SUBJECT: INTERNET AS TERRORIST / THE SEQUEL SOURCE: ZiffWire via First! by Individual, Inc. DATE: May 25, 1995 INDEX: [6] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [I--t--r] at [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, [I--t--r] at [ctive] Week [05-25-95 at 17:27 EDT, Copyright 1995, ZiffWire, File: c0525204.4zf] Copyright (c) 1995 by INDIVIDUAL, Inc. All rights reserved.