual builders sit there cleaning up broken workflows, deprecated APIs, version churn, version fragmentation, hardware changes, and promises that never matched reality.
Open tools are one of the few ways builders can keep some control.
Now imagine the same thinking behind AB 2047 spreading.
Not just printers.
Design software.
Slicers.
Firmware.
AR creation tools.
Local Ai systems.
Browsers.
Phones.
Cameras.
Spatial maps.
Anything that can create, capture, render, analyze, or output something.
Once the rule becomes “the tool must inspect the work,” everything changes.
A printer scanning a model is not far removed from an Ai tool scanning a document before it helps you write.
A browser checking whether you are allowed to view a page is not far removed from an age gate that requires identity verification.
An AR device mapping a room is not far removed from a surveillance device if the data is captured, stored, shared, or monetized.
A camera on glasses is not just a camera when it is connected to face recognition, location history, advertising profiles, and platform accounts.
This is why I keep saying the architecture matters.
It is not enough for a company to say it is building for a better world. Look at the chaos these systems create in their own backyards.
Look at the defaults.
Look at the data flows.
Look at who owns the output.
Look at who can see the metadata.
Look at who can change the rules after the device is already in your home.
Look at who benefits when the tool becomes dependent on permission.
A 3D printer is a physical example of a much larger problem.
Tech companies love to turn ownership into access.
You bought the thing, but the company controls the account.
You own the device, but the firmware decides what you can do.
You paid for the software, but the update changes the terms.
You created the file, but the platform scans it.
You made the art, but the system trains on it.
You built the prototype, but the cloud logs it.
You want privacy, but the product requires identity.
You want safety, but the solution quietly builds a surveillance layer that can expand later.
This is not paranoia. This is product history.
We have watched this happen with phones, cars, smart TVs, printers, cameras, doorbells, children’s platforms, social media, insurance data, and workplace tools.
Now we are watching the same logic reach into maker hardware.
That should bother every creator.
Not because 3D printing is perfect.
It is not.
PLA is still plastic. Consumer printing still creates waste. Bad prints happen. Failed parts happen. People print junk. People print things they should not.
That is not the whole story.
The larger environmental and social value of 3D printing is often about making only what you need, where you need it, when you need it. It can reduce shipping. It can reduce packaging. It can extend the life of products. It can make repair more practical. It can help people learn by doing instead of only consuming.
That is a good thing.
The more useful a tool becomes, the more pressure there is to control it.
That is where this bill becomes part of a bigger story.
The same public language keeps showing up across different technologies.
Children need safety, so scan faces.
Communities need safety, so monitor tools.
Drivers need accountability, so collect behaviour.
Users need protection, so require accounts.
Creators need moderation, so scan uploads.
Cities need progress, so map everything.
Patients need care, so centralize data.
Workers need productivity, so track activity.
Students need integrity, so watch their eyes.
Every one of these arguments can begin with a legitimate concern.
That is what makes it difficult.
The concern is often real. The proposed system is often the problem.
I build technology. I am not anti-tech. I am not anti-Ai. I am not anti-AR. I am not anti-safety.
I am against lazy systems that solve hard social problems by putting surveillance into the default layer.
That is the line.
With WorldCAST, I have spent years thinking about browser-based AR, spatial tools, and ways to give people experiences without forcing them through app stores, accounts, and unnecessary capture.
With ZeroTrace, the entire idea is that private communication should not require a permanent identity, a stored history, or a corporate database sitting behind every human interaction.
With local Ai, the point is simple. If the data can stay near the person, the company, the family, or the community, it should. Not everything needs to be fed to a remote system. Not everything needs to become training material. Not everything needs to become a product metric.
With elder care and non-camera sensing, the hard question is how to protect someone without stripping them of dignity. That means thinking about local processing, minimal capture, and systems that detect enough to help without turning a home into a panopticon.
These are not separate topics.
They are the same topic viewed through different tools.
Who controls the system?
Where does the data go?
What does the tool know?
Who can change its behaviour?
Can the user inspect it?
Can the user repair it?
Can the user say no?
Can the system do its job without creating a permanent record of lawful life?
That last question should be asked before any monitoring system is allowed near the public.
AB 2047 fails that test for me.
It takes a lawful general-purpose tool and pushes it toward mandatory inspection. It assumes that because something can be misused, the tool itself should become a checkpoint. It puts pressure on manufacturers to lock things down. It creates incentives for proprietary control. It makes open-source work feel legally risky. It gives larger companies a compliance moat while smaller builders, hobbyists, and independent creators carry the burden.
Like so much modern regulation, it risks punishing the people who are easiest to regulate, not the people causing the harm.
This is how you get a worse world while claiming to build a safer one.
You do not stop crime by making every tool a cop.
You do not protect children by normalizing face scans.
You do not protect creators by scanning every creative act.
You do not protect communities by giving companies more control over private tools.
You do not protect democracy by making anonymity suspicious.
You do not protect innovation by criminalizing the ability to modify the machines we own.
That word, own, is doing a lot of work here.
Do we own the tools in our homes?
Do we own the devices in our shops?
Do we own the files we create?
Do we own the right to repair?
Do we own the right to work offline?
Do we own the right to build without being watched by default?
Because if the answer keeps moving toward no, then we should stop pretending this is only about one bill, one printer, one state, or one category of files.
This is about the future of general-purpose computing.
A 3D printer is just where the argument becomes visible.
You can see the plastic part.
You can hold the output.
You can understand the absurdity of scanning a file for intent.
The same fight is happening inside software, Ai, AR, identity systems, cars, cameras, schools, workplaces, and homes.
The future is being divided into two paths.
One path treats people as owners, builders, citizens, creators, and adults.
The other treats people as users to be managed.
I know which path most large companies prefer.
Managed users are easier to bill.
Managed users are easier to track.
Managed users are easier to lock in.
Managed users are easier to upsell.
Managed users are easier to cut off.
Builders are harder.
Builders modify things.
Builders ask why.
Builders find another way.
Builders keep old systems alive.
Builders fork code.
Builders repair parts.
Builders keep tools useful long after a company has moved on.
That is why this matters.
A six-minute razor cover is not just a razor cover.
It is proof that a person with a tool can avoid waste, avoid a purchase, avoid shipping, avoid packaging, and solve a small problem without asking a company for permission.
Scale that up across homes, schools, shops, farms, clinics, museums, artists, engineers, and small businesses.
That is not a threat.
That is resilience.
But resilience is hard to monetize when people own their tools.
So we should be very careful when a law, a company, or a platform tells us that ownership is dangerous and permission is safety.
That trade is almost never as clean as advertised.
I want safer communities.
I also want people to keep control over lawful tools.
Both things can be true.
The lazy answer is to monitor everything.
The harder answer is to write laws that target actual harm without turning every creative device into a surveillance endpoint.
That is the work lawmakers should be doing.
Because once the printer starts watching you, it will not stop with the printer.