Interesting People mailing list archives
Dateline segment on bomb recipes available on the Internet
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Fri, 2 Sep 1994 11:38:02 -0400
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
Current thread:
- Dateline segment on bomb recipes available on the Internet David Farber (Sep 02)