By LEONARD GRAY / L’Observateur / May 22, 1999

LAPLACE – The Internet is a valuable learning tool – ideal for research and a boon to educational efforts. However, what children have access to maybe in question, especially in the wake of the Columbine High School incident in Colorado.

As an experiment, L’Observateur took two high school students and, under adult supervision, asked them to attempt to find certain information. Theydid – with no problem.

A 16-year-old girl was asked to find directions to manufacture a pipe bomb. That was at 3:03 p.m. By 3:15 p.m., she found an online handbookwhich gave specific directions on everything from making pipe bombs to letter bombs to landmines.

There’s also everything from how to hotwire a car to credit card fraud, and from vandalism suggestions around school to “how to kill someone with your bare hands.”A search for buying firearms over the Internet brought up a host of online gun dealers. Their sites call for buyers to send them a local FederalFirearms License holder to accept delivery, and that holder would conduct the background check of the buyer before releasing the weapon.

Juveniles, according to one site, may only acquire an online weapon with the written permission of the parent or guardian and only if the weapon is to be used for “employment, ranching, farming, target practice or hunting.”Potentially dangerous information is also widespread in the Internet and widely available. One search produced the website of a militia groupwhich aims at the establishment of a 25-million-man standing civilian army before the year 2000.

A 15-year-old girl, given similar assignments, tracked down another website in less than 10 minutes which sells booklets for $15 to $25 on computer hacking, telephone fraud, ATM fraud and “constructing a nuclear device.”This last item in the catalog is described as “the real thing” and provides information on how to acquire the radioactive materials, constructing the bomb itself (complete with schematic diagrams), and concludes “not for the faint of heart!” This particular catalog, according to their counter, had nearly 600,000 people who had viewed it.

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