EXERCISING HIS RIGHTS: BOMB-MAKING INFO ON CAPE MAN'S WEB SITE

Beneath one of the buttons on David Smith's Web site hides a trove of how-to information about making bombs: letter bombs, paint bombs, touch explosives, Thermite bombs, CO2 bombs, Solidox bombs, smoke bombs, mail box bombs, napalm, a fertilizer bomb, a tennis ball bomb, a diskette bomb and landmines along with instructions for making plastic explosives from bleach.

The bomb-making directions are a small part of the Cape Girardeau man's Web site, which also includes information about science fiction, CDs and computer talk, his resume and pictures of long-lost women friends he hopes to locate. There is an anarchist manifesto and a listing of every word and Web site picked out by a popular Internet filter. The site also offers instructions on how to counterfeit money and commit credit-card fraud.

Smith has reposted much of the information from other sites.

His answer to the question of why he would place bomb-making information on his Web site is a simple one: "Because I can."

Putting this kind of information on the Internet is exercising his Constitutional rights, Smith says.

In another sense, he claimed, he is demonstrating as art sometimes does, he points out just how violent and messed up the world is.

This information is already out there and easily obtained, he says.

"It's not information that you can't get from a good high school chemistry textbook or in public libraries. There's nothing online you can't find somewhere else."

The site is visited by relatively few people, he says. One of the links that provides information about how to be a terrorist is an example.

"It gets a whopping 34 hits a day when people are doing billions and billions of things on the Internet," Smith said.

Two Roseau, Minn., teen-agers who visited the site last week are being disciplined for downloading some of the bomb-making information. Jeff Kienitz, technology coordinator at Roseau Community School, said the school could have expelled the two boys but decided not to.

He reported the incident to the FBI and was told nothing could be done about the Web site (See related story).

Smith does not think there's anything wrong with providing the information.

"What might concern me slightly is that the search was being done in the first place," he said. "Why are you looking these things up?

Someone who actually makes a bomb using his information would have to be unstable in the first place, he reasons.

"If he thinks it's a good idea to use it, he had a lot of issues before he came along to me," Smith said. "We have here a disturbed young person who clearly needed help."

Smith said he has never made a bomb himself.

Kienitz disagrees that only disturbed youngsters would go ahead and make a bomb after finding the instructions.

He recalled taking apart his grandmother's perfectly good washing machine when he was a boy. "Children have a natural curiosity," he said. "That's what we try to develop here at school."

Kienitz maintains the computers for the 1,700-student school near the Canadian border. As a fellow "computer person," he deplores what Smith is doing.

"He's making a mockery of the whole system," he said.

"We don't need (students) to have access to that sort of information. It serves no purpose."

He said he is not necessarily speaking for the school district "although I'm sure they would agree."

At Southeast Missouri State University, Smith was a Student Government senator and SG representative to the University Information Technology Committee. He was a columnist and movie reviewer at the Capaha Arrow, the school newspaper, before graduating in December with a bachelor's degree in computer science. He said he is moving out of town this weekend to search for jobs.

Dr. Roy Keller, adviser to the Arrow, differs with Smith's insistence on exercising his First Amendment rights in this case. "I think some serious thought needs to be given to curtailing that kind of thing," he said. "The consequences are just too serious."