Dangerous Information

Most of my writing (ok all) requires doing research. And for this particular story, I require some....some would say "sketchy" information. Mainly, about all the different ways to kill humans quietly and or efficiently. Its for a story about hitmen.

But the problem is....I'm not sure if I should be doing this sort of thing on google. So uh, am I gonna be put on a government watchlist or something if I start snooping around for such info? I'd like to know before I start doing this.

This got me thinking about information and the internet. Is it illegal to look up how to make a bomb? What about how to make drugs? If it is, are you ok with this kind of information being available to anyone who wants to know? How free should information be?

Edit: What if someone started a website that centers on making dangerous information easily accessible from one place. Like how to make drugs, poisons, how to commit crimes, how to not get caught, how to kill someone without leaving evidence, how to get rid of a dead body, how to make a wide assortment of explosive and dangerous devices, and things like that.

Would that be illegal? Would you be okay with such a website?

edited 18th Oct '11 2:49:18 PM by ViralLamb

Power corrupts. Knowledge is Power. Study hard. Be evil.

Depends on where you are... But more than likely you will be put on some sort of list... The good news: You probably won't be picked up(definitely won't, in the US) unless something untoward happens. It is legal to look up any piece of information(in the US at least, in other countries... it may be less so). If you find something you never should have(in the US), it's the guy who put the info out there that gets in trouble, not the people who read and remember it...

As for whether all that crap should be out there? Depends on what it is. And since there won't be a consensus on what should be restricted, there really isn't much of a reason to restrict any of it...

I don't think looking up information alone can get you into trouble. they can't really do anything to you if you don't actually do anything dangerous with that information. (Not to mention that this is something you could look up in a library, I'm fairly sure.) So.. yeah, go ahead and google. You'll probably get wikipedia on the top of all those lists. *shrug* I don't think you'll get into trouble for looking up that stuff alone.

And, you know, it should be fairly easy to prove you're using it for writing. And information, in general, should be a free thing. (This isn't getting into things like copyright, which is its own legal beast.)

There's a book out there written by a doctor giving realistic murder advice for prospective mystery writers. I don't think there's much of a problem with looking up information.

edited 18th Oct '11 12:52:57 AM by Clarste

It's For A Book, after all...

edited 18th Oct '11 1:01:19 AM by Greenmantle

Keep Rolling On

Heh. I'm writing a terrorism novel (which will get published eventually, I swear...), and I'm trying as hard as I can not to look up certain information exactly because of the fear of getting picked up. I think I'll just eventually put a disclaimer saying "lots of this info was made up so that the gov't didn't blacklist my ass for terrorist activities".

edited 18th Oct '11 6:31:43 AM by FFShinra

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

You know, you may look for stuff like fighting manuals, in particular those written for the soldiers. They contain a number of hints on how to kill people, while also looking innocent enough in your browser's history (at least better than "hey can u tel me how 2 kil ppl plx" ).

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

lol.. No, you don't have anything to worry about as far as being put on a list or anything like that.

Look for the old US Army Fairbairn Sykes hand to hand field manuals. They have good stuff and can probably be found in PDF.

Here's what you do: rent a cheap hotel room for a month, and make sure that rent includes free wireless. Set up your labtop for remote access, plug in it, and leave it running in the hotel room. Then access said computer remotely to disguise your IP address. I'm sure that there's another step or two in there, but you can probably figure it out on your own without arousing suspicion.

Are you using a public computer to look it up? If not, then no, you're fine.

go ahead and do every stupid thing you can imagine

Another source you could consider is your friendly neighborhood botanist. They know all sorts of ways to kill a man with vegetable-based poisons. You could even disguise it as "say, I want to live in the woods for a month to test my endurance, can you tell me what local plants I shouldn't eat, because they are deadly poison?".

I'll look that up thanks.

Well that seems a bit much.

By "public computer" do you mean like at the library? Why does it matter if its a public computer?

Lets up the ante a bit: What if someone started a website that centers on making dangerous information easily accessible from one place. Like how to make drugs, poisons, how to commit crimes, how to not get caught, how to kill someone without leaving evidence, how to get rid of a dead body, how to make a wide assortment of explosive and dangerous devices, and things like that.

Would that be illegal? Would you be okay with such a website?

Edit: added above question to OP

edited 18th Oct '11 2:49:58 PM by ViralLamb

Power corrupts. Knowledge is Power. Study hard. Be evil.

Three words: Freedom. Of. Speech.

Governments shouldn't get to restrict people's access to dangerous information.

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

I don't know, but those sorts of sites already exist. I visited plenty of them back when I was a teenager. Searching for "the anarchist's cookbook" tended to bring up sites with instructions on how to do various illegal activities. Granted, they were poorly researched and probably incorrect.

Of course I would. It'd be a good resource for writing, and for life.

I know such website exists, but they're probably sloppy and all over the place with subject matter. I'm talking about a kind of focused project for collecting and sharing dangerous information. Maybe in the form of a wiki. Basically, your all stop-shopping center for dangerous and shady information.

I'm stupid, so I don't know all the ins and outs of a wiki, but that's what I imagine it being.

edited 18th Oct '11 4:24:45 PM by ViralLamb

Power corrupts. Knowledge is Power. Study hard. Be evil.

Is there such a thing as dangerous information?

If there is, then it's because it hurts those who don't deserve to be in power IMHO.

This is where I, the Vampire Mistress, proudly reside: http://liberal.nationstates.net/nation=nova_nacio

I think the only real issue that comes up is if you are later accused of a crime that you would now legitimately know how to commit. If the state can prove you know how to commit a specific crime it becomes easier to show THAT you committed that crime.

Much to my BFF's wife's chagrin, No Pants 2013 became No Pants 2010's at his house.

I'm not sure that could be a problem for an innocent person.

Power corrupts. Knowledge is Power. Study hard. Be evil.

You might be surprised. As an example, it's kind of hard to know how to secure computer systems without knowing a thing or to about how to break computer security.

The problem would be that not all criminal activities make sense to one person. E.g., you could learn about making automatic weapons from a right-wing militiaman, but about synthesizing drugs from some leftist, and one might not want to be anywhere near the other.

edited 20th Oct '11 4:50:07 PM by Tzetze

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

That's like saying because I don't like My Little Pony, that I wouldn't want to come to these forums anymore because a thread exists for the purpose of talking about it.

Power corrupts. Knowledge is Power. Study hard. Be evil.

It would certainly matter on a wiki, which generally have quasidemocratic ruling structures. What if a right-winger wants all curse words censored, and a leftist prefaces all mentions of the US with "imperialist" etc.?

edited 20th Oct '11 5:04:11 PM by Tzetze

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

I suppose to avoid that you'd have to follow Wikipedia's example and keep stuff in a neutral language. Also, this seems like an odd derail.

edited 20th Oct '11 5:47:36 PM by ViralLamb

Power corrupts. Knowledge is Power. Study hard. Be evil.