Transcript

SHOW: CBS THIS MORNING (7:00 AM ET)

May 20, 1999, Thursday

TYPE: Newscast

HEADLINE: CALLS FOR INTERNET TO STOP WEB PAGES WITH INFORMATION ON BOMBMAKING

ANCHORS: THALIA ASSURAS

REPORTERS: MAGGIE COOPER

BODY:
THALIA ASSURAS, co-host: These days, anyone can log on to the Internet and get easy access to recipes for making bombs. As Maggie Cooper reports, some people want to put an end to that.

Mr. DENNIS SAFFRAN (Center for Community Interest): 'Shrapnel is very important if you want to kill or injure a lot of people with your pipe bomb.'

MAGGIE COOPER reporting:

The chilling words of Eric Harris, from the Littleton teen-ager's Web site, have helped illuminate a potentially perilous niche of the Internet.

Mr. SAFFRAN: We're giving every Eric Harris, every troubled kid out there the tools to become a Tim McVeigh or a Ted Kaczynski.

COOPER: No one knows better than Unabomber brother David Kaczynski how seriously threats of violence must be taken. He and one of his brother's victims called on Internet companies to block access to the barrage of bombmaking information available on the Web.

Mr. DAVID KACZYNSKI (Brother of Unabomber): These Web sites are like a public billboard, and the corporate executives who are in charge of those billboards have an--a choice to make at this point: 'Hey, I don't want to be a party to facilitating violence, mayhem and murder.'

COOPER: Marsha Kight lost her daughter in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Ms. MARSHA KIGHT (Victim's Mother): And I hope Microsoft and all the Internet companies are listening to a--a cry of people who have experienced this kind of tragedy on a--on a personal level.

Mr. FLOYD ABRAMS (First Amendment Attorney): We don't want or we shouldn't want to have Internet companies be the ultimate decisionmakers about ha--who gets a chance to be on the Net.

COOPER: But for grieving families looking for an answer, taking away access to the tools of violence makes sense.

Mr. ABRAMS: It is misleading, it--it's a lie to tell the victims in Colorado this wouldn't have happened if only there hadn't been a Net.

COOPER: The Senate this week passed a provision of the juvenile crime bill that would make it illegal to distribute bombmaking information on the Internet if it's intended to be used violently. The victims and their families here today want more, much more. Maggie Cooper, CBS News, New York.