Ban the Bomb (online)
p2p news / p2pnet:- Ban the Bomb has taken on a new meaning in Germany.
Bavarian minister of the interior Günther Beckstein has “called upon the industry to find solutions for a security problem which in his opinion is a very grave one: manuals for building bombs to be found on the Internet,” says Heise Online.
“It is possible to download recipes on how to manufacture with little effort very difficult to detect explosives,” Mr. Beckstein told the German business daily Handelsblatt in a talk to be published in the paper’s Tuesday edition.
This was “an extremely dangerous state of affairs,” he noted, says the story, “and one very difficult to get to grips with. Filtering programs comparable to the ones successfully used in the fight against child pornography might provide a remedy here, he surmised.”
The story doesn’t say when Beckstein made his startling discovery which has, of course, been common knowledge online since the year dot. Literally.
William Powell’s eminently-available-online Anarchist’s Cook Book was, for example, published in 1971 as a protest against the US government war in Vietnam. It has recipes and instructions for making bombs at home, among a number of other handy skills.
And as an educational experiment, enter ‘how to make a bomb’ on your favourite search engine.
Heise doesn’t say which industry(ies) Beckstein is appealing to, or how he expects it/them to do anything about banning the bomb online. But his plea has generated a certain amount of priceless PR.
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See:-
Heise Online – Bavarian Minister of the Interior calls for filters for Internet bomb-building manuals, September 13, 2005
September 14th, 2005 at 9:55 am
Theres some very cool books out there aren’t there. Have lots of them myself. I mean who not capable of making a bomb. Its the simplest thing in the world to do. Good chemist, supermarket and a garden center all the ingredients yourll ever need.
September 15th, 2005 at 2:46 pm
Günther Beckstein is a well-known law-and-order nutjob. I know it’s hard to believe but I think that guy actually sincerely believes in the statement he gave.
The sad part is that nutjobs like him are on the rise since 9/11 further contributing to the damage terrorists have already done by dismanteling civil rights.
September 16th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
I remember in the past that the US tripped about it after all of those school shooting and whatnot. Guess what… Those manuals are still there. YOu can’t stop the internet. Its global and if you try, you won’t suceed. Just look at p2p.