The New York Times (reg. req.) publishes an op-ed piece by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, now columnist Nicholas Kristof in which he argues in favor, literally, of government censorship and book burning (Recipes for Death). How ironic that this is published by the same newspaper that famously fought the Pentagon Papers case. Can Pulitzer Prizes be revoked?
This article is wrong on so many levels that it isn't even funny. I might go into detail about how recent, successful terrorist attacks have generally used very low tech means (flying planes into buildings, truck bombs, suicide bombers) and how even if we could guarantee there would be no weapons of mass destruction used in terrorism, that wouldn't stop terrorism or even lower the potential body count much or how it would be very difficult to define what is and isn't dangerous knowledge and do we really want the government to make the call or mention the fact that terrorist receive much of their training overseas where US censorship wouldn't reach, etc. But I won't. I will, instead, focus on a single, glaring flaw that Kristof's argument doesn't address:
Our small presses could end up helping terrorists much more than Saddam ever has.
Memo to Kristof: In the modern age, a small press is a computer and a printer. A large press is a computer with an Internet connection.
Kristof argues that we should ban books detailing means of chemical, nuclear and biologic warfare. This necessarily means that we will have to ban this information on the Internet. It is relatively easy to eliminate physical books. It would create all sorts of interesting challenges to censor particular information on the Internet (which, as we all know, is chock-a-block with steganographic terrorist messages already). How would Kristof propose to censor the Internet? Would he adopt the policies of China and Saudi Arabia? I see no other means to achieve his goal.