-Caveat Lector-
from:
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/digital/daily/0,2822,12032,00.html
<A
HREF="http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/digital/daily/0,2822,12032,00.html">TIME
Digital - May 1, 1997: Bombs Away
</A>
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Bombs Away
FROM THURSDAY, MAY 1, 1997
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NETLY NEWS
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."
That's not all. On Monday, Defense Secretary William Cohen blamed the
Internet for spreading bomb-making info and encouraging terrorist
attacks. Then yesterday the Justice Department told a House subcommittee
that "terrorists, organized crime, child pornographers, drug cartels,
financial predators, hostile foreign intelligence agents, and other
criminals" will benefit from unbreakable encryption.
It's no surprise: Washington bureaucrats want to control the Net. And
what better excuse than protecting children? The Justice Department
study says: "ATF investigators participated in the investigation of two
North Attleboro, Massachusetts, juveniles, aged 11 and 14, who were
injured while attempting to make an improvised explosive device. The
youths had retrieved from the Internet information on how to make
napalm, and were badly burned when a mixture being heated on a kitchen
stove ignited."
Nowhere does the government admit that it's the parents' job to tell
their kids not to cook napalm in Mom's frying pan. And, of course,
detailed instructions on bomb-making can be found not just online, but
in libraries and even government bookstores. "Such information is
readily available to anyone with a Waldenbooks bookstore in the local
mall or who has access to a public library," says Bob Corn-Revere, an
attorney at the Washington firm of Hogan & Hartson. "Such information is
readily available to anyone who can read. When you boil down these
arguments to their essential root, the argument is that there's just too
much speech out there."
"Call me cynical, but the fact that this is coming out during the
Oklahoma bombing trial strikes me as not coincidental," Corn-Revere
says.
Indeed, it was the Oklahoma bombing that spurred Sen. Dianne Feinstein
(D-Calif.), one of D.C.'s most censor-happy politicos, into action two
years ago. Rescue workers were still pulling bodies from the rubble when
she tried to score some political points by banning bomb-making
instructions in print or online. She attached her amendment to an
anti-terrorism bill that Congress was considering. Sen. Joe Biden
(D-Del.) joined her in moral outrage, saying his staff found a recipe on
Usenet for "baby food bombs" that were "so powerful that they can
destroy a car." (Note to the U.S. Senate: Don't believe everything you
read on netnews.)
Then Feinstein ran up against the First Amendment. Frank Tuerkheimer, a
former federal prosecutor, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in May
1995 that "our obligations to remain true to the basic values that
characterize our system of government" should not "be weakened by the
horrors of the moment." The House Republicans scuttled Feinstein's plan
in favor of requiring the Justice Department to report on the
availability of bomb-makinginformation and to recommend new laws if
necessary.
Now the Justice Department proposes a law even broader than Feinstein's
boondoggle: It would ban descriptions about the "use" of explosives in
addition to information on their manufacture, and restrict information
on "destructive devices" and "weapons of mass destruction" as well. It
would, however, require a prosecutor to prove a defendant had intent to
"further" a crime. "We have concluded that Senator Feinstein's proposal
can withstand constitutional muster in most, if not all, of its possible
applications, if such legislation is slightly modified in several
respects that we propose," the report says.
Will Feinstein take the bait and try again? "As far as future plans, I
don't know," a staffer told me.
Of course she'll try again. Politicians can't help but grandstand on top
of tragedy. Which is why Feinstein and her colleagues would do well to
listen to Justice Brandeis, who wrote in 1928: "The greatest threats to
liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but
without understanding."
-- DECLAN MCCULLAGH
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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