Bomb-making instructions....

The latest crime for which Senator Diane Swinestein has earned the
[CENSORED] is her "bomb-making instructions on the Internet are illegal"
bill.

But I have a question. Does this mean CNN will face prosecution if it
publishes the transcripts of the McVeigh case?

Keith Henson, an explosives enthusiast since the early 1960s, was
describing to us last night at a Silicon Valley party just how accurate the
instructions were in the transcripts of the McVeigh trial, as the experts
pointed out the steps needed to make the liquid explosive "Astrolight" (or
"Astrolite"). Keith pointed out that most of the "lay" reports had repeated
some of the usual lay errors about ammonium nitrate and fuel oil bombs, but
that the full court transcript "got it right" on the conversion of the
precursors to the more effective liquid form. It was Keith who raised the
issue of the Swinestein bill making publication of court transcripts a
crime...sort of collides with the notion of open trials....

(This party was a regular plotting opportunity...we figured out just how
big a Ryder truck has to be to hold the "ergs" needed to take down some
targets that sorely need taking down...all in theory, you understand.)

We need to hold a trial for this bitch. Then a quick trip to the firewall.



--Tim May



There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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As I'm sure you know, CNN is probably safe in any case, reality being what
it is.

The fine line that DOJ recommended on the Feinstein Amendment is based
mainly on intent.  I don't have the report in front of me, but I think DOJ
recognized that widespread publication makes it harder to prove a nasty
intent.

Suppose CNN got the McVeigh transcripts, scanned them in, and put them up
on the Web.  It's pretty newsworthy.  Hard to see how there could be a
prosecution given the First Amendment, even if the Feinstein Amendment
became law.

Indeed, I would assume that the information would propagate to other sites
as well, including outside the United States.  At that point prosecution
seems even more difficult.

IMHO, proving intent is to some extent a function of how "public"
information is.  If information is publicly available but not very well
known, or perhaps more important, its being publicly available is not very
well known - then it is easier to convince a jury that knowing it implies
badness (unless you have a good, usually institution based, reason for
knowing it).

It would be an interesting piece of sociology of speech, law and technology
to do a serious, scholarly study of the public availability of existing
bombmaking information on the Web.  Where does it come from?  How much was
originally government information?  How accurate is it?  What kind of bombs
can be built with the info?  Who puts it up?  Then compare what's on the
Web to what's in university and public libraries.  This is the kind of
study that may not be doable once the Amendment passes, for obvious reasons.

Lee

At 8:32 PM -0700 6/22/97, Tim May wrote:
>The latest crime for which Senator Diane Swinestein has earned the
>[CENSORED] is her "bomb-making instructions on the Internet are illegal"
>bill.
>
>But I have a question. Does this mean CNN will face prosecution if it
>publishes the transcripts of the McVeigh case?




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> It would be an interesting piece of sociology of speech, law and technology
> to do a serious, scholarly study of the public availability of existing
> bombmaking information on the Web.  Where does it come from?  How much was
> originally government information?  How accurate is it?  What kind of bombs
> can be built with the info?  Who puts it up?  Then compare what's on the
> Web to what's in university and public libraries.  This is the kind of
> study that may not be doable once the Amendment passes, for obvious reasons.

I personally know no chemistry at all, but what would be nice is if 
someone who knows what they are doing wrote an "anarchists cookbook" type 
set of files, but this time got them right so anyone attempting any of 
the recipes wouldn`t be killed.

        Datacomms Technologies data security
       Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
  Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org    
       Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/
      Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85
     "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"