more on Terror Weapons In The Cupboard?

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 09:27:58 -0500
To: dave () farber net, ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Terror Weapons In The Cupboard?

This is news?   The FBI seems to have too much time on their hands to
invent and distribute "information" that is utterly useless, well-known,
and breeds paranoia about ordinary things.

I made pipe bombs as a kid.   They were called Amateur Rockets, using fuels
such as Zinc and Sulfur.   Instructions were provided in a book I bought
from Scholastic Book Club when I was in 8th grade.   (October Sky type
rockets, not the Estes ones).

I know how to make molotov cocktails with materials in my garage.   Should
we tell the FBI to get concerned about lawn mowers and soda pop?

I made poison gases as a kid.   My Gilbert chemistry set and chemicals I
could buy in a local hobby store provided the resources.  Making Chlorine
was interesting, and it was interesting to experiment with it in poisoning
bacteria, and mixing Chlorine with Hydrogen was really fun because a good
zap of UV light from a flashbulb would ignite it.  (instructions for all
this were available in a book called "The Boy's Own Book of Chemistry".

I cultured bacteria as a kid.  I liked to look at them under a
microscope.    When my family got sick from food poisoning (probably
Salmonella) I could probably have cultured those too.   I explored the
effects of chemicals on them (Chlorine, Sulfur Dioxide, etc.)

Any nerd like me could have become a "terrorist", I suppose.  I'm sure some
did.   But this knowledge has been available for a century.

Does the knowledge cause terrorism?   Does the availability of materials
cause terrorism?

Hardly.   The FBI needs to stop being paranoid about the natural world or
the technical world.   The real causes of terrorism are found in economics
and rhetoric.   Not in technology and science.

Scaring the s**t out of people that somehow their grocery stores need to be
held accountable for preventing terrorism is an outrageous waste of
taxpayer money.


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