The New Freedom

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I noticed something very peculiar last night. I saw a link on Reddit which said “The DHS edited my freakin’ blog!”. I clicked on it and it linked to a post on a blog called Stolen Bikes Ride Faster: The musings and adventures of a secretly insane (but not necessarily mad) scientist.

The original post was called “Homegrown Terror: Grow Your Own!”
Apparently this person is a chemistry professional and wrote a post about he thought that if gun nuts got to keep fifty caliber machine guns then he should be allowed to keep Thermite. The post then went on to discuss “Homegrown Terrorism,” the hot new threat to our safety and target of recent terrifying legislation, H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007.

News of HR1955 quickly made it’s way around the internet as it is essentially a thoughtcrime bill. It has passed the house and has yet to pass the Senate. I don’t know if it will make it through this time, but I don’t think it would face much objection with a name like that. It’s another bill with deliberately vague, undefined terms like ‘radical’ and ‘force’ which could be used to charge just about anybody the government doesn’t like as a terrorist, and people charged as terrorists already don’t get civil rights or due process, which makes things even more convenient. I assume it will probably used to charge brown-skinned people, but it could just as easily be applied to certain sects of the peace movement or internet culture. I myself am interested in radical politics and although I am a huge pacifist, I do recognize that there comes a time. Some people even believe this is mentioned in the 2nd Amendment. I’m not afraid to talk about my political opinions here, but I this bill could potentially label me a terrorist for advocating some of those opinions, and that scares me a lot.

Anyway, the post went on to describe in some detail how easy it is to make fun, redneck, high-school-boys type explosives, some of which could potentially scale up (like the AN/FO used in the Oklahoma City bombing). I don’t think it contained anything new that couldn’t be found by a quick Google. However, the author got a note from his friend saying that large parts of the text had been removed and replaced by the word ‘-redacted’ over and over again. This is what I saw when I clicked on that post. I took a screencap (excuse the Windows.. I just can’t get Ubuntu wifi drivers to work consistently):

Click For Bigger

The author then made another post detailing his findings about the editing. He was able to trace the edits back to an IP, 63.162.143.21 which equates to n021.dhs.gov, an address the US Department of Homeland Security has used to
vandalize Wikipedia with. Did the Department of Homeland Security somehow gain access to this man’s website and remove content about bombmaking? In the investigative post, he provided a link to a zip file with the complete source of the original post before it was censored, which I will mirror in the interest of free speech here.

Here’s a chunk of ‘redacted’ text, hopefully it (or I!) won’t disappear..

This brings us to one of my favorite classes of reactions: oxidation using chlorates and perchlorates. Perchlorates are salts derived from perchloric acid. They’re commonly used to treat thyroid disorders. Additionally, they can be found in airbags, fertilizers, and…um…rocket fuel. My favorite is potassium perchlorate, simply because large amounts are readily available to me. Ammonium perchlorate may be harder to come by, but it makes for some good solid rocket fuel. I should say at this point that while they’re pretty good oxidizers, perchlorates aren’t as strong as chlorates. They are, however, much more stable and thus more pleasant to work with.
The way this reaction works is actually pretty cool - you generate intense flames and a lot of heat without actually needing a flame or spark or even heat for ignition. You start off by mixing roughly equal parts perchlorate and sugar. Yeah, just regular old household sugar. Not Equal, not Sweet ‘n’ Low, not Splenda - that crap doesn’t work in the kitchen, and it won’t work here. So anyway, you take your mixture of perchlorate and sugar and you put it someplace cool. I recommend not doing it on the deck of your apartment - I learned the hard way that people tend to freak out and call the fire department when they see four-foot-high fireballs and thick black smoke. Once you’re in an appropriate location, you whip out your vial of concentrated sulfuric acid. Come on, you’re resourceful, you can get your hands on some of this stuff. If it comes down to it, just crack open your car battery. Put a few drops of acid on your powder mixture, and run away.

At this point in time, that post, the investigative post and the entry on Reddit.com have all disappeared. The only existing reference to it is this chunk from another author on the blog:

**NOTE**
Rob may not be making new posts for the next day or two - he had to head out of town for a while. […] Thanks for sticking around, and hopefully he’ll be able to tell you more about what happened yesterday in a little while.

There are no email addresses but I left a comment asking for more information.

Personally, I don’t know what to make of all this. It certainly sets off my bullshit detector, because do the DHS really have the resources and competence to pull off something like this? And would they use them for a couple of commonly available, undergraduate explosives recipes? Perhaps if he were posting detailed sources for Semtex or dirty/nuclear devices they might make a note of it, but even those can’t be too hard to find with a quick search, can they? It just doesn’t seem plausible. But on the other hand, it does seem quite fishy. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if the author posts anything about it in the next few days.

Hm..

I’ve made some changes to the site. For one thing, the ads are gone. I didn’t like them anyway. Also, I’ve discovered that the social bookmarking site del.icio.us has a feature which automatically turns my bookmarks into a blog post. I’m going to try using this because there are often times that I’d like to link/write about something but simply don’t have the time, as I am a university student with a very busy schedule and a Star Trek addiction. So look out for lots more interesting links on my site! I’ve also added a neat-looking widget which displays geoinformation about users currently viewing the site. The company running it has a really nasty-looking license agreement, but all of my content is obviously under open-licensing anyway, so I guess I don’t mind for now.

That’s all for now, more as this develops!
Rich

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