Like all technologies, you can put 3D Printing to dubious use as well..

Today’s news is a German hacker, Ray. Ray likes to collect handcuffs and find crazy ways to open them.

This time he was able to duplicate the key to Dutch police handcuffs (there’s only one key format – duh!). He simply took a high-resolution photograph of a key that was dangling from a policeman’s belt, reconstructed it in 3D software and printed it on a 3D printer. And yes, it worked!

It’s probably not legal to own such a key so I don’t advise printing one, but it does make for a very interesting demonstration of what happens once production tools become democratized.

Now handcuffs are only for temporarily restraining suspects (at least by the Dutch police), so I don’t think this is a major issue for them. Still, the trouble with the interweb is of course that once a file it out in the open (as it is in this case) it’s extremely difficult – if not impossible – to remove it, making the key in question virtually useless. If this had happened to, say,  a master key of a building, you’d have to  replace every lock..

This story is not unlike the British police chief Bob Quick, whose secret document was photographed on the street. Do we need to be more careful ‘out there’? I makes me wonder what’s next; people taking an ultra-high resolution photograph of your thumb to replicate your fingerprint? (yes Ray, we have your fingerprint on file now, too 😉 Replicating your car keys when you leave your car?

[Via blackbag.nl]