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It's very analogous to regulating certain common chemicals as "controlled precursors." It's not that the government wants people not to have these substances, o
by derefr 4y ago
It's very analogous to regulating certain common chemicals as "controlled precursors." It's not that the government wants people not to have these substances, or that they want to restrict their use in making useful, non-controlled substances; rather, it's that they want to know who has these chemicals, so as to be able to attribute and trace any controlled substances that might be produced.
In this case, they want to have a list of everyone who's playing around with radar systems, because any such person could — entirely just by taking the commonly-available tech and advancing their own private understanding from there — become a fully-fledged radar engineer, and build a system that could be interesting to terrorists et al.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago> it's that they want to know who has these chemicals, This is why we have the police around farms a lot, to see how safely the diesel and nitrate fertiliser is locked up. A legacy of the Republican violence of the 1970s to 1990s, when we had a lot of keen "amateur chemists" bimbling about in white vans at night...
- osmarks 4y agoIf they were particularly consistent about this, they would have to watch a lot of electrical engineers.
- jojobas 4y agoYou can't copy-paste controlled precursors. Making knowledge illegal (a la nuclear "born secret") is a dead end. I'm pretty sure these guys would email their stuff to anyone who asked still.