Bombs Away, from The Netly News Network

*********

http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/1,1042,902,00.html

The Netly News Network
May 1, 1997

Bombs Away
by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)

    Internet fear-mongering is back in vogue inside
the White House. The Clinton administration escalated
its assault on the Net this week, warning that it
provides bomb-making recipes to anyone "with a modem"
and proposing a new law to restrict such information.

     In a 53-page report released on Tuesday, the
Department of Justice alleges that criminals are
trawling cyberspace for how-to kits on making
explosives. "ATF statistics reflect that, between 1985
and June 1996, the investigations of at least 30
bombings and four attempted bombings resulted in the
recovery of bomb-making literature that the suspects
had obtained from the Internet," the report says. "A
member of the DoJ committee accessed a single web site
on the World Wide Web and obtained the titles of 110
different bomb-making texts."

[...]


-------------------------
Declan McCullagh
Time Inc.
The Netly News Network
Washington Correspondent
http://netlynews.com/

Declan McCullagh writes:
>                                                   "A
> member of the DoJ committee accessed a single web site
> on the World Wide Web and obtained the titles of 110
> different bomb-making texts."

I wonder if this was a bookstore.  I did a search for "explosives"
on amazon.com and came up with at least that many titles.  Only a
handful were of the Anarchist's Cookbook ilk.  Most were academic or
industrial studies; a few were from US Govt or Govt-affiliated
organizations.


-- Jeff

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----


In <199705011950.PAA24272@jafar.issl.atl.hp.com>, on 05/01/97 at 01:50 PM,
   Jeff Barber <jeffb@issl.atl.hp.com> said:


>Declan McCullagh writes:
>>                                                   "A
>> member of the DoJ committee accessed a single web site
>> on the World Wide Web and obtained the titles of 110
>> different bomb-making texts."

>I wonder if this was a bookstore.  I did a search for "explosives" on
>amazon.com and came up with at least that many titles.  Only a handful
>were of the Anarchist's Cookbook ilk.  Most were academic or industrial
>studies; a few were from US Govt or Govt-affiliated organizations.

Well the whole thing is just more smoke and mirrors.

The bomb used in Oklahoma required the knowledge of CHEM 101. I have
several Eng. Books that go into great detail on making Nitrogen/Deasel
bombs as they are routinely used in Mining operations. They are safe to
store as a convenient binary explosive, easy to store, and easy to prepare
as needed "on site" not to mention they are relativly cheap to use. :)

I would imagine that you will have to pass a FBI/CIA/NSA security clearance
before you can enroll in collage in the near future. :(

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At 11:54 AM 5/1/97 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>The Clinton administration escalated
>its assault on the Net this week, warning that it
>provides bomb-making recipes to anyone "with a modem"
>and proposing a new law to restrict such information.*
...
>"A member of the DoJ committee accessed a single web site
>on the World Wide Web and obtained the titles of 110
>different bomb-making texts."

OH, NO*!!!  THERE ARE BOOKSTORES ON THE NET!!!!
WITH BANNED BOOKS IN THEM!!!!  OH, NO!!!!

	[*Please excuse the shouting, I'm quoting FBI officials here :-]

The obvious bookstores to look at, if you want to freak the mundanes, are
	http://www.loompanics.com/ and http://www.paladin-press.com/
Yer basic Whole Extremist Catalogs.  Of course, if you _really_ want to
find books on explosives, you'll need to wait until the 
Library of CONgress is on line, or the U.S.Army Field Manuals.
If you can't find explosives on the net, AltaVista's not doing its job.

My favorite net explosives site is the Hagley Museum in Wilmington Delaware,
about 105 miles from Declan's location in the Heart of Darkness.
It's the old duPont Gunpowder Mills, and was a popular field trip for
elementary school students when I was growing up.  We'd learn how to
make gunpowder, and learn about workplace safety and colonial industry,
and watch the ducks and geese on the Brandywine River (Is it still legal
to mention the name of a river named after Alcoholic Beverages on the net?
They also farmed tobacco near there!)

Pictures of Munitions Preparation Equipment are on the Dangerous Internet at 
	http://www.hagley.lib.de.us/wheel.gif


[*During a previous call for censorship of bombs and bad language on the net,
I received email from a number of Senators, including Feinstein, containing 
obscenity and terrorism instructions.  Don't remember if Biden replied.
Email autoresponders can be fun.]	



#			Thanks;  Bill
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