Group Asks Web Firms to Keep
Bomb-Making Sites off the Web

Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Victims of bombings and an advocacy group called on the nation's leading Internet companies Wednesday to keep bomb-making sites off the Web.

"No one has a constitutional right to use an Internet company's property to facilitate murder," said Dennis Saffran, executive director of the Center for the Community Interest. "Rather, the companies have the constitutional right -- and the moral obligation -- to stop this use of their property."

Joined by a survivor of a Unabomber mail bombing and the mother of a woman killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, the group mailed letters Wednesday to America Online Inc., Microsoft Corp., Yahoo! Inc. and Walt Disney Co., which recently launched Go.com, asking for them to take action.

The companies should identify and shut down access to bomb-making sites; routinely scan their sites for bomb-making information; and remove sites that specifically threaten or encourage physical violence against named private individuals, the letters said.

Officials with AOL, Yahoo and Go.com, a joint venture between Infoseek Corp. and Disney, said they already prohibit such information. Officials with Microsoft did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment. The companies also do not control all the material on the Web, so virtually anyone with a computer and a modem could create a Web site of their own with whatever information they desired.

"Any such materials we find are removed," said AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein, who noted that posting bomb-making material on AOL is a violation of the company's terms.

Still, Eric Harris, one of the two youths who killed 12 students and a teacher and then themselves at a Colorado high school last month, had a Web site on AOL filled with bomb diagrams.

David Kaczynski, the brother of convicted "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski, said easy access to bomb-making sites can turn good kids bad. "We're allowing every Eric Harris, every troubled kid out there, to become the next Tim McVeigh," Mr. Kaczynski said.

Gary Wright, who still finds shards of shrapnel in his skin from a Kaczynski bomb, said that in a span of 15 minutes, he was able to find 10 sites telling him how to make pipe and rocket bombs, bombs disguised as tennis balls, and homemade napalm.

"A child running in the park is going to have no hesitation in picking up something that is made to look like it can give him pleasure, like a tennis ball," Mr. Wright said.