Bill Takes Aim at Bomb Instructions on Net

Posting bomb-making instructions on the Internet would be illegal in some cases under an amendment to a Senate bill passed last week, one month after the high school massacre in Littleton, Colo., was linked to such online information.

The legislation, introduced by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), would apply to books, videos and other media, but it is largely designed to curtail the wide availability of bomb formulas online.

Since the Littleton tragedy, Feinstein said, “there has been a steady stream of incidents of youths using the Internet to build bombs and threaten their use at school.”

The legislation would make it illegal to distribute bomb instructions if the distributor intends for the information to be used to commit a violent crime, or knows that the recipient intends to do so.

Skeptics note that proving such intent is difficult and say that even if the measure becomes law, most bomb-making data on the Net would still be protected speech under the 1st Amendment.

The measure’s prospects are dim. The Senate has passed similar legislation three times previously, only to see it killed in House-Senate conference committees.