RE: Clever
To the gutless prick who posted the following anonymously:
"What to do? Wait until we all get blown to hell?
At least this guy is trying to come up with some ways to help, albeit misguided and ill-informed and, in all probability, unenforcable.
Here's a new thought for you, instead of ridicule, insult, righteous indignation, bitchin and moanin' howsabout coming up with some ideas to throw in the pot?
I assume you are all intelligent enough to formulate your own ideas?"
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If you seriously believe that access to such files on the internet (especially considering the quality of a lot of the information on the internet) is going to get us all "blown to hell", you need to up your meds again until you can no longer hear the voices.
FFS, I've seen some of these instructions and they're frankly laughable. Those that are not are pretty much common knowledge anyway.
What "this guy is trying to come up with" is some ways to exert government control and promote censorship - the not-so-thin end of a rather large wedge.
How "misguided and ill-informed and, in all probability, unenforcable" it may be is irrelevant. The fact is that he is seeking censorship - making him no different to any book-burning fascist in history (and I'm including the USA, with its long history of book-burnings and censorship and its current government policies, along with 1930's Germany in that category)
Here's a new thought for you - one your Ubergruppenfuhrer at the Ministry of Truth would disapprove of: Censorship, book-burning and the suspension of basic rights creates exactly the sort of environment in which the malcontents who would seek to use such devices can flourish.
Another thought for you: When the entire Western World is presided over by dictators and the Secret Police are tapping everyones telecommunications and arresting "suspected terrorists in the middle of the night, the Terrorists will have won - as they have already won against the USA. The Patriot Act and other measures in force in the USA have ensured that the entirety of the USA lives in fear of something - the terrorists or its own overly-authoritarian and unconstitutional government, doesn't matter which.
Personally I know how to make a large number of explosives, poisons, improvised weapons etc - not to use against anyone, but out of intellectual curiousity. Most of that information I had long before the advent of the internet - and most of it a lot more accurate than half the crap on the web.
I have the information in encyclopaedias and other books. Perhaps we should ban "Hazards in the Chemical Laboratory" (which I own, as a former chemistry student) as people might use it to make explosives and poisons - rather than using it to assist in exercising due caution and avoiding potentially dangerous cross-contamination in the lab.
Who cares if a few chemistry students get blown up or wind up with an eyeful of shattered Pyrex through not knowing to ensure the work bench is clear of all traces of one chemical before handling another - just so long as the terrorists don't have access to a book that tells them what spontaneously goes bang, eh?
FFS! There are a lot of hazardous things out there that anyone with a modicum of intellect would know could be used as a makeshift weapon/bomb/incendiary - hands up who doesn't know that a glass bottle full of petrol and a burning rag can be used as an incendiary device?
Readily available encyclopaedias (libraries, second hand book shops, Amazon.com etc) have *accurate* recipes for gunpowder, dynamite, nitroglycerin, TNT, RDX etc etc etc. Much better than on the web where you have to have enough knowledge of chemistry to be able to verify that the "recipe" is real and not some bogus crap (and if you had that knowledge, you'd hardly need a recipe off the 'net, would you?)
I saw a movie once where the villain was threatening to blow up buildings unless the city paid a ransom. The Scientific Advisor was explaining to the Sceptical Cop that the manufacture of nitroglycerin was, in fact, very easy so the threat was quite real. In the movie, the Adviosor not merely mentioned the three chemicals required, he explained in detail (complete with film footage with the fuzzy-round-the-edges "I'm seeing this in my mind" effect to SHOW how it was done) how to make nitroglycerin in a bathtub, and how to avoid blowing yourself up in the process.
Extremely detailed instructions - perhaps that movie should be banned along with any movie or book describing how rockets can use hydrogen peroxide or hydrazine/nitric acid as propellants.
Then they can later get down to the brass tacks of banning certain books on philosphy and other harmful ideas they don't want people thinking about.
To your final point, I have no ideas on how to ensure that only "the right people" gain access to "dangeorus information" because, unlike you, I'm intelligent enough to see that the very act of judging who the "right people" are is one of the early steps on the road to a dictatorship.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
