This page considers bombmaking and other terrorist information on the net.

It covers

• introduction – are online bomb recipes a contemporary myth
• offline – what is available in print
• statistics – how much information, who is looking at it?
• issues - balancing free speech, public safety and credibility
• studies - government and academic studies

     Introduction

In discussing censorship, free speech and information flows we have noted that three preoccupations of regulators, the media and the community are the availability of online -

• primers on suicide
• information about DIY bomb construction or poison manufacture
• child pornography.

As with cybersuicide, the prevalence and significance of online 'bomb kits' or poison guides is unclear.

Much discussion of internet primers has an anecdotal basis, with few hard figures about the number of sites or their use and little effort to relate online information to what is available offline (whether in print, in classrooms, in military units or through word of mouth among the wider community).

Uncertainty about a substantive basis for special regulation has not, however, inhibited some national and state efforts to restrict or even eliminate 'bomb sites', with for example prohibitions on publishing DIY explosives instructions or calls for criminal sanctions against publishers.

The US federal Violent & Repeat Juvenile Offender Accountability Act of 1999, for example, criminalises the teaching or distribution of information on "how to make a bomb or other weapon of mass destruction" if the distributor intends use of the information to commit a federal violent crime or knows that the recipient intends to use it to commit such a crime. The penalty is a fine of US$250,000 and/or a maximum of 20 years imprisonment.

Critics have responded that use of the law to expunge pyrotechnics information from the web is inconsistent with the US Federal Government's print publication (in for example the Forestry Service's Blaster's Handbook) of details about explosive manufacture and deployment and the 1997 report on The Availability of Bombmaking Information by the Department of Justice's cybercrime unit.

Others, somewhat harshly, have labelled it as gesture politics, arguing that few publishers will admit to knowing what is in a reader's mind. US anarchist Sherman Austin, who pleaded guilty in 2003 to distributing information related to explosives, perhaps unsurprisingly told the court that he "wasn't really thinking" when he hosted a primer (with a link from raisethefist.com) and that "I'd be devastated if someone used this information to harm others".

     Offline

Arguably the internet's greatest significance in the dissemination of bombmaking information has been as a tool for marketing print publications and allowing people to order texts from other jurisdictions.

Much of the information that is (or has been) online derives from commercial and government publications, many of which are still available in libraries or available from mainstream retailers (eg the 1971 Anarchist Cookbook, Improvised Munitions Black Book or Big Book of Mischief from Amazon.com or primers direct from 'survivalist' publishers such as Loompanics). 1995 testimony by US academic Frank Tuerkheimer noted that the 1986 Encyclopedia Britannica

reveals great detail on explosive manufacture, similar in many respects to the information disseminated electronically of concern to the [Senate Judiciary] Committee and others, including, on page 279, a description of the Ammonium Nitrate/Fuel Oil mixture used in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Much information is presumably available by word of mouth - enthusiasts who are intelligent or merely persistent can for example devise basic explosives on the basis of classroom science experiments - or in academic and industry publications.

In 1962 the US Patent Office for example granted patent 3,060,165 regarding use of ricin as a biological weapon. That patent was publicly available for several decades and was online until after the culling of US federal government sites following September 11 that is discussed elsewhere in this site. The patent is, however, still available in non-US databases and can for example be accessed via the European Patent Office.

Basic information is also available in the mass media. In 2003 for example the 7.30 Report current affairs program on Australia's national ABC television network featured four Tasmanian documentary makers building and detonating a fertiliser bomb, similar to devices used in terrorist attacks overseas.

It is important to note that the federal censorship regime in Australia requires the Office of Film & Literature Classification (OFLC) to refuse classification of any materials that "promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime or violence". Prior to 1996 that ban more specifically referred to

detailed instruction or encouragement in: (i) the use of terrorist-type weapons and terrorist acts, (ii) the abuse of prescribed drugs.

     Statistics

Detailed statistics about the incidence of DIY weapons information on the net and - more importantly - about its use are unavailable. Inferences based on the reported sales of texts such as the Anarchist Cookbook or the mirroring of sites should be treated with caution, as the extent to which purchasing/copying reflects adolescent naughtiness is unknown. Few nations have reported successful prosecutions of people for online publication of DIY weapons information or use of that information.

     Issues

A key issue in regulating bomb or other weapons sites is the appropriateness of legislation against information (often characterised as innately neutral) and publication rather than action, particularly in cultures with a strong emphasis on free speech.

What are regulators seeking to do? We can identify several objectives.

The first - often dismissed as gesture politics or technological naivety - is to supress information that undermines community safety and is rendered more potent through online distribution. If reflects identification of the net as "the other" (ie a contemporary focus for latent anxieties) and as a soft target.

A second is restriction of bomb sites as a form of social boundary setting, signalling that some activities are unacceptable. Proponents of that restriction recognise that it will not be wholly effective but consider that the value of the overall "message" is significant, outweighing concerns about limits on free speech.

Restrictions have often been complemented by withdrawal from the public domain of information about critical infrastructure. In practice it is clear that dligence and social engineering will often reveal much of the suppressed information.

Ironically, denunciations by politicians and the media regarding the existence of bomb sites (and exotica such as the New Zealand DIY cruise missile site) has arguably made that information easier to find and driven people to emulate online publication.

In 1999 survivors of the Oklahoma City and Unabomber bombings called on commercial internet hosts and enterprises such as such as Yahoo! that provide space for newsgroups and other forums to

run automated search engine programs that continuously scan their computers for red-flag keywords suggesting the presence of bombmaking instructions. If a staff review of the site or posting then turned up actual instructions for making bombs, it should immediately be shut down or deleted.

Search engine operators should conduct similar automated scans of the web, with the engines not providing links to confirmed bombmaking sites. The operators should also alert hosts to the presence of dangerous and inappropriate information on their servers.

Such calls have been disregarded; critics of the Austin prosecution in the US accordingly note that a 'better' version of instructions about DIY molotov cocktail making is available on Wikipedia.

Action against online publishing reflects perceptions of risk and safety, with substantial research suggesting that perceptions of danger (and the intensity of responses) are sometimes not based on hard statistics. Sprightly comments are provided by Frank Furedi's Culture of Fear (London: Continuum 2002).

     Studies

In contrast to mass media angst about bomb recipes there have been few detailed studies of what information is available online, whether that information is accurate, who might be looking at it and whether it is available offline.

Genevieve Knezo's 2003 report for the Congressional Research Service on 'Sensitive But Unclassified' and Other Federal Security Controls on Scientific & Technical Information: History & Current Controversy (PDF) offers an introduction to US debate about restrictions on technical information published by government agencies and associated bodies.






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