7 ms·

That's in the UK. Such a law would run afoul of the First Amendment in the US.

by Fej 8y ago

Brakenshire 8y ago
Do texts that contain bomb-making information really fall under the first amendment in the US?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- aidenn0 8y ago
  Yes, except possibly when containing classified information.
  - astura 8y ago
    Publishing and/or otherwise mishandling classified information isn't a crime unless you have (or had) a security clearance.
    - aidenn0 8y ago
      IANAL, but pretty sure that this is not true. There is not a blanket ban on prior-restraint for national security reasons, but New York Times Co. v. United States did establish limits on it. One takeaway from that case could be that it did at least partly imply that the burden of proof is on the government, not the press. However, since all 9 justices had differing opinions, there's a lot of uncertainty over what is and isn't legal.
- dpratt 8y ago
  Of course it does, and it would be a fundamental insult to the history and legacy of Western culture if it wasn’t protected speech.
- striking 8y ago
  IANAL, but I don't see anything like that here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce.... So, decent chance it's protected speech.
- smhenderson 8y ago
  According to Wikipedia[1] the legal status of the book has been challenged or been brought up by politicians over the years but that it is still readily available from online retailers like Amazon. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anarchist_Cookbook#Legality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anarchist_Cookbook#Legalit...
  - Brakenshire 8y ago
    I think this book in particular is not serious in that respect, it's something written by an angry teenager (who became a communicant member of the Church of England five years later!). The person in the article above was acquitted on the basis that he was just a prankster, and that's mostly the audience of the book. I'm more interested in the general principle.
- toast0 8y ago
  The government can't exactly ban chemistry textbooks, can it? Anyway, for this type of censorship to be effective to prevent dissemination of knowledge, it would need to happen before distribution, and prior restraint is generally considered unconstitutional in the US, except in matters of national security. National security could likely include planned troop movements and nuclear weapons manufacturing procedures (although, you can figure out a lot by reading physics textbooks).
  - Brakenshire 8y ago
    There's a pretty big difference between a chemistry textbook on the one hand, and a step by step layman's guide on how to make a bomb, avoid detection and so on on the other. And then of course beyond that you can go into progressively more dangerous weapons. Would a guide to building IED's with shaped explosives fall under the protections, for instance? I was just watching a documentary yesterday about Iran taught these techniques to Shia militia in Iraq. And then you can get into progressively more dangerous weapons. The interesting thing is where the line is drawn, how far 'national security' is interpreted.
    - jandrese 8y ago
      The Chemistry textbook is more dangerous, because it isn't full of errors and bullshit like the Anarchists Cookbook.
    - toast0 8y ago
      The I in IED stands for improvised. I'm sure there's better or worse ones, but put some stuff that goes boom in a tight container is a pretty good start. If your society is held together by a lack of available knowledge on how to blow stuff up (or take other dangerous actions), I don't expect it will be held together for very long. Motivated people can figure this out pretty quickly.
- orblivion 8y ago
  It's for sale on Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-William-Powell/dp/1684111374 https://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-William-Powell/dp/... I think it falls within the margins.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- cthalupa 8y ago
  Of course they do. It's horrifying to me that there's places where that isn't allowed.
- ozzyman700 8y ago
  Yes, however I bet it might fall under 'providing material aid' if provided to a foreign "terrorist" entity.
  - Brakenshire 8y ago
    Oh, that's interesting. Difficult to see how such a link could be demonstrated with online publishing though.
    - ozzyman700 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Munitions_List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Munitions_List It seems distributing TAC online should be fine, I thought it might fall under some kind of ITAR requirement but I am just ignorant of the truth.
- philwelch 8y ago
  "Imminent lawless action" is the current constitutional standard.
  - Brakenshire 8y ago
    That seems to be about incitement, do that apply to technical documentation? As described above, instructions to build a nuclear bomb, to take an extreme example, are restricted, but surely not on that basis.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      I should probably disclaim at this point that I'm not a lawyer, let alone a constitutional law scholar. I'm also not a physicist. Here's some instructions to build a nuclear bomb, right off the top of my head: 1. Take a mass of U-235 about half the critical mass of U-235 and shape it into a rod. 2. Take another equal mass of U-235 and form it into a hollow cylinder, into which the rod will fit. DO NOT PUT THE MASSES OF URANIUM TOGETHER! 3. Put some kind of inert material between the two masses of uranium to keep them separated, and also to keep the rod lined up with the center of the cylinder. Place the separated uranium in a tight cylinder with room left on top of the rod. 4. Put a charge on top of the cylinder, behind the rod. Connect the fuse for this charge to whatever detonation mechanism you like--igniting this charge will also ignite the bomb. You might say, "hey, that's cheating! Where do you get all that U-235 in the first place?". You're right, that is a hard problem. The entire US managed to scrape together enough U-235 for one of these bombs and just dropped it on Hiroshima completely untested because getting U-235 is a pain in the ass. Instead, you'll want to have concentric shells of plutonium that implode together into a critical mass with the use of shape charges. Plutonium isn't even a naturally occurring element, but it's still easier to get than U-235. The shape charges are a little harder to figure out (this is one of many things John von Neumann is known for) but enough of it has been documented that it can't be that hard to work out. This is the design of the bombs tested at Trinity and later dropped on Nagasaki. So, yeah. Some details of specific, advanced nuclear bomb designs are restricted, but largely because the information is currently classified and virtually everybody with that information works in a government position where the laws surrounding classified information and the non-proliferation treaty are binding to them personally. Also, actually putting the information into practice requires lots and lots of hard, large-scale work to get enough fissile material in the first place. I'm pretty sure the physics and engineering faculty of the average American university could build working nuclear bombs if they had unlimited budgets and resources, it's just that once you start trying to refine weapons-grade plutonium, it's kind of obvious and then someone from the Department of Energy shows up and confiscates all your plutonium and you probably end up on some sort of watchlist somewhere.
- philipkglass 8y ago
  Yes. In fact you'll find the better ones on the shelves of technical libraries [1], both in the US and in other English-speaking countries. Introductory: The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives by Tenney L. Davis. Advanced: Chemistry and Technology of Explosives by Tadeusz Urbanski (English translation by M. Jurecki). Encyclopedic: Encyclopedia of Explosives and Related Items by Basil T. Federoff. Advanced applications of explosives, toward the destruction of materiel and human beings: Tactical Missile Warheads by Joseph Carleone. When I was an undergraduate I even found a book about nerve gas on the shelves -- Some aspects of the chemistry and toxic action of organic compounds containing phosphorus and fluorine by Bernard Charles Saunders. Dig into the citations and you find a further wealth of detail, papers now universally accessible through sci-hub. The main obstacle to making effective bombs isn't restrictions on information. It's that most people inclined to violence [2] can't or won't teach themselves something new even if given a wealth of high quality literature to do it with. [1] And on Amazon and Library Genesis. [2] Most non-violent people too have trouble with learning on their own. People who keep learning new things may overestimate how common that ability is in general.

That's in the UK. Such a law would run afoul of the First Amendment in the US.

by Fej 8y ago

That's in the UK. Such a law would run afoul of the First Amendment in the US.

Brakenshire 8y ago

Do texts that contain bomb-making information really fall under the first amendment in the US?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
aidenn0 8y ago
Yes, except possibly when containing classified information.
- astura 8y ago
  Publishing and/or otherwise mishandling classified information isn't a crime unless you have (or had) a security clearance.
  - aidenn0 8y ago
    IANAL, but pretty sure that this is not true. There is not a blanket ban on prior-restraint for national security reasons, but New York Times Co. v. United States did establish limits on it. One takeaway from that case could be that it did at least partly imply that the burden of proof is on the government, not the press. However, since all 9 justices had differing opinions, there's a lot of uncertainty over what is and isn't legal.
dpratt 8y ago
Of course it does, and it would be a fundamental insult to the history and legacy of Western culture if it wasn’t protected speech.
striking 8y ago
IANAL, but I don't see anything like that here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce.... So, decent chance it's protected speech.
smhenderson 8y ago
According to Wikipedia[1] the legal status of the book has been challenged or been brought up by politicians over the years but that it is still readily available from online retailers like Amazon. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anarchist_Cookbook#Legality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anarchist_Cookbook#Legalit...
- Brakenshire 8y ago
  I think this book in particular is not serious in that respect, it's something written by an angry teenager (who became a communicant member of the Church of England five years later!). The person in the article above was acquitted on the basis that he was just a prankster, and that's mostly the audience of the book. I'm more interested in the general principle.
toast0 8y ago
The government can't exactly ban chemistry textbooks, can it? Anyway, for this type of censorship to be effective to prevent dissemination of knowledge, it would need to happen before distribution, and prior restraint is generally considered unconstitutional in the US, except in matters of national security. National security could likely include planned troop movements and nuclear weapons manufacturing procedures (although, you can figure out a lot by reading physics textbooks).
- Brakenshire 8y ago
  There's a pretty big difference between a chemistry textbook on the one hand, and a step by step layman's guide on how to make a bomb, avoid detection and so on on the other. And then of course beyond that you can go into progressively more dangerous weapons. Would a guide to building IED's with shaped explosives fall under the protections, for instance? I was just watching a documentary yesterday about Iran taught these techniques to Shia militia in Iraq. And then you can get into progressively more dangerous weapons. The interesting thing is where the line is drawn, how far 'national security' is interpreted.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    The Chemistry textbook is more dangerous, because it isn't full of errors and bullshit like the Anarchists Cookbook.
  - toast0 8y ago
    The I in IED stands for improvised. I'm sure there's better or worse ones, but put some stuff that goes boom in a tight container is a pretty good start. If your society is held together by a lack of available knowledge on how to blow stuff up (or take other dangerous actions), I don't expect it will be held together for very long. Motivated people can figure this out pretty quickly.
orblivion 8y ago
It's for sale on Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-William-Powell/dp/1684111374 https://www.amazon.com/Anarchist-Cookbook-William-Powell/dp/... I think it falls within the margins.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cthalupa 8y ago
Of course they do. It's horrifying to me that there's places where that isn't allowed.
ozzyman700 8y ago
Yes, however I bet it might fall under 'providing material aid' if provided to a foreign "terrorist" entity.
- Brakenshire 8y ago
  Oh, that's interesting. Difficult to see how such a link could be demonstrated with online publishing though.
  - ozzyman700 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Munitions_List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Munitions_List It seems distributing TAC online should be fine, I thought it might fall under some kind of ITAR requirement but I am just ignorant of the truth.
philwelch 8y ago
"Imminent lawless action" is the current constitutional standard.
- Brakenshire 8y ago
  That seems to be about incitement, do that apply to technical documentation? As described above, instructions to build a nuclear bomb, to take an extreme example, are restricted, but surely not on that basis.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    I should probably disclaim at this point that I'm not a lawyer, let alone a constitutional law scholar. I'm also not a physicist. Here's some instructions to build a nuclear bomb, right off the top of my head: 1. Take a mass of U-235 about half the critical mass of U-235 and shape it into a rod. 2. Take another equal mass of U-235 and form it into a hollow cylinder, into which the rod will fit. DO NOT PUT THE MASSES OF URANIUM TOGETHER! 3. Put some kind of inert material between the two masses of uranium to keep them separated, and also to keep the rod lined up with the center of the cylinder. Place the separated uranium in a tight cylinder with room left on top of the rod. 4. Put a charge on top of the cylinder, behind the rod. Connect the fuse for this charge to whatever detonation mechanism you like--igniting this charge will also ignite the bomb. You might say, "hey, that's cheating! Where do you get all that U-235 in the first place?". You're right, that is a hard problem. The entire US managed to scrape together enough U-235 for one of these bombs and just dropped it on Hiroshima completely untested because getting U-235 is a pain in the ass. Instead, you'll want to have concentric shells of plutonium that implode together into a critical mass with the use of shape charges. Plutonium isn't even a naturally occurring element, but it's still easier to get than U-235. The shape charges are a little harder to figure out (this is one of many things John von Neumann is known for) but enough of it has been documented that it can't be that hard to work out. This is the design of the bombs tested at Trinity and later dropped on Nagasaki. So, yeah. Some details of specific, advanced nuclear bomb designs are restricted, but largely because the information is currently classified and virtually everybody with that information works in a government position where the laws surrounding classified information and the non-proliferation treaty are binding to them personally. Also, actually putting the information into practice requires lots and lots of hard, large-scale work to get enough fissile material in the first place. I'm pretty sure the physics and engineering faculty of the average American university could build working nuclear bombs if they had unlimited budgets and resources, it's just that once you start trying to refine weapons-grade plutonium, it's kind of obvious and then someone from the Department of Energy shows up and confiscates all your plutonium and you probably end up on some sort of watchlist somewhere.
philipkglass 8y ago
Yes. In fact you'll find the better ones on the shelves of technical libraries [1], both in the US and in other English-speaking countries. Introductory: The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives by Tenney L. Davis. Advanced: Chemistry and Technology of Explosives by Tadeusz Urbanski (English translation by M. Jurecki). Encyclopedic: Encyclopedia of Explosives and Related Items by Basil T. Federoff. Advanced applications of explosives, toward the destruction of materiel and human beings: Tactical Missile Warheads by Joseph Carleone. When I was an undergraduate I even found a book about nerve gas on the shelves -- Some aspects of the chemistry and toxic action of organic compounds containing phosphorus and fluorine by Bernard Charles Saunders. Dig into the citations and you find a further wealth of detail, papers now universally accessible through sci-hub. The main obstacle to making effective bombs isn't restrictions on information. It's that most people inclined to violence [2] can't or won't teach themselves something new even if given a wealth of high quality literature to do it with. [1] And on Amazon and Library Genesis. [2] Most non-violent people too have trouble with learning on their own. People who keep learning new things may overestimate how common that ability is in general.