INTERNET AS TERRORIST / THE SEQUEL

[Dave Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu>]

>Posted-Date: Sat, 27 May 1995 03:04:32 -0400
>From: Doug Michels <doug@sco.COM>
>To: farber@central.cis.upenn.edu
>Subject: INTERNET AS TERRORIST / THE SEQUEL
>Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 23:59:00 -0700 (PDT)
>
>>From sco.sco.com!woolf.individual.com!individual.com!first Thu May 25
>>23:21:05 1995
>Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 02:19:11 -0400
>From: first@individual.com (An Information Service of INDIVIDUAL Inc.)
>Message-Id: <199505260619.AA23377@individual.com>
>To: individual@sco.com
>Profid: SCOKL1
>Addrid: NEIL1
>Subject:  INTERNET AS TERRORIST / THE SEQUEL
>
>============================================================================
>SUBJECT:  INTERNET AS TERRORIST / THE SEQUEL
>SOURCE:   ZiffWire via First! by Individual, Inc.
>DATE:     May 25, 1995
>INDEX:    [6]
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  Inter@ctive Week via First! : A Senate panel went gunning for the
>Internet. They didn't miss.
>
>  During a May 11 hearing titled "The Availability of Bomb Making
>Information On The Internet," several senators, led by presidential
>candidate Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), made
>the Internet out to be a prime purveyor of terrorism.
>
>  Specter chaired the hearing of the Subcommittee on Terrorism. He did not
>mince words: "There are serious questions about whether it is
>technologically feasible to restrict access to the Internet or to censor
>certain messages." His Subcommittee wants to find the answer.
>
>  Although rumblings about the Internet's role in terrorism have been
>echoing through the halls of Capitol Hill ever since the bombing in Oklahoma
>City, Specter's hearing was the first to officially investigate the issue in
>a congressional forum.
>
>  The Subcommittee heard from five expert witnesses. Each acknowledged that
>even the "mayhem manuals" -- as Specter called the Internet text files that
>contain bomb-making information -- should be considered protected speech
>under First Amendment guidelines. However, Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon
>Wiesenthal Center questioned whether Congress couldn't, somehow, devise a
>way to censor speech. The "obscene or threatening phone caller" doesn't have
>protected speech, Hier said. "Why are those protections afforded if he
>launches the same attack via the Internet?"
>
>  Sen. Feinstein couldn't brook with the idea that the First Amendment
>extended to "information . . . that teaches people to kill." The expert
>testimony "really has my dander up," Feinstein said, suggesting that such
>information be banned from electronic networks.
>
>  Bomb-making instruction books made available online should be targeted for
>censorship, Feinstein suggested, because that information is "pushing the
>envelope of free speech to extremes." She told the experts that the
>"doctrine of prior restraint is one we have to look at." After all, she
>said, that such information "isn't what this country is all about."
>
>  That line drew a sharp rebuke from Jerry Berman, executive director of the
>Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology: "Excuse me, Senator,
>that is what this country is all about." Berman then asked: "Are you
>proposing we outlaw that kind of speech for bookstores?" Feinstein just
>glared.
>
>  Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) added his two cents, saying that if Americans
>"really knew about the dark back alleys of the Internet . . . they would be
>shocked." Kohl went on to suggest that Congress would look at placing
>artificial restraints on access to the Internet. "In other words, the
>industry acts now or Congress will do it for you," Kohl said. "After all, if
>we have the technology to get kids on the Internet, we have should have the
>technology to get them off."
>
>  The Department of Justice got its licks in when Deputy Assistant Attorney
>General Robert Litt testified. "Not only do would-be terrorists have access
>to detailed information on how to construct explosives," he said, "but so do
>children." He followed that line with a shot aimed at commercial services
>such as Prodigy, America Online and CompuServe: "This problem can only grow
>worse as more families join the Internet 'society.'"
>
>  America Online's Government Affairs Director William Burrington pointed
>out that any restrictions the U.S. might place on Internet access would
>largely be ignored by the rest of the world, given the "international
>information ocean" that is the Net.
>
>  Specter was set on his heels when he questioned Litt. "What first-hand
>knowledge or statistics do you have about crimes that have taken place as a
>result of information gathered from the Internet?" Specter asked. "None,"
>replied Litt. Specter reframed the question twice, but Litt could find no
>other answer. Specter asked him to "investigate" the question and report
>back.
>
>  Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) broke from his colleagues, saying, "Before we
>head down a road that leads to censorship we must think long and hard about
>its consequences." He then cut to the bottom line of the debate: It is
>"harmful and dangerous conduct, not speech, that justifies adverse legal
>consequences," Leahy said.
>
>  The most telling blow came from former U.S. Attorney Frank Tuerkheimer.
>Currently a law professor, Tuerkheimer gained notoriety in the 1970s when,
>arguing the government's case, he successfully blocked the publication of
>the How to Make an H-Bomb article in The Progressive magazine, providing a
>precedent for the "prior restraint" doctrine.
>
>  Tuerkheimer said that today he regrets arguing that case, first because
>the information was all available in public libraries, and second because
>another publication ended up printing it anyway. Those circumstances, he
>said, show the fallacy of trying to censor information, which "will find a
>way to get out," he said.
>
>  Tuerkheimer also pointed out to the Senate panel that even the
>Encyclopedia Britannica includes detailed bomb making information. Further,
>a publication called the Blaster's Handbook, which contains a detailed
>recipe for an Ammonium Nitrate/Fuel oil bomb like that used in Oklahoma
>City, is available for free -- from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's
>Forestry Service.
>
>  Brock N. Meeks, Inter@ctive Week
>
>[05-25-95 at 17:27 EDT, Copyright 1995, ZiffWire, File: c0525204.4zf]
>
>  Copyright (c) 1995 by INDIVIDUAL, Inc.  All rights reserved.
>
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>