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     Regulation

This page considers regulation of online bombmaking information and points to some studies.

It covers

• issues - balancing free speech, public safety and credibility
• commodities - restricting access to explosives and ingredients
• studies - government and academic studies

     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.

The Melbourne Age announced November 2005 that

Intercepts and electronic surveillance since July last year had yielded almost 240 hours of conversations between [alleged Australian terrorist group] members discussing making bombs, sourcing chemicals and identifying other chemicals "that were not easy to source since September 11", gathering funds and organising military style training. ... The group had downloaded the Vortex Cookbook, a sort of anarchists' handbook, detailing the concoction of explosives

Much of that cookbook does not extend beyond recycling over-the-counter fireworks.

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).

In July 2007 EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini indicated that the European Commission planned to criminalise placing instructions on the internet about how to make a bomb. "Arguments about freedom of expression will not be allowed to stand in the way of criminalising the publication of bomb-making information that could be used by terrorists". ISPs would face charges if they failed to block websites containing bomb-making instructions generated anywhere in the world. Frattini commented that

It should simply not be possible to leave people free to instruct other people on the internet on how to make a bomb – that has nothing to do with freedom of expression. My proposal will be to criminalise actions and instructions to make a bomb because it is too often that we discover websites that contain complete instructions for homemade bombs.

     commodities

One criticism of moves to censor the net (and remove DIY guides from bookshops and libraries) is that potential criminals do not need to concoct their own explosives - and thereby risk eliminating both themselves and their kitchen sinks - if they can steal high quality explosives from storage at a civil engineering project, buy blasting powder over the counter for agricultural use or purchase pyrotechnics for recreational use.

Governments have sought to ensure that explosives are stored in a secure environment, although it is clear that there is some loss from construction sites in Australia and elsewhere, and to crimp large-scale access to the more powerful pyrotechnics.

It is not possible to tightly restrict multi-purpose chemicals such as paint thinner. Governments have, however, sought to restrict access to materials for fertiliser bombs.

In implementing a national agreement Australian states and territories have enacted restrictions on access to security sensitive ammonium nitrate (SSAN). Retailers and suppliers of SSAN fertilisers must be registered and are not permitted to sell or supply SSAN for private 'home use' in concentrations greater than 45% ammonium nitrate. Those distributors can only provide SSAN to licensed users, primarily agriculturalists. All licence holders must undergo a security clearance involving police and ASIO.

Similar arrangements are in place in the UK, Spain and other nations, underpinned by restrictions - effective or otherwise - on storage of SSAN.

     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.

US literature regarding the suppression of online information about bomb making includes Bryan Yeazel's 2002 'Bomb-making Manuals on the Internet' in 16 Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy 279-306, Brian Holland's 2005 'Inherently Dangerous: The Potential For An Internet-Specific Standard Restricting Speech That Performs a Teaching Function' in 39 University of San Francisco Law Review 353-406, Liezl Pangilinan's 2005 'When A Nation Is At War: A Context Dependent Theory of Free Speech For the Regulation of Weapon Recipes' in 22 Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 683-721 and Andrianna Kastanek's 2004 'From Hit Man To A Military Takeover of New York City: The Evolving Effects of Rice v Paladin Enterprises on Internet Censorship' in 99 Northwestern University Law Review 383-440.

Background includes the 1997 US Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, & Applications (CPSMA) report Marking, Rendering Inert, and Licensing of Explosive Materials.






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