Availability of 'Dangerous' Information

Summary

Concerns are sometimes raised about the availability of 'dangerous' information, such as bomb making recipes, on the Internet, and about disinformation or opinion being presented as fact.

Mechanism

There is a very wide range of people who have access to Internet publishing facilities. Some publish information they do not consider dangerous (but others might), some publish information which is dangerous but caution others not to use it. In practice there is little or no evidence of easy access through the Internet to accurate, dangerous information which is not already available through other channels, e.g. a public library.

Quality of information on the Internet is variable. In particularly, a recipe for, say, ricin that might be found on the Internet may well not be complete or correct. There is no way of knowing this for certain unless one already knows how to make ricin.

'Dangerous' information - or any other kind - is only any use if you have an understanding of its quality. Because of its very nature, any 'dangerous' information on the Internet is likely to be published in such a way that its quality is very hard to check.

There is also a concern that information about infrastructure could be used by those seeking to threaten it. In the UK and the US information about some government facilities and utility networks has been removed from the web in the last few years.

Comment

Whether or not publishing information about infrastructure causes a risk to that infrastructure is a matter for the owners and operators of that infrastructure.

Example Mitigations

Literature survey or other attempt to find information - compare with other public sources such as public library, encyclopedias.

Discussions with Police