Dateline segment on bomb recipes available on the Internet

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic () eff org>
Date: Fri, 2 Sep 1994 11:12:36 -0400 (EDT)




Topic 627 [eff]:  Dateline & "Child-Proofing" Cyberspace
#5 of 6: Ludlow (ludlow)      Fri Sep  2 '94 (07:46)    44 lines


 For the record, here's the note I sent to Dateline.


 to Dateline:


 I was very disappointed in last night's segment on the availability
 of bomb recipies on the interenet.


 The segment was dishonest in that it implied that bomb building
 by minors was a new phenomenon, and that it was made possible in
 large part by the internet.  In fact, this was a problem long before
 the internet was even imagined.  For example, there are numerous
 documented cases of children being maimed by homemade bombs
 throughout the 1960's.  I would have thought that a careful and
 honest news organization would note this fact.


 Is the problem worse today than in the 1960's? We were presented
 no evidence that it is.  For all we know, net-surfing  minors are
 *less* likely to build bombs than their off-line counterparts.  Thus,
 the story also failed to document that there is any sort of
 correlation, much less causal connection, between "basement
 bombers" and the availability of this information over the net.
 But isn't this the very first question that a good reporter should
 investigate?


 Finally, I was struck by the fact that the report seemed to place
 the onus of responsibility on the internet rather than the
 parents of these bomb-building children.  For example, the
 parents in question may not have been in a position to know
 what the children were downloading , but surely they should
 have become suspicious when, as your report indicated, the
 children turned a room above the garage into a "bomb
 building factory!"


 I really think that this report was nothing more than another
 poorly researched and poorly documented attempt to whip
 concerned parents into a state of hysteria over the evils of
 the mysterious internet.  I am sorry that NBC has decided to
 join that irresponsible disinformation campaign.


 Dr. Peter Ludlow
 Assoc. Prof.
 Dept. of Philosophy
 SUNY Stony Brook
 Stony Brook, NY 111794