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Thursday, April 4, 2013

Should Search Engines Block Queries to The Anarchist's Cookbook?



This thought came to me when I decided to search for The Anarchist's Cookbook to calm my curiosity of how easy it is for anyone to get a hold of it. When I searched Google for it, the first page presented me a number of places where I could purchase the book, along with a full pdf file of the book. I was quite surprised when I found it so quickly, and quite disturbed at that as well. I am fully against internet censoring to the extent of websites being shut down (other than that of illegality issues), but I believe that search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo should take a step towards assuring that the average internet user cannot obtain information like this.

The problem that I have with The Anarchist's Cookbook is not the fact that it explains how to make explosives, I think it's good information for people who know what they are doing, such as chemists, but I have a problem with the fact that it is written for the average person, who has had no safety training in handling chemicals. It explains how to get certain chemicals from off the shelf products in order to construct bombs, and other such dangerous weapons, rather than having to get chemicals from a supplier such as Sigma-Aldrich, who makes it impossible for the average person to obtain. If someone really wanted to hurt someone, they should have to gain the knowledge first before jumping right to making the explosive from a set out procedure. In that time planning it out, they could very well change their mind. An example of this is the Drano Bomb, where kids can make a bomb out of common household items, which can cause serious damage, as reported here. Reports have been made of people loosing fingers while holding the water bottle, which is an unexpecting object to be a bomb since we see bottles littered all the time.

In the end, we have to ask ourselves if information like this should be free to the public, through being written in layman’s terms, rather than in academic terminology that could only be understood with four years of post secondary education, along with the understanding and appreciation of what we are dealing with.

1 comment:

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