    [Senate Hearing 106-803]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                                            S. Hrg. 106-803

                           HATE CRIME ON THE INTERNET

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   before the

                           COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
                              UNITED STATES SENATE

                           ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                       on

     RAMIFICATIONS OF INTERNET TECHNOLOGY ON TODAY'S CHILDREN, FOCUSING ON
     THE PREVALENCE OF INTERNET HATE, AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON HOW TO SHIELD
               CHILDREN FROM THE NEGATIVE IMPACT OF VIOLENT MEDIA

                                   __________

                               SEPTEMBER 14, 1999

                                   __________

                              Serial No. J-106-48

                                   __________

             Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

                       U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
    67-653                     WASHINGTON : 2001

                           COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                         ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah, Chairman

    STROM THURMOND, South Carolina       PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont
    CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa            EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts
    ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania          JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
    JON KYL, Arizona                     HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin
    MIKE DeWINE, Ohio                    DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
    JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri              RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
    SPENCER ABRAHAM, Michigan            ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
    JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama               CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York
    BOB SMITH, New Hampshire

                 Manus Cooney, Chief Counsel and Staff Director

                     Bruce A. Cohen, Minority Chief Counsel

                                      (ii)

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                        STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS

                                                                       Page

    Hatch, Hon. Orrin G., U.S. Senator from the State of Utah........     1
    Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont...     3
    Kennedy, Hon. Edward M., U.S. Senator from the State of
      Massachusetts..................................................    11

                        CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

    Panel consisting of Michael J. Gennaco, Assistant U.S. Attorney,
      and Chief, Civil Rights Section, Central District of
      California, Los Angeles, CA; Abraham Cooper, associate dean,
      Simon Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles, CA; Wade Henderson,
      executive director, Leadership Conference On Civil Rights,
      Washington, DC; Howard Berkowitz, national chair, Anti-
      Defamation League, Washington, DC; and Joseph T. Roy, Sr.,
      director, Intelligence Project, Southern Poverty Law Center,
      Montgomery, AL.................................................     6

                   ALPHABETICAL LIST AND MATERIALS SUBMITTED

    Berkowitz, Howard:
        Testimony....................................................    24
        Prepared statement...........................................    26
    Cooper, Abraham:
        Testimony....................................................    12
        Prepared statement...........................................    15
    Gennaco, Michael J.:
        Testimony....................................................     6
        Prepared statement...........................................     9
    Henderson, Wade:
        Testimony....................................................    16
        Prepared statement...........................................    20
    Roy, Joseph T., Sr.:
        Testimony....................................................    50
        Prepared statement...........................................    53
            Editorial, Intelligence Report, No. 94, Spring 1999......    56
            Internet Hate Site List, Intelligence Report, No. 93,
              Winter 1999............................................    57
            Story on Hate Sites and Related Litigation, Intelligence
              Report, No. 93, Winter 1999............................    60
            Story on Hate Sites, Intelligence Report, No. 89, Winter
              1998...................................................    62

                                    APPENDIX
                             Questions and Answers

    Responses of Michael Gennaco to Questions from Senator Leahy.....    71
    Responses of Howard Berkowitz to Questions from Senator Leahy....    71

                      Additional Submission for the Record

    Prepared statement of Karen Narasaki, on behalf of the National
      Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium........................    73

                           HATE CRIME ON THE INTERNET

                                  ----------

                          TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1999

                                           U.S. Senate,
                                    Committee on the Judiciary,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:18 a.m., in
    room SD-226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Orrin G.
    Hatch (chairman of the committee) presiding.
        Also present: Senators Grassley, and Leahy.

     OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ORRIN G. HATCH, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
                           THE STATE OF UTAH

        The Chairman. I am sorry I am a little bit late. We will
    start this hearing. Good morning. We are happy to welcome all
    of you to today's hearing on Hate Crime on the Internet. We are
    pleased to have today five impressive witnesses, whom I shall
    introduce in short order.
        The Internet is a technology that heralds a breadth of
    understanding and education never before imagined. It holds a
    promise for disseminating knowledge and breaking down barriers
    to learning and understanding that is unrivaled, and I have
    accordingly been a staunch advocate and proponent of efforts to
    keep the Internet unregulated and competitive.
        However, today's hearing will focus on ramifications of
    Internet technology that can only be described as troubling.
    Unfortunately, for many parents, one of the timeless truths of
    good parenting, to teach children not to speak with strangers,
    has passed from the realm of the possible into a relic of a
    bygone day.
        We live in a time, according to a recent poll, when a full
    60 percent of parents disagree with the proposition that the
    Internet is a safe place for kids. And no wonder. In a
    technology seldom understood as well by parents as by their
    children, the universal information-sharing neighborhood
    established by the Internet has come to shelter a league of
    misfits intent on marketing their brand of hate to America's
    future.
        The knowledge of our children's lives, without which we
    cannot hope to fulfill our responsibilities as parents, seems
    increasingly out of our grasp, and the imagination and
    introspection that are so essential to a child's development
    are threatened by a technology where the power for advancement
    of knowledge exists alongside the possibility of contamination
    through hate.
        The strangers we warned our children not to speak to are, I
    fear, the very ones using the anonymity promised in cyberspace
    to prowl for children, to whom they could never hope to endear
    themselves on a street corner. This a serious situation indeed.
        The facts set out in newspaper accounts and reports by
    interested parties are simply staggering. One of our witnesses
    today hails from an organization, the Southern Poverty Law
    Center, which individually tracked sites for 254 hate groups in
    January of this year, up 50 percent from one year ago. Another
    group represented here, the Anti-Defamation League, estimated
    the presence of some 500 to 600 hate groups on the Web as of
    this June.
        But numbers hardly tell the story; the Web sites themselves
    do. They are not simply crude Web sites with blatantly racist
    or anti-Semitic messages. These groups are involved in a
    concerted effort to recruit college-bound middle- and upper
    middle-class kids, kids who are educated, energetic and
    articulate; in other words, precisely the type of kid you would
    not expect to see marching in a neo-Nazi parade.
        And those wolves come in sheep's clothing. To fulfill their
    recruitment objectives, these hate groups can be remarkably
    sophisticated, carefully avoiding obvious and explicit appeals
    to racism and anti-Semitism. These sites, of course, are
    matters of great concern to me. To the extent that these groups
    claim to disavow violence, the facts speak for themselves.
        The World Church of the Creator appears to have played a
    pivotal role in the life of Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, the 21-
    year-old whose cowardly evil we recall from his July 4 shooting
    of African Americans, Jewish people, and Asians. In addition,
    literature from this group was found near synagogues burned
    this June in Sacramento, CA.
        We must be vigilant and prompt in our efforts to begin
    eliminating hate on the Internet, but we must also do so with
    exactitude. From this complicated maze of issues, there is
    simply no simple answer, and with the First Amendment as our
    country's first premise, we know that any solutions that we
    endorse must recognize that the surest way to defeat the
    message of hate is to hold it under the harsh light of public
    scrutiny.
        Throughout the course of this hearing and afterwards, I
    will be interested to hear from the witnesses their view of the
    adequacy of the current state of the law, and I will ask the
    witnesses whether more might be done by Congress, consistent
    with the First Amendment, to better enable the elimination of
    certain types of hate on the Internet, such as non-protected
    speech that clearly advocates an imminent act of violence.
        But I have some preliminary thoughts on other efforts that
    Congress might explore and I will be eager for the witnesses'
    views on these other efforts. I have already sought to exercise
    leadership in this area in various ways, through the
    introduction of legislation that aims to make filtering
    technology more readily accessible and that aims to criminalize
    the use of the Internet to teach bomb-making. Such a proposal
    would include provisions to help Internet service providers
    identify those sites that illegally incite violence through
    hate speech.
        Now, it is my hope that ISP's, Internet service providers,
    will then put some procedures in place and take down a site so
    designated. To encourage the ISP's in implementing such a
    procedure, we might grant them certain immunities from any
    liabilities that they might otherwise face.
        I am also contemplating a measure to make it a crime to
    knowingly or intentionally advocate on the Internet the
    commission of a crime of physical violence against a person or
    the property of any individual or group or class of
    individuals. Maybe with this legislation, we will be able to
    deter heinous incitements to violence not yet committed on the
    Internet.
        Now, I look forward to hearing from each of our witnesses
    here today and receiving your thoughts on some of these
    proposals.
        Finally, prior to closing, I would like to announce that
    today I am reissuing an updated timely and valuable report
    prepared by the majority staff of the Committee on the
    Judiciary. The updated report includes information about the
    prevalence of Internet hate, as well as recommendations about
    shielding children from the negative impact of violent media.
        I hope that this report, entitled ``Children, Violence, and
    the Media--A Report for Parents and Policy Makers,'' will
    further the discussion about the flood of media violence in
    this country, including on the Internet, and what can be done
    about it. After all, the problem of youth violence is a complex
    problem which demands a comprehensive solution, one which deals
    with the need to empower parents to make sure our schools are
    safer, and to improve enforcement, deterrence and prevention.
        I am very pleased to welcome all of you here today. I would
    like to turn to our Democrat leader on the committee, Senator
    Leahy, at this time.

      STATEMENT OF HON. PATRICK J. LEAHY, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
                            STATE OF VERMONT

        Senator Leahy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and as a long-time
    member of this committee I will be anxious to read the report
    that you and the committee staff have put together. Should you
    want any advice or help from this side, feel free to ask.
        Today's hearing is a very important one and focuses on the
    serious problem of hate crimes, and on the growth of the use of
    the Internet to promote the agenda of hate. These are issues
    that concern every one of us.
        I think of the incidents of recent violent crimes that are
    motivated by hate and bigotry and how they have seared the
    conscience of this country. Last month, a gunman burst into a
    Jewish community center in Los Angeles and sprayed the building
    with 70 bullets. I think what strikes me as a parent and a
    grandparent so much is the view that we all saw, actually
    worldwide saw, with police officers leading the little children
    hand by hand, leading them to safety.
        Every one of us who have had children in school at that age
    or on a playground know how children are going to cross the
    street. All the children hold hands, and it is usually a couple
    of adults, teachers, doing it. Here, it is police officers in
    flack jackets, carrying automatic weapons, probably thinking of
    children of their own, leading these children to safety. It is
    a searing, terrible, terrible sight to see in our country. When
    the man surrendered who had done the shooting, he said his
    rampage had been motivated by his hatred of Jews.
        We can replicate this with all the other hate crimes based
    on religion or color of one's skin or ethnic background. A
    murderous string of drive-by shootings in Illinois and Indiana
    a month before left two people dead and nine wounded--again,
    racial and religious hatred. These are sensational crimes, the
    ones that focus public attention. But there is also a toll we
    are paying each year in other hate crimes that find less
    notoriety, but with no less suffering for the victims and their
    families.
        I think it is clear that we as a Nation still have serious
    work to do in protecting all Americans from these crimes and in
    ensuring equal rights for all our citizens. The answer to hate
    and bigotry has to ultimately be found in increased respect and
    tolerance for all our citizens, but strengthening our Federal
    hate crimes legislation is a step in the right direction.
        I commend Senator Kennedy for his leadership in this
    effort. I am proud to have been an original cosponsor of the
    Hate Crimes Prevention Act. This legislation amends the Federal
    hate crimes statute to make it easier for Federal law
    enforcement officials to investigate and prosecute cases of
    racial and religious violence. It focuses the attention and
    resources of the Federal Government on the problem of hate
    crimes committed against people because of their sexual
    preference or their gender or their disability.
        We passed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act in the Senate this
    year as part of the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill.
    I know Chairman Hatch has some concerns with the scope of the
    legislation. I also know the chairman is one who is totally
    opposed to bigotry, and I would hope that he and I and Senator
    Kennedy and others can work together to address the concerns
    that he has.
        I believe the bill in its current form would operate as
    intended. It would strengthen Federal jurisdiction over hate
    crimes as a backup, but not a substitute, for State and local
    law enforcement. The bill has received strong bipartisan
    support from State and local law enforcement organizations
    across the country, and we should pass this powerful law
    enforcement aid.
        The Hate Crimes Prevention Act is a tool for combatting
    acts of violence and threats of violence motivated by hatred
    and bigotry. It does not target pure speech, however offensive
    or disagreeable. The Constitution does not allow that. As
    Justice Holmes wrote, the Constitution protects not just
    freedom for the thought and expression we agree with, but
    freedom for the thought we deplore.
        There is another concrete action we could take in the
    Senate right now to help in the fight against hate crimes. We
    should face up to our responsibility to vote on the nomination
    of Bill Lann Lee to head the Civil Rights Division. Along with
    the Deputy Attorney General, Bill Lann Lee has been at the
    forefront of Federal efforts against hate crimes. He has done
    an outstanding job in this regard, but the Senate has refused
    to vote on his confirmation for 2 years.
        I think it is past time for this committee to do the right
    thing, the honorable thing, and report this qualified nominee
    to the Senate and let the Senate vote up or down on him. If
    Senators want to vote against him, fine. But any Senator who
    looks objectively at his record, I believe, Republican or
    Democrat, would vote for him. Then the Senate could fulfill its
    constitutional duty under the Advice and Consent Clause,
    because his is a critical position in the fight against hate
    crimes. If we want to oppose hate crimes, we ought to confirm
    Bill Lann Lee so he could have the full authority of a
    confirmed Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, rather
    than continue to treat him as if he were a second-class citizen
    and as if the efforts he is leading against hate crimes were
    unimportant. They are important.
        We ought to vote on this good man. We need his problem-
    solving abilities in these difficult times. He is spearheading
    Federal efforts against hate crimes, against modern slavery and
    for equal justice for all Americans. If confirmed, he would be
    the first Asian Pacific American to be appointed to head the
    Civil Rights Division in its storied history, and the highest-
    ranking Federal executive officer of Asian Pacific American
    heritage in our 200-year history. I think it would be a very
    important step that we could take in our efforts against hate
    crimes.
        In closing, let me say that it has been said that the
    content of the Internet is as diverse as human thought. I am a
    strong supporter of the Internet and have been since its
    inception. Its diversity is its greatest strength, but it comes
    at a cost. We will hear testimony today about how the Internet
    has been poisoned by extremists and bigots who use it to spread
    hate propaganda and reinforce each other's hateful convictions,
    almost as a net to pull in some of this Nation's losers who can
    validate themselves only by hating others.
        But we will also hear about how the Internet has been used
    to track down hate groups, and software that helps parents
    shield their children from this venom. As we take stock of the
    poison that is making its way to this new medium, we must not
    mistake the Internet itself with the actual source of the
    hateful content of these Web pages. When it comes to hate on
    the Internet, the problem is the message, not the medium. We
    have to examine what can be done about hate on the Internet
    within the constraints imposed by the First Amendment.
        So, Mr. Chairman, I think you have a very important hearing
    and I am delighted to join with you in this hearing.
        The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Senator Leahy, for
    your good remarks.
        I am very pleased to welcome the five members of our panel.
    First, we will hear from Mr. Michael Gennaco, who is an
    Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California,
    and who coordinates that office's hate crimes investigation and
    prosecution.
        We are very proud of you, Mr. Gennaco. You have been
    responsible for securing the first conviction ever against a
    hate crime assailant for acts taken on the Internet. I believe
    you may have two of those to your credit, and I think it is
    time that that happened.
        Second will be Rabbi Abraham Cooper, somebody I greatly
    admire, who is the Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal
    Center. He has been a longtime activist for Jewish and human
    rights causes on five continents. And with his efforts, the
    Center has produced a CD-ROM interactive report that
    illuminates the extent of hate on the Internet. So we are very
    grateful to have you here, sir.
        Third, we will hear from a friend of mine, Wade Henderson,
    who is the Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on
    Civil Rights. The Leadership Conference is the Nation's oldest
    and largest coalition of organizations committed to civil
    rights work and has over 180 component organizations.
        Did I get that right, Wade?
        Mr. Henderson. You did indeed.
        The Chairman. Fourth will be Howard Berkowitz, who is the
    National Chair of the Anti-Defamation League, a man I greatly
    respect. Mr. Berkowitz has been a central figure in advancing
    the League's efforts to fight anti-Semitism, racism and
    prejudice. And his organization is credited with being the
    first non-profit group to develop a hate crime filter for
    Internet users. So we are very anxious to hear your testimony
    as well.
        Last but not least, we will hear from Joseph Roy, who is
    the Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence
    Project. In that capacity, Mr. Roy gathers intelligence on
    extremist activities nationwide, assists law enforcement, and
    helps educate community groups on the threat of domestic
    terrorism. I have tremendous respect for you and your
    organization.
        We have, I think, in this panel as good a panel to discuss
    these issues as I have ever seen. Now, we are expecting a vote
    any minute, but I think we will begin anyway. And if we do have
    to interrupt, I hope you will understand it is just the nature
    of this beast called the U.S. Senate.
        So we will start with you, Mr. Gennaco, first and we will
    go right across the table.

        PANEL CONSISTING OF MICHAEL J. GENNACO, ASSISTANT U.S.
    ATTORNEY, AND CHIEF, CIVIL RIGHTS SECTION, CENTRAL DISTRICT OF
     CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, CA; ABRAHAM COOPER, ASSOCIATE DEAN,
       SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER, LOS ANGELES, CA; WADE HENDERSON,
      EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON CIVIL RIGHTS,
        WASHINGTON, DC; HOWARD BERKOWITZ, NATIONAL CHAIR, ANTI-
      DEFAMATION LEAGUE, WASHINGTON, DC; AND JOSEPH T. ROY, SR.,
     DIRECTOR, INTELLIGENCE PROJECT, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER,
                             MONTGOMERY, AL

                    STATEMENT OF MICHAEL J. GENNACO

        Mr. Gennaco. Thank you. In September 1996, 62 Asian
    American students at the University of California at Irvine
    began preparing for another academic year. Almost 3 years ago
    to the day, this occurred. It was orientation week, a time of
    renewal, a return to campus, a welcoming for both new and
    returning students. But the unfortunate greeting that 62 Asian
    American students received arrived over the Internet to their
    e-mail accounts from a person who called himself ``Asian
    Hater.''
        ``Asian Hater'' e-mailed all 62 students, stating that he
    hated Asians, that he blamed them for all of the ills on
    campus, and for keeping the reputation of UC-Irvine down. In
    the e-mail, ``Asian Hater'' demeaned and derogated Asian
    Americans, and told each of the victims that if they did not
    leave campus that he would make it his personal career to hunt
    down and kill each of them.
        After the students received the electronic message, a cloud
    of terror hung over the UCI campus for weeks. Some of the
    victims left school for home. Others considered transferring to
    other schools. Others changed their academic schedules so that
    they would not be on campus alone at night. Still others
    started carrying mace and changed their commuting habits.
        Victims talked about how the threat sent a chill up their
    spines, how it caused them to feel unsafe on campus and how
    they were constantly looking over their shoulder. They wondered
    who ``Asian Hater'' was and whether he would actually come
    after them. Fear was cast over the campus by that singular
    threat of hate, not only for the 62 students who were the
    direct recipients of the threat, but also for the entire Asian
    community on campus and the campus as a whole.
        Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I
    am Michael Gennaco, a Federal prosecutor for the U.S.
    Attorney's Office for the Central District of California. It
    was my privilege to represent the United States in the
    prosecution against ``Asian Hater,'' the first prosecution ever
    under the Federal hate crimes statute involving threats
    transmitted over the Internet.
        Through that experience, I learned how the Internet can be
    used efficiently and effectively to spread racially motivated
    terror to scores of unsuspecting individuals. I soon learned
    that the UC-Irvine hate crime was only a precursor of other
    Internet hate crimes. For example, on the morning of March 5,
    1998, 42 Latino faculty members turned on their computers at
    Cal State-Los Angeles to read their e-mails. They read a mean-
    spirited, derogatory threat against Latinos.
        Using the most demeaning racial slurs, the sender told the
    faculty members that he hated their race, that he wanted them
    to die, that the only reason that the professors were hired was
    because of affirmative action, that their race was stupid,
    greedy and ugly, and that the sender was going to personally
    come down and kill each of them. As with the UC-Irvine case,
    many of the Latino faculty members were terrified by the
    message of hate, wondering who could hate them that much, a
    former unbalanced student perhaps? The professors talked about
    how the message left them fearful about being alone on campus
    and caused them to be continually looking over their shoulders
    in anxiety.
        As the Federal investigation continued, the investigative
    team learned that the 42 Latino professors were not the only
    victims targeted by this messenger of hate. The sender had
    searched the Internet for other victims and sent similar death
    threats to 25 Latino students at MIT and to Latino employees at
    NASA, Xerox, Indiana University, the Texas Hispanic Journal,
    and the IRS. Similar concerns of anxiety and fear were
    communicated to the FBI from the victims at those institutions
    as well.
        As a result of the Federal investigations, my investigative
    team was able to successfully prosecute the senders of
    threatening e-mail in both the UC-Irvine and the Cal State-Los
    Angeles cases. However, the climate of fear and foreboding
    caused by these electronic threats transmitted over the
    Internet vividly illustrates the need for increased vigilance
    by all in order to successfully combat this new method of
    violating the civil rights of Americans.
        Despite some views to the contrary, there is nothing unique
    about the Internet that insulates the sender of such hate
    threats from the criminal laws of our country. A sender simply
    cannot target a group of individuals because of their race,
    national origin, or religious beliefs and send them threats via
    the Internet.
        The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that threats of
    violence are not protected by the First Amendment. In accord
    with that jurisprudence, similar threats of violence are not
    protected by the First Amendment simply because they are
    transmitted in cyberspace.
        Because the Internet presents an effective and efficient
    way for persons to communicate to numerous individuals, the
    ability of individuals and hate groups to terrorize victims has
    multiplied exponentially. A person or hate group who wants to
    target and threaten scores of individuals can do so simply
    sitting at a computer terminal for a few minutes.
        Unlike the traditional means of sending threatening
    communications via the telephone or through the U.S. mail, the
    Internet offers a medium of communication where a skilled user
    can spew out hate-laced threats to countless victims throughout
    the country with little effort. Moreover, hate mongers can
    create threats at their terminal and send out those threats
    while hiding behind computer screens. In short, the Internet
    has created a whole new class of criminals. Persons who do not
    have the fortitude to threaten persons face-to-face or even
    over the telephone can hide behind the anonymity of cyberspace
    and send out their hate-laced threats.
        In addition, I have learned through my prosecution of
    Internet hate crimes that certain inherent characteristics of
    e-mail make hate threats communicated over the Internet
    particularly frightening to targeted victims. Unlike
    traditional mail, electronic mail is transmitted
    instantaneously. The receiver thus knows that the sender is
    thinking the communicated message of harm at the same time the
    transmission is received.
        Moreover, unlike communications over the telephone, the
    electronic message is not accompanied by non-verbal
    inflections, tones of voice, or any other auditory cues. The
    message simply blips on to the victim's screen. As a result,
    the victim cannot gauge, except from the message itself, the
    degree to which the sender is intent on carrying out the
    threat, whether the sender has the capacity to implement the
    threat, or any other information about the person who sends the
    hate transmission. This knowledge vacuum makes any threat
    received over the Internet particularly disturbing to the
    victim.
        Finally, because an electronically transmitted message
    arrives directly on the victim's computer screen, usually with
    a ring or other audio cue, the message is much more invasive
    than traditional mail. Regular mail is delivered in a mailbox.
    Electronic mail flashes on to a computer screen at the victim's
    work station, her home, her bedroom, her children's room,
    wherever the victim's terminal happens to be.
        There is thus no question that this new mode of
    transmitting thoughts, knowledge and ideas, while having great
    potential and tremendous advantages over traditional methods of
    communication, also presents a new and serious challenge to law
    enforcement authorities with regard to those that would abuse
    the technology.
        The inherent nature of Internet hate crimes investigations
    and prosecutions also demands that Federal investigators and
    prosecutors assume an active role in bringing hate criminals to
    justice for several reasons. First, oftentimes, as with the Cal
    State-Los Angeles case, the sender transmits hate mail across
    State lines to victims throughout the country.
        Second, investigators must have expertise in computer
    crimes and sufficient resources in order to track the sender of
    the electronic transmissions and recapture any similar message
    sent from the sender's computer. The FBI, for example, has the
    expertise in its computer crimes units.
        Finally, as with both the UC-Irvine and the Cal State
    cases, in order to obtain locator information about the sender
    and potential victims, one must have the capability to subpoena
    Internet service providers. Quite often, those providers reside
    outside the State in which the transmission originated.
    Accordingly, the Federal Government must play a role in
    investigating and prosecuting cyberspace hate crimes.
        Of course, because much of the electronically transmitted
    hate, while despicable, may be protected by the First
    Amendment, criminal prosecution cannot always provide the
    answer. For that reason, it is essential that other methods to
    combat the spread of hate on the Internet be devised and
    implemented, whether through education or new technologies such
    as filtering devices.
        Internet service providers, civil rights organizations,
    Federal and local investigative and prosecutive authorities,
    and State and Federal legislators must all play a role in
    countering the hate mongers on the Internet. It is only by
    working together that we can successfully combat those who
    would use the Internet to spread their message of hate and
    fear, and in order to ensure a cyberspace consistent with a
    world view of racial and religious tolerance.
        Thank you.
        The Chairman. Thank you so much.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Gennaco follows:]

                    PREPARED STATEMENT OF MICHAEL J. GENNACO

                              HATE ON THE INTERNET

        In September 1996, 62 Asian American students at the University of
    California at Irvine began preparing for another academic year. It was
    orientation week, a time of renewal, a return to campus, a welcoming
    for both new and returning students * * * but the unfortunate greeting
    that 62 Asian American students received arrived over the Internet to
    their e-mail accounts, from a person who called himself ``Asian
    Hater''. ``Asian Hater'' e-mailed all 62 students stating that he hated
    Asians, that he blamed them for all of the ills on campus, and for
    keeping the reputation of UC-Irvine down. In the e-mail, ``Asian
    Hater'' demeaned and derogated Asian Americans and told each of the
    victims that if they did not leave campus that he would make it his
    personal career to hunt down and kill each of them.
        After the students received the electronic message, a cloud of
    terror hung over the UCI campus for weeks. Some of the victims left
    school for home, others considered transferring to other schools,
    others changed their academic schedules so that they would not be on
    campus alone at night, still others started carrying mace and changed
    their commuting habits. Victims talked about how the threat sent a
    chill up their spines, how it caused them to feel unsafe on campus, and
    how they were constantly looking over their shoulder. They wondered who
    ``Asian Hater'' was and whether he would actually come after them. Fear
    was cast over the campus by that singular threat of hate, not only for
    the 62 students who were the direct recipients of the threat, but also
    for the entire Asian community on campus and the campus as a whole.
        Good morning members of the committee. I am Michael Gennaco, a
    Federal prosecutor from the United States Attorney's Office for the
    Central District of California. it was my privilege to represent the
    United States in the prosecution against ``Asian Hater'', the first
    prosecution ever under the Federal hate crime statute involving threats
    transmitted over the Internet. Through that experience, I learned how
    the Internet can be used efficiently and effectively to spread racially
    motivated terror to scores of unsuspecting individuals.
        I soon learned that the UC-Irvine hate crime was only a precursor
    of other Internet hate crimes. For example, on the morning of March 5,
    1998, 42 Latino faculty members turned on their computers at Cal State
    Los Angeles to read their e-mails. They read a mean-spirited derogatory
    threat against Latinos. Using the most demeaning racial slurs, the
    sender told the faculty members that he hated their race, that he
    wanted them to die, that the only reason that the professors were hired
    was because of affirmative action, that their race was stupid, greedy,
    and ugly and that the sender was going to personally come down and kill
    each of them. As with the UC-Irvine case, many of the Latino faculty
    members were terrified by the message of hate, wondering who could hate
    them that much (a former unbalanced student perhaps). The professors
    talked about how the message left them fearful about being alone on
    campus and caused them to be continually looking over their shoulders
    in anxiety.
        As the Federal investigation continued, the investigative team
    learned that the 42 Latino professors were not the only victims
    targeted by this messenger of hate. The sender had searched the
    Internet for other victims and sent similar death threats to 25 Latino
    students at MIT, and to Latino employees at NASA, Xerox, Indiana
    University, the Texas Hispanic Journal, and the IRS. Similar concerns
    of anxiety and fear were communicated to the FBI from the victims at
    those institutions as well.
        As a result of the Federal investigations, my investigative team
    was able to successfully prosecute the senders of threatening e-mail in
    both the UC-Irvine and the Cal State Los Angeles cases. However, the
    climate of fear and foreboding caused by these electronic threats
    transmitted over the Internet vividly illustrates the need for
    increased vigilance by all in order to successfully combat this new
    method of violating the civil rights of Americans.
        Despite some views to the contrary, there is nothing unique about
    the Internet that insulates the sender of such hate threats from the
    criminal laws of our country. A sender simply cannot target a group of
    individuals because of their race, national origin or religious beliefs
    and send them threats via the Internet. The Supreme Court has
    repeatedly said that threats of violence are not protected by the First
    Amendment. In accord with that jurisprudence, similar threats of
    violence are not protected by the First Amendment, simply because they
    are transmitted in cyberspace.
        Because the Internet presents an effective and efficient way for
    persons to communicate to numerous individuals, the ability of
    individuals and hate groups to terrorize victims has multiplied
    exponentially. A person or hate group who wants to target and threaten
    scores of individuals can do so simply by sitting at a computer
    terminal for a few minutes. Unlike the traditional means of sending
    threatening communications via the telephone or through the U.S. mail,
    the Internet offers a medium of communication where a skilled user can
    spew out hate-laced threats to countless victims throughout the country
    with little effort.
        Moreover, hate mongers can create hate threats at their terminal
    and send out those threats while hiding behind computer screens. In
    short, the Internet has created a whole new class of criminals--persons
    who do not have the fortitude to threaten persons face to face or even
    over the telephone can hide behind the anonymity of cyberspace and send
    out their hate-laced threats.
        In addition, I have learned through my prosecution of Internet hate
    crimes that certain inherent characteristics of e-mail make hate
    threats communicated over the Internet particularly frightening to
    targeted victims. Unlike traditional mail, electronic mail is
    transmitted instantaneously--the receiver thus knows that the sender is
    thinking the communicated message of harm at the same time the
    transmission is received. Moreover, unlike communications over the
    telephone, the electronic message is not accompanied by non verbal
    inflections, tones of voice, or any other auditory cues. The message
    simply blips onto the victim's screen. As a result, the victim cannot
    gauge, except from the message itself, the degree to which the sender
    is intent on carrying out the threat, whether the sender has the
    capacity to implement the threat or any other information about the
    person who sends the hate transmission. This knowledge ``vacuum'' makes
    any threat received over the Internet particularly disturbing to the
    victim.
        Finally, because an electronically transmitted message arrives
    directly on the victim's computer screen, usually with a ring or other
    audio cue, the message is much more invasive than traditional mail.
    Regular mail is delivered in a mail box. Electronic mail flashes onto a
    computer screen at the victim's work station, her home, her bedroom,
    her children's room * * * wherever the victim's terminal happens to be.
        There is thus no question that this new mode of transmitting
    thoughts, knowledge, and ideas, while having great potential and
    tremendous advantages over traditional methods of communication, also
    presents a new and serious challenge to law enforcement authorities
    with regard to those that would abuse the technology.
        The Inherent nature of Internet hate crime investigations and
    prosecutions also demands that Federal investigators and prosecutors
    assume an active role in bringing hate criminals to justice for several
    reasons. First, oftentimes, as with the Cal State-Los Angeles case, the
    sender transmits hate mail across State lines to victims throughout the
    country. Second, investigators must have expertise in computer crimes
    and sufficient resources in order to track the sender of the electronic
    transmissions and recapture any similar messages sent from the sender's
    computer--the FBI, for example, has the expertise in its computer
    crimes units. Finally, as with both the UC-Irvine and Cal State cases,
    in order to obtain locator information about the sender and potential
    victims, one must have the capability to subpoena Internet service
    providers--quite often those providers reside outside the state in
    which the transmission originated. Accordingly, the Federal Government
    must play a role in investigating and prosecuting cyberspace hate
    crimes.
        Of course, because much of the electronically transmitted hate,
    while despicable, may be protected by the First Amendment, criminal
    prosecution cannot always provide the answer. For that reason, it is
    essential that other methods to combat the spread of hate on the
    Internet be devised and implemented whether through education, or new
    technology such as filtering devices. Internet service providers, civil
    rights organizations, Federal and local investigative and prosecutive
    authorities, and State and Federal legislators must all play a role in
    countering the hate mongers on the Internet. It is only by working
    together that we can successfully combat those who would use the
    Internet to spread their message of hate and fear and to ensure a
    cyberspace consistent with a world view of racial and religious
    tolerance.

        The Chairman. I would like to personally hear all the rest
    of the testimony. We have a vote. I am suggesting that we
    recess so that we can go and vote, so we can come back and hear
    all of you. We appreciated your testimony, Mr. Gennaco.
        So it will take us about 5 to 10 minutes to be able to go
    over and vote and get back here, but we will try and do that as
    quickly as we can. We will just recess for that amount of time
    until we can get back from this vote.
        Senator Leahy. I would like to also put a statement in the
    record by Senator Kennedy.
        The Chairman. Without objection, we will keep the record
    open for statements from every member of the committee until
    5:00 p.m. today.
        [The prepared statement of Senator Kennedy follows:]

                PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY

        Thank you Mr. Chairman. I welcome this opportunity to discuss once
    again this critical issue. Hate crimes continue to be a festering
    problem that cannot be ignored by Congress or the American people.
    During the last two years, the nation's conscience has been shocked by
    the hate and brutality targeted against innocent victims because of
    their race, religion, gender, disability or sexual orientation.
        Just look at today's newspapers, which contain an article about
    Lawrence Brewer, one of the men who dragged James Byrd, Jr. to death in
    Texas. Brewer bragged in a jailhouse letter about the ``rush'' he felt
    while killing James Byrd. In the letter, Brewer said ``And no longer am
    I a virgin. It was a rush and I'm still licking my lips for more.''
    According to Jasper prosecutors, by killing James Byrd, Brewer and his
    friends intended to give publicity to a new white supremacist group,
    the Texas Rebel Soldiers.
        White supremacist Benjamin Smith left two people dead and injured
    nine people during his July 4th rampage in Indiana and Illinois.
        Last month, Buford Furrow, terrorized children and adults at the
    North Valley Jewish Community Center, in Los Angeles, wounding three
    children and two adults.
        These incidents are just the tip of the iceberg. Many, many more
    hate crimes occur across this country that don't receive nationwide
    attention. And, many of them go unreported because the victims are
    embarrassed or feel too intimidated to go to the police.
        Recently, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer announced that
    1,750 hate crimes were reported by California law enforcement agencies
    last year--nearly five a day.
        The national statistics collected by the FBI show that:

       In 1997, 11,211 law enforcement agencies around the country
            reported 8,049 bias-motivated criminal incidents to the FBI,
            compared to 8,759 in 1996.
       Of the 8,049 total incidents, 4,710 were motivated by racial
            bias; 1,385 by religious bias; 1,102 by sexual orientation bias
            and 836 by ethnicity/national origin bias.
       Of the 1,385 incidents reported by religious bias, 79
            percent were anti-Semitic.
       This report included, for the first time, crimes directed
            against disabled individuals.

    In 1997, there were 12 crimes reported to have occurred due to a
    person's disability.
        It is long past time for the Senate to act against the problem of
    hate crimes and their impact on the nation. We can continue to do this
    by funding organizations such as the National Center for Hate Crime
    Prevention, located in Newton, Massachusetts, which organizes hate
    crime prevention and response training for practitioners, trainers and
    youth across the country. The Center also develops publications and
    other resource materials to help professionals and communities address
    the complex issues involved in juvenile hate crime and its impact on
    society. At the request of city officials, the Center just completed
    training sessions in Jasper, Texas, Denver and Los Angeles.
        It is clear that tolerance in this country faces a serious
    challenge, because of these despicable crimes. As the Southern Poverty
    Law Center has noted,

            In a year that saw hate groups soar past the 500 mark, the most
            dangerous sign was not the rising number of jackbooted sieg-
            heilers or hooded cross-burners. It was not even the highly
            publicized slayings of James Byrd, Jr. in Jasper, Texas, and
            Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. Instead, it was the
            increasing number of reminders that hate-based ideology is
            being repackaged as an intellectualized version of white self-
            affirmation that seeks mainstream respectability.

        We are coming to a new millennium, and enjoying record economic
    prosperity and dramatic technological advance. Yet every day, lives
    continue to be shattered by hatred and bigotry. The explosion of hate
    organizations on websites is an ominous example of the dark side of our
    progress in technology. These sites are spewing hate to millions of
    people, young and old. No family with a computer is immune from the
    infiltration of hate into their home. No family is immune from having
    their children, who surf the web unsupervised, come across these sites.
    No community is safe from those who seek to carry out violent acts of
    prejudice.
        Every mindless act of hatred exacts a toll upon the nation. Finding
    the right strategies to fight hate is the responsibility of everyone. I
    commend the organizations that are represented here today for their
    work in combating hate crimes. Together, Congress, state and local
    governments and communities must send the powerful message that America
    is determined to stop these vicious crimes.

        The Chairman. So with that, we will recess until we can get
    back.
        [The committee stood in recess from 10:45 a.m. to 11:01
    a.m.]
        The Chairman. We will turn to you, Rabbi Cooper. Sorry for
    the delay, but it is just one of those things we have to go
    through around here. So we will turn to your testimony.

                      STATEMENT OF ABRAHAM COOPER

        Rabbi Cooper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of the
    400,000 constituent families of the Wiesenthal Center, I first
    wish to commend this committee for revisiting the problem of
    hate on the Internet and for giving our Center the opportunity
    to share its perspective on this crucial issue.
        The phenomenal growth of the Internet and its impact on all
    aspects of our lives continues to astound even its most ardent
    promoters. Consider that as we speak there are more than 109
    million users of the Internet in North America alone. By the
    year 2000, Europe's online population will increase to 59
    million. By 2001, China will have 40 million users. Worldwide
    Matrix Information and Directory Services reported that last
    year there were 102 million accessing the Internet, up from 57
    million in 1997, and projected for 2001, 707 million users.
        It is not only the venture capitalists who have understood
    the limitless potential of these new technologies. Human rights
    groups like the Wiesenthal Center utilize the World Wide Web to
    spread their educational mandate free of charge to schools,
    researchers, and the media. Recently, our Center has used the
    Internet to broadcast the Dali Lama's speech at our Museum of
    Tolerance into Asia, beamed your colleague Senator Brownback's
    speech from Capitol Hill to an audience in Los Angeles
    attending our International Conference on Slavery Today, and
    broadcast a live simultaneous conference on Japanese war crimes
    from Tokyo and Los Angeles. We have also utilized our Web site
    to empower victims of the Nazi Holocaust seeking justice and
    restitution from Swiss banks and European insurance companies.
        It is this very power of communication and marketing that
    extremists, professional bigots, anarchists, and terrorists
    have sought to harness in their ongoing efforts to promote
    their agendas into the mainstream of our society, with a
    particular focus on America's youth. The main weapon of choice
    to market hate has become the World Wide Web. For the first
    time in the history of our democracy, those promoting hate,
    racial violence, and terrorism are able to do so directly into
    the mainstream 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in an
    unassailable and attractive format.
        As our Digital Hate 2000 CD-ROM report shows, many of these
    groups, once isolated geographically and marginalized to the
    fringes of society, have succeeded in creating an online sub-
    culture of hate. This enables extremists to market hate music
    CD's alongside practical how-to guides to make bombs in your
    home or garage. By the way, Mr. Chairman, I have the current
    top 10 list of bomb-making sites, downloaded just this past
    Friday.
        Digital links are the virtual cement for the skinhead
    movement, bridging the geographic distance between the
    Charlemagne skinheads in France, for example, to groups in New
    Jersey and Colorado. To date, there is no evidence that this
    online culture of hate has yet succeeded in creating a mass
    movement, but not for lack of trying. Indeed, the World Church
    of the Creator, a group linked to this summer's anti-Semitic
    and racist violence, has designed Web sites for kids as young
    as 9 and 10 years old. The KKK and other extremist groups like
    the Aryan Nations have followed suit.
        But those behind the changing face of hate in America are
    not concerned in the short run about numbers. For them, the
    Internet has already succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in
    undermining our civil society. Taking a page from the all too
    successful game book of international terrorists, they use the
    Internet to inspire a social misfit in a high school, a racist
    lone wolf, or an unnamed leaderless resistance cell to act out
    white power fantasies against blacks, Jews, and Asian
    Americans.
        In 1999, the Internet can serve as a terrorism tutor. It
    did for Eric Harris at Columbine. It provided the theological
    justification for torching of synagogues in Sacramento and the
    pseudo-intellectual basis for violent hate attacks in Illinois
    and Indiana.
        While the main activities of these groups and individuals
    have been focused on the World Wide Web, there is growing
    evidence that other technologies available via the Internet are
    being used to promote this agenda, and to also engage in
    illegal activities, including the illegal sale of firearms.
        So here we are on the eve of the millennium with every
    indication that the overwhelming majority of Americans reject
    the anti-Semitism, the racism and bigotry repackaged on the
    Internet. But we also live at a time when, despite the greatest
    period of sustained economic growth in U.S. history, we see the
    number of self-proclaimed hate groups soaring to over 400 and
    hate crimes continuing unabated. This year, we have also
    witnessed individuals prepared to carry out domestic acts of
    terrorism, and the young and impressionable being lured to an
    online world promoting racist violence and terrorism.
        What steps should be taken? First, every law enforcement
    department that deals with hate crimes in America has to be
    online. Second, parents need to take a more proactive approach
    to their kids' Internet activity. The Internet is not a
    babysitting service. Talk to your kids, and by all means
    utilize a filtering software or work with your kids to set your
    own guidelines.
        Third, we need the attention and involvement of the
    collective genius that is giving us the Internet. We need them
    to be good corporate citizens and neighbors. We need their
    leadership not only in technology, but in fostering good
    citizenship and tolerance.
        To give one point, there is no law requiring for-profit
    companies to continue to do business and provide services to
    individuals and groups teaching and preaching bomb-making and
    terrorism. It is preferred that the online community set their
    own standards and stick to them. In this connection, the
    Wiesenthal Center wishes to commend yahoo.com's recent removal
    of racist clubs from their sites as a welcome example of
    proactive leadership. Just last night, Yahoo indicated that
    they have now taken off probably over 70 of these free clubs
    that have been utilized by the Klan and other hate
    organizations.
        In short, a good rule of thumb in approaching these issues
    online is to review what Americans have done in the pre-
    Internet world. If we are talking about mail, mail equals
    privacy. If there is evidence of illegal activity via e-mail,
    as we heard from our distinguished speaker, the same standards
    should apply as traditional mail. The same would hold true for
    telephonic-type communications.
        As for the World Wide Web, it is the new main street of
    commerce, marketing, and advertising. It is not generally a
    venue for discussion and debate. We would therefore hope that
    Internet providers would at least take the basic step of
    setting their own standards for use of their service, and that
    they would be responsive to those standards and the concerns of
    the community.
        After Columbine, Sacramento and Chicago, after the North
    Valley JCC, we desperately need to work together to marginalize
    the message and messengers of terrorism and racism in our
    country. The Internet community's direct involvement in this
    effort will go a long way in ensuring that our kids will be
    living in a safer, more tolerant America.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and if you have any questions, I
    would be happy to answer them.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Rabbi Cooper.
        [The prepared statement of Rabbi Cooper follows:]

                   PREPARED STATEMENT OF RABBI ABRAHAM COOPER

        Mr. Chairman; on behalf of the 400,000 constituent families of the
    Simon Wiesenthal Center, I first wish to commend this committee for
    revisiting the problem of hate on the Internet and for giving our
    Center the opportunity to share its perspective on this crucial issue.
        The phenomenal growth of the Internet and its growing impact on all
    aspects of our lives--continues to astound even its most ardent
    promoters. Consider that as we speak, there are 109.23 million users of
    the Internet in North America alone. By the year 2000, Europe's online
    population will increase to 59 million. By 2001 China will have 40
    million users.
        Worldwide, Matrix Information and Directory Services reported that
    in 1998, there were 102 million accessing the Internet, up from 57
    million in 1997. Projected for 2001?--707 million users!
        And it's not only the venture capitalists who have understood the
    limitless potential of these new technologies. Human rights groups like
    the Wiesenthal Center utilize the Worldwide Web to spread their
    educational mandate--free of charge--to schools, researchers and the
    media--free of charge. Our Center has used the Internet to broadcast
    the Dali Lama's speech at the Museum of Tolerance into Asia, beamed
    Senator Brownback's speech from Capitol Hill to our audience in Los
    Angeles attending our International Conference on slavery, and
    broadcast a live, simultaneous conference on Japanese war crimes from
    Tokyo and Los Angeles. We have also utilized our Website to empower
    victims of the Nazi Holocaust seeking justice and restitution from
    Swiss banks and insurance companies.
        It is of course, this very power of communication and marketing
    that extremists, professional bigots, anarchists and terrorists have
    sought to harness in their ongoing efforts to promote their agendas
    into the mainstream of our society--with a particular focus--on
    America's youth.
        The main weapon of choice to market hate is the Worldwide Web. For
    the first time in history of our democracy, those promoting hate,
    racial violence ant terrorism have been able to do so directly into the
    mainstream, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in an unassailable and
    attractive format. And as our Digital Hate 2000 CD-Rom report shows,
    many of these groups, once isolated geographically and marginalized to
    the fringes of society, have succeeded in creating an online subculture
    of hate. This enables extremists to market hate music CD's alongside
    practical how-to guides to make bombs in your own home or garage.
    Digital links are tee `virtual' cement for skinhead movement, bridging
    the geographic distance between the Charlemagne skinheads in France to
    groups from New Jersey to Colorado.
        To date, there is no evidence that this online culture of hate has
    yet succeeded in creating a mass movement of hate. But not for lack of
    trying. Indeed, the World Church of the Creator, a group linked to this
    summer's antisemitic and racist violence has designed Websites for kids
    as young as 9 or 10 years old. The KKK and other extremist groups, like
    the Aryan Nations have followed suit.
        But those behind the changing face of hate in America are not
    concerned in the short run about numbers. For them the Internet has
    already succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in undermining our civil
    society. Taking a page from the all-too-successful gamebook of
    international terrorists, they use the Internet to inspire a social
    misfit in a high school, a racist lone wolf--or an unnamed leaderless
    resistance cell to act out white power fantasies against blacks, Jews
    or Asian Americans.
        In 1999, the Internet can serve as a terrorism tutor--it did for
    Eric Harris at Columbine; it provided the theological justification for
    the torching of synagogues in Sacramento, and the psuedo-intellectual
    basis for violent hate attacks in Illinois and Indiana.
        And while the main activities of these groups and individuals have
    been focused on the Worldwide Web, there is growing evidence that other
    technologies available via the Internet are being used to promote this
    agenda and to also engage in illegal activities including the illegal
    sale of firearms.
        So here we are, on the eve of the millennium, with every indication
    that the overwhelming majority of Americans reject the antisemitism,
    the racism and bigotry repackaged on the Internet. But we also live at
    a time when, despite the greatest period of sustained economic growth
    in U.S. history, we see the number of self-proclaimed hate groups
    soaring to over 400, and hate crimes continuing, unabated. This year,
    we have also witnessed individuals prepared to carry out domestic acts
    of terrorism and young, impressionable, being lured to an online world
    promoting racist violence and terrorism.
        What steps should be taken? First every law enforcement department
    that deals with hate crimes in America has to be online. Secondly,
    parents need to take a more proactive approach to their kids Internet
    activity. The Internet is not a babysitting service. Talk to your kids
    and by all means utilize a filtering software or work with your kids to
    set your own guidelines. Third, we need the attention and involvement
    of the collective genius that has given us the Internet. We need them
    to be good corporate citizens and neighbors. We need their leadership,
    not only in technology, but in fostering good citizenship and
    tolerance. To give just one suggestion, there is no law requiring for-
    profit companies to continue to do business and provide services to
    individuals and groups teaching and preaching bomb making and
    terrorism. It is preferred that the online community set their own
    standards and stick to them. (Yahoo.com's recent removal of racists
    clubs from their sites is a welcomed example). In short, a good rule of
    thumb in approaching these issues online is to review what Americans
    have done in the pre-Internet world. If we are talking about `mail'--
    mail-privacy. If there is evidence of illegal activity via e-mail, the
    same standard should apply as traditional mail. The same would hold
    true for telephonic-type communications. As for the Worldwide Web, it
    is the new mainstreet of commerce, marketing and advertising--it is not
    generally a venue for discussion and debate. We would therefore hope
    that Internet providers would at least take the basic step of setting
    their own standards for use of their service and that they would be
    responsive to those standards and the concerns of the community.
        After Columbine, Sacramento, Chicago, after the North Valley JCC,
    we desperately need to marginalize the message and messengers of
    terrorism and racism in our country. The Internet commmunity's direct
    involvement in this effort will go a long way to ensuring that our kids
    will be living in a safer, more tolerant America. Thank you, Mr.
    Chairman.

        The Chairman. We will turn to you now, Mr. Henderson.

                      STATEMENT OF WADE HENDERSON

        Mr. Henderson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Wade
    Henderson. I am the Executive Director of the Leadership
    Conference on Civil Rights. I also serve as counsel to the
    Leadership Conference Education Fund. I am pleased to appear
    before you today on behalf of both organizations to discuss the
    issue of hate on the Internet.
        As you noted, Mr. Chairman, the Leadership Conference on
    Civil Rights is the Nation's oldest, largest, and most diverse
    coalition of organizations committed to the protection of civil
    and human rights in the United States. Since its establishment
    in 1950, the Leadership Conference has promoted the passage and
    monitored the implementation of laws designed to achieve
    equality under law for all persons in the United States. The
    Leadership Conference Education Fund was founded in 1969 as the
    education arm of the civil rights coalition and continues to
    fill that role today.
        Hate, whether it is purveyed on the Internet, on the
    printing press or on the street corner, is a matter of
    fundamental concern to the Leadership Conference. Hatred of
    people because of who they are, where they worship, or the
    color of their skin is the antithesis of what we stand for as
    an organization. Hate makes a mockery of our accomplishments
    and undermines our half century of work to rid the United
    States of vestiges of slavery and oppression.
        Hate manifests itself in many ways, ranging all the way
    from a muttered remark in the workplace to brutal killing
    sprees. All hate must be condemned, but society's response to
    hate must be tailored to the manner in which it is expressed.
    Specifically, it is important to recognize a distinction
    between hate speech and hate crimes.
        In my testimony today, I will outline the Leadership
    Conference's concern about the proliferation of both hate
    speech and hate crimes, and explain our view of the
    relationship between these two phenomena. In doing so, however,
    I will make it clear that we believe the legislative reply to
    hate speech and hate crimes should be very different.
        At the outset, I want to emphasize that I believe the
    Internet is a wonderful development. It dramatically lowers the
    barriers to those who wish to enter the marketplace of ideas,
    enabling many more people to publish information and
    disseminate their views. Indeed, the Internet is perhaps the
    most democratic form of communication ever invented. In just a
    few years, the Internet has already revolutionized such diverse
    fields as medicine, law and commerce. Over time, I believe it
    will contribute greatly to the civil life of the Nation as
    well.
        The Internet is profoundly non-judgmental. It transmits
    information, whether the information is good or bad, true or
    false, helpful or hurtful. In the realm of civil rights, that
    means that the Internet is a forum for messages of racial
    healing, as well as messages of racial hatred. For reasons I
    will explain, I am ultimately optimistic that, on balance, the
    Internet is a force for social reconciliation. But while we
    marvel at the Internet's potential for good, we can't afford to
    ignore that which is frightening.
        The Leadership Conference abhors hate speech on the
    Internet and, of course, we abhor hate speech conveyed through
    any other medium. But we recognize that hate speech on the
    Internet reaches a wider and perhaps more impressionable
    audience, and that sophisticated hate mongers can use the
    Internet to enlist converts to their cause.
        As other witnesses have already described, hate groups are
    increasingly well-established in cyberspace, using the Internet
    to promote and distribute their propaganda, recruit members,
    and exchange information. Their messages are disturbing,
    despicable, and must be condemned in the strongest possible
    terms. But the existence of these viewpoints in cyberspace
    merely confirms their existence in American culture. The
    Internet does not create hatred; it illuminates it. It reminds
    us of the long road we must travel before we reach a truly
    race-blind society.
        The Leadership Conference believes that the best antidote
    for offensive speech is more speech on the other side, and
    therefore we have sought to answer hate speech on the Internet
    with anti-hate speech on the Internet. We have aggressively
    used the Internet to disseminate our message of racial harmony
    and non-discrimination to a broader audience, and to make more
    widely available the tools that we believe can combat bigotry.
        For example, 2 years ago, with the assistance of the Bell
    Atlantic Corporation, we launched a new Web site,
    www.civilrights.org, to educate the public about the history
    and goals of the civil rights movement and to counter those who
    espouse hatred because of individuals' race, ethnicity, gender,
    disability, religion, or sexual orientation. A central
    component of this Web site is the Hate Crimes Prevention
    Center, initiated by the Leadership Conference Education Fund.
    It is an interactive clearinghouse for information about
    bigotry and hate crimes.
        These initiatives, inspired by the White House Conference
    on Hate Crimes, have dramatically extended our institutional
    presence in combatting prejudice in cyberspace and elsewhere.
    Our online Hate Crimes Prevention Center, for example, now
    provides updated information on Federal and State hate crime
    statutes and statistics, community-based law enforcement
    strategies to respond to bigotry and violence, materials for
    parents and teachers to help them raise a generation of
    children who will grow up to embrace diversity and non-
    discrimination, and, of course, links to other relevant
    resources.
        In addition, the Leadership Conference has entered into a
    long-term relationship with America Online to develop a portal
    that will serve as the seminal resource on the Internet on the
    history and future of the civil rights movement in this
    country. As a leader in information technology, America Online
    believes strongly in the power of combatting prejudice and
    improving inter-group understanding utilizing the Internet.
        These are but some of the steps we are taking to counter
    hate speech on the Internet, to drown out bigots with a chorus
    of harmony. But for two very important reasons, the Leadership
    Conference emphatically does not endorse proposals to censor
    hate speech on the Internet.
        First, we want the Internet to thrive, and we believe that
    the Internet by its nature cannot thrive in a climate of
    censorship. We want it to thrive because we recognize the
    Internet's potential as a force for cohesion and tolerance. It
    empowers individuals to reach across racial, ethnic, and
    religious lines like never before. It fosters dialogue. We
    support robust speech on the Internet because we are convinced
    we are right, that the hate mongers are wrong, and we know that
    reason will ultimately prevail over prejudice in the
    marketplace of ideas.
        Second, the Leadership Conference is deeply committed to
    the First Amendment. There was a time not too long ago when the
    message of the civil rights movement was seen as subversive and
    offensive. There was a time when civil rights leaders invoked
    the constitutional principle of free speech to confront threats
    of censorship and repression. Now that we are in the mainstream
    and the bigots are on the fringes, we will not abandon the
    principles and protections that brought us as a Nation to where
    we are today.
        Now, one reason we must be so vigilant about countering
    hate speech is that, left unchallenged, hate speech can incite
    violence. When bigots cross over the line from speech to action
    and carry out their warped ideology through violence, we leave
    the realm of hate speech and enter the realm of hate crimes.
    And whereas hate speech must be condemned but tolerated in our
    constitutional system, hate crimes must be condemned and
    prosecuted.
        While we do not believe that Congress should attempt to
    censor or crack down on hate speech, the Leadership Conference
    strongly believes that a fresh legislative response to the
    epidemic of hate crimes is both necessary and appropriate. And
    for that reason, we do support the passage of the Hate Crimes
    Prevention Act of 1999.
        I won't discuss the hate crimes bill, Mr. Chairman. I know
    that you are familiar with it. But I will say that it does
    remove anachronistic and unnecessarily burdensome limits on
    Federal prosecution, and that for us is a very important
    matter.
        And I will just make one final point to conclude. We know
    that the limits of current law are evident from the prosecution
    of Buford Furrow, the avowed white supremacist who shot up a
    day care center and killed a Federal employee. While the murder
    of Federal postal worker Joseph Ileto, because of his
    ethnicity, has resulted in a Federal indictment, Furrow's
    brutal assault on four children because of their religion did
    not constitute a Federal crime and therefore must be prosecuted
    by the Los Angeles district attorney's office in State court.
        The fact that the children are not Federal employees and
    were not engaged in a federally-protected activity does not
    make the assault on them any less of an infringement on Federal
    interests. Buford Furrow's crime was deliberately intended to
    shatter the ideals of equality and tolerance, on which our
    Federal Government was founded and which are embodied in the
    Federal Constitution. We hope that Congress will act soon to
    strengthen the Nation's hate crime laws.
        Now, where is the line between speech and action? As the
    Federal prosecution described by my colleague initially makes
    clear, there are times when hate speech takes the form of
    threats so specific and so imminent that law enforcement may
    appropriately intervene. The line is not always bright,
    especially as we come to grips with the promise and perils of
    the Internet, but we rely on the courts to define that line in
    individual cases. And I want to commend the prosecutor for
    being able to do that through his case.
        The aftermath of the Matthew Shepard case, however,
    contains a lesson about the promise and perils of the Internet.
    Judy Shepard, Matthew's mother, wrote recently that almost
    overnight after the killing, memorial Web sites for Matthew
    appeared. But then the huge number of hate-filled messages left
    at some of them forced the web masters to shut down their guest
    books.
        Ms. Shepard notes that, ``It is in the environment of
    institutionalized intolerance that our senses are bombarded
    almost daily with incident after incident of violence and
    hate.'' But then she writes, ``For all who ask what they can do
    for Matthew and other victims, my answer is to educate and
    bring understanding where you see hate and ignorance, bring
    light where you see darkness, bring freedom where there is
    fear, and begin to heal.''
        Judy Shepard is exactly right. The way to fight those using
    the Web to promote hate is to counter speech with more
    compelling speech, promoting the vision of America where we
    live together in mutual respect and celebrate our diversity.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Henderson.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Henderson follows:]

                      PREPARED STATEMENT OF WADE HENDERSON

        Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: My name is Wade
    Henderson and I am the Executive Director of the Leadership Conference
    on Civil Rights. I also serve as Counsel to the Leadership Conference
    Education Fund. I am pleased to appear before you today on behalf of
    the Leadership Conference to discuss the issue of hate on the Internet.
        The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights is the nation's oldest,
    largest and most diverse coalition of organizations committed to the
    protection of civil and human rights in the United States. Since its
    establishment in 1950 by A. Philip Randolph, Arnold Aronson, and Roy
    Wilkins, three civil rights leaders who would eventually receive the
    Presidential Medal of Freedom, LCCR has promoted the passage and
    monitored the implementation of laws designed to achieve equality under
    law for all persons in the United States. Today, LCCR consists of over
    180 organizations working in concert to advance the cause of equality.
    Our coalition includes groups representing persons of color, women,
    labor organizations, persons with disabilities, older Americans, gays
    and lesbians, major religious groups, and civil liberties and human
    rights interests. It is a privilege to represent the civil and human
    rights community in addressing the Committee today. LCEF was founded in
    1969 as the education arm of the civil rights coalition and continues
    to fill that role today.
        Hate--whether it is purveyed on the Internet, on the printing
    press, or on the street corner--is a matter of fundamental concern to
    the Leadership Conference. Hatred of people because of who they are,
    where they worship or the color of their skin, is the antithesis of
    what we stand for as an organization. Hate makes a mockery of our
    accomplishments and undermines our half century of work to rid the
    United States of the vestiges of slavery and oppression.
        The Leadership Conference proudly participated in historic
    struggles that led to enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the
    Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the Americans
    with Disabilities Act of 1990, and many other landmark civil rights
    laws. As difficult as those campaigns may have been, that may have been
    the easy part. Much more difficult is the struggle to change attitudes,
    to overcome bigotry, to build harmony. All the laws in the world cannot
    exorcise the demons of hatred, racism, sexism, xenophobia and
    homophobia that still plague this society.
        Hate manifests itself in many ways, ranging all the way from a
    muttered remark in the, workplace to brutal killing sprees. All hate
    must be condemned; but society's response to hate must be tailored to
    the manner in which it is expressed. Specifically, it is important to
    recognize a distinction between hate speech and hate crimes. In my
    testimony today I will outline LCCR's concern about the proliferation
    of both hate speech and hate crimes, and explain our view of the
    relationship between these two phenomena. In doing so, however, I will
    make clear that we believe the legislative reply to hate speech and
    hate crimes should be very different.

                                  HATE SPEECH

        Some bigots keep their thoughts to themselves, never uttering a
    hateful remark or engaging in a hateful deed. Others, unfortunately,
    make themselves heard. They spread their vile opinions through casual
    conversation, or by confronting the object of their hatred with verbal
    abuse. Still others go so far as to disseminate their views through
    leaflets, pamphlets, books or broadcast media. Hitler's Mein Kampf is
    one of history's most notorious examples of published hate speech, but
    the ugly tradition both predates Hitler and survives him. And today,
    hate speakers have a new medium through which to express themselves:
    the Internet.
        At the outset, I want to emphasize that I believe the Internet is a
    wonderful development. It dramatically lowers the barriers to those who
    wish to enter the marketplace of ideas, enabling many more people to
    publish information and disseminate their views. Indeed, the Internet
    is perhaps the most democratic form of communication ever invented. In
    just a few years the Internet has already revolutionized such diverse
    fields as medicine, law and commerce; over time, I believe it will
    contribute greatly to the civic life of the nation as well.
        The Internet is profoundly non-judgmental. It transmits information
    whether that information is good or bad, true or false, helpful or
    hurtful. In the realm of civil rights, that means the Internet is a
    forum for messages of racial healing as well as racial hatred. For
    reasons I will explain, I am ultimately optimistic that, on balance,
    the Internet is a force for social reconciliation. But while we marvel
    at the Internet's potential for good, we cannot afford to ignore that
    which is frightening.
        The Leadership Conference abhors hate speech on the Internet. Of
    course we abhor hate speech conveyed through any other medium; but we
    recognize that hate speech on the Internet reaches a wider and perhaps
    more impressionable audience, and that sophisticated hate-mongers can
    use the Internet to enlist converts to their cause.
        As other witnesses have described, hate groups are increasingly
    well-established in cyberspace, using the Internet to promote and
    distribute their propaganda, recruit members, and exchange information.
    In 1995, Ku Klux Klan leader Don Black established the Stormfront site
    that ``serves as a clearinghouse for traditional white supremacist
    materials, addresses, and links to Home Pages * * * [of other hate
    groups].'' Skinheads USA also maintains a web page that begins with a
    warning: ``If you are not interested in the survival of the White race,
    piss off.'' The page also includes a game called ``write a caption''--
    on one day the photograph to be captioned was of an African-American
    man being assaulted by a Caucasian.
        Another web page by a group calling itself CNG expresses the view
    that ``all non-Whites must be either exported or segregated to prevent
    further bastardization of our people, domination of our land, jobs and
    positions of education and employment.'' Still other ``hate pages'' on
    the Internet are run by individual extremists such as the site
    ``Independent White Racialists'' whose organizer, a self-described
    skinhead, says his page ``is evidence that concerned White people don't
    have to be members of an organization to fight our freedom for White
    survival.''
        Such messages are disturbing, despicable and must be condemned in
    the strongest possible terms. But the existence of these viewpoints in
    cyberspace merely confirms their existence in American culture. The
    Internet does not create hatred; it illuminates it. It reminds us of
    the long road we must travel before we reach a truly race-blind
    society.
        What, then, is the proper response to Internet-spread hate speech?
    In our view, it is not sufficient to turn off the computer or slap on
    filtering software; these voices of disunity must be countered. Over
    seventy years ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote:

            [T]he fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones * * * If
            there be time to expose through discussion the falsehoods and
            fallacies, to avert the evil by processes of education, the
            remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only
            an emergency can justify repression. Such must be the rule if
            authority is to be reconciled with freedom. Such, in my
            opinion, is the command of the Constitution.

    Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 375 (1927) (Brandeis, J.,
    concurring) (emphasis added).
        The Leadership Conference has taken Justice Brandeis' wisdom to
    heart. We believe that the best antidote for offensive speech is more
    speech on the other side, and therefore we have sought to answer hate
    speech on the Internet with anti-hate speech on the Internet. We have
    aggressively used the Internet to disseminate our message of racial
    harmony and non-discrimination to a broader audience and to make more
    widely available the tools we believe can combat bigotry.
        For example, in November 1997, with the assistance of Bell Atlantic
    Corporation, we launched a new Web site, www.civilrights.org, to
    educate the public about the history and goals of the civil rights
    movement and to counter those who espouse hatred against individuals
    because of their race, ethnicity, gender, disability, religion, or
    sexual orientation. A central component of this web site is the Hate
    Crimes Prevention Center, located at http://civilrights.org/lcef/hcpc/,
    an interactive clearinghouse for information about bigotry and hate
    crimes. These initiatives, inspired by President Clinton's challenge at
    the White House Conference on Hate Crimes for Americans to find ways to
    overcome the fears that lead to bigotry and violence, have dramatically
    extended our institutional presence in combating prejudice in
    cyberspace and elsewhere.
        Since that time, with funding from the Levi Strauss Foundation and
    the Gill Foundation, the Leadership Conference has expanded
    ``civilrights.org.'' Our on-line Hate Crimes Prevention Center, for
    example, now provides updated information on federal and state hate
    crime statutes and statistics; community-based and law enforcement
    strategies to respond to bigotry and violence; materials for parents
    and teachers to help them raise a generation of children who will grow
    up to embrace diversity and non-discrimination; and of course links to
    other relevant resources.
        In the near future, the Leadership Conference expects to take
    another major step forward in the on-line fight against hatred. With
    the assistance of Ripple Effects, a San Francisco-based software
    company, we are developing a multimedia tool, deliverable over the
    Internet, that will proactively spread our message of racial and ethnic
    tolerance to pre-adolescents before the destructive thoughts and
    behaviors that can lead to violence take root. Combining the power of
    technology and cutting-edge behavioral research, we believe this module
    will effectively leverage the digital medium to help counter all forms
    of bigotry and hate.
        In addition, the Leadership Conference has entered into a long-term
    relationship with America Online to develop a portal that will serve as
    the seminal resource on the Internet on the history and future of civil
    rights in this country. As a leader in information technology, America
    Online believes strongly in the power of combating prejudice and
    improving intergroup understanding utilizing the Internet.
        These are some of the steps we are taking to counter hate speech on
    the Internet, to drown out the bigots with a chorus of harmony. But for
    two very important reasons, the Leadership Conference emphatically does
    not endorse proposals to censor hate speech on the Internet.
        First, we want the Internet to thrive; and we believe that the
    Internet, by its nature, cannot thrive in a climate of censorship or
    heavy-handed government regulation. We want it to thrive because we
    recognize the Internet's potential as a force for cohesion and
    tolerance. It empowers individuals to reach across racial, ethnic and
    religious lines like never before. It fosters the dialogue that is the
    sine qua non of reconciliation. We support robust speech on the
    Internet because we are convinced we are right, the hate-mongers are
    wrong, and we know that reason will eventually prevail over prejudice
    in the marketplace of ideas.
        Second, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights is deeply
    committed to the First Amendment. There was a time, not too long ago,
    when the message of the civil rights movement was seen as subversive or
    offensive. There was a time when our leaders invoked the constitutional
    principle of free speech to confront threats of censorship and
    repression. Now that we are in the mainstream, and the bigots are on
    the fringes, we will not abandon the principles and protections that
    brought us to where we are today.

                                  HATE CRIMES

        One reason we must be so vigilant about countering hate speech is
    that, left unchallenged, hate speech can incite hate violence. When
    bigots cross over the line from speech to action and carry out their
    warped ideology through violence, we leave the realm of hate speech and
    enter the realm of hate crimes. Whereas hate speech must be condemned
    but tolerated in our constitutional system, hate crimes must be
    condemned and prosecuted.
        The Leadership Conference believes that hate crimes are a more
    serious problem than is generally recognized, and that the problem
    requires a more unified and determined response by governmental, civic,
    religious and educational organizations. Two years ago, in conjunction
    with the Leadership Conference Education Fund (LCEF), we published
    Cause For Concern: Hate Crimes in America, one of the first
    comprehensive assessments of the hate crime problem in the United
    States. That investigation confirmed our fear that violence motivated
    by hatred is both prevalent and on the rise.
        Even in the short time since we published Cause for Concern, there
    have been a series of hate-related crimes that serve as painful
    reminders of the bigotry still simmering in our society. On June 7,
    1998, the dismembered body of 49 year-old James Byrd, Jr., an African
    American male, was found in a wooded area in Jasper, Texas. The
    assailants chained Byrd to the back of their pickup truck and dragged
    his body along a rural dirt road. When found, Byrd's head and right arm
    were missing. Three white males were subsequently arrested and charged
    with his murder.
        In October of the same year, three white males tied Matthew Shepard
    to a wooden fence along an old dirt road, and pistol-whipped him with
    the butt of a .357 Magnum until they believed he was dead. They broke
    his skull. Then they took his wallet, his patent leather shoes and took
    off to burglarize his house. Matthew died a few days later in the
    hospital.
        Earlier this year, Steven Mullins admitted to crushing the head of
    Billy Jack Gaither, an Alabama gay man with repeated blows of an ax
    handle, after stabbing him in the neck and ribcage.
        Most recently, avowed white supremacists Benjamin Smith and Buford
    O. Furrow, Jr. went on shooting sprees in two Midwestern states and at
    a Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles, respectively. Smith killed
    two and wounded nine others while Furrow shot five individuals,
    including four children, before, killing a Filipino postman. Furrow
    said he wanted the community center attack to be ``a wake-up call to
    America to kill Jews.''
        These are crimes against individuals, but they also represent an
    attack on the American ideal that we can forge one nation out of many
    different people. The violence reverberates beyond the immediate
    victims, scarring every other member of the targeted minority group and
    cracking the bedrock of peaceful tolerance on which our country was
    founded.
        While we do not believe that Congress should attempt to censor or
    crackdown on hate speech, the Leadership Conference strongly believes
    that a fresh legislative response to the epidemic of hate crimes is
    both necessary and appropriate. For that reason, we support passage of
    the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 1999 (S. 622 and H.R. 1082),
    legislation cosponsored by members of both parties in both Houses,
    including Senators Kennedy, Specter, Leahy and Schumer on this
    Committee.
        S. 622 would strengthen the current federal hate crimes statute in
    two respects. First, it would remove unnecessary and anachronistic
    obstacles to federal prosecution of hate crimes under current law.
    Second, it would bring within the ambit of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 245 crimes
    committed due to the victim's disability, sexual orientation or gender.
        The limits of current federal law are evident from the prosecution
    of Buford Furrow, the avowed white supremacist who shot-up a day care
    center and killed a federal employee. While the murder of Post Office
    employee Joseph S. Ileto, because of his ethnicity has resulted in a
    federal indictment, Furrow's brutal assault of 4 children because of
    their religion did not constitute a federal crime and must be
    prosecuted by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office in state
    court. The fact that the children are not federal employees and were
    not engaged in a federally protected activity does not make the assault
    on them any less of an infringement on federal interests. Furrow's
    crime was deliberately intended to shatter the ideals of equality and
    tolerance on which our federal government was founded and which are
    embodied in the federal constitution.
        Consider other brutal hate crimes beyond the reach of federal law:

       On June 18, 1995, Thai Mai, a 23 year old Vietnamese
            American was attacked by three young white males at a nightclub
            in Michigan. After yelling racial slurs at Mai, the three men
            beat him until he fell against the cement floor splitting his
            head open. Mai died five days later from major head trauma.
       Randy Lawson, a white male and father of three was attacked
            and murdered by two African Americans on April 9, 1994.
            Lawson's attackers later admitted that they had killed him
            because he was white and they did not like white people. The
            murder incited intense outrage within the community and lead to
            two other racially motivated killings.
       On January 4, 1996 Fred Mangione, a gay man was brutally
            murdered in Houston Texas by two neo-Nazis who bragged about
            hating homosexuals. The two assailants, both members of a white
            supremacist group, stabbed Mangione 35 times.

        To be sure, the assailants in each of these cases were prosecuted
    in state court. But our support for the Hate Crimes Prevention Act does
    not rest on the assumption that perpetrators of violent crimes will go
    unpunished. Most often state prosecution will suffice. But we believe
    it is important for there to be a federal backstop to ensure adequate
    punishment if local authorities are unable or unwilling to prosecute.
        More important, we urge passage of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act
    on the grounds that federal law should reflect the federal interest in
    protecting all minorities from bigotry and hate-motivated violence.
    Just as there is symbolic value in congressional condemnation of hate
    speech on the Internet, we think Congress should express the entire
    nation's outrage at these heinous hate crimes by including them within
    the protection of federal criminal law. That is a legitimate function
    of the criminal law.
        The civil rights community is frustrated, frankly, that this
    Congress, which is so quick to deploy the federal criminal law to
    condemn other conduct that could be left to state prosecutors, has been
    suddenly overcome by abstract concerns about federalism when it comes
    to condemning hate crimes. We respectfully submit that the slaying of
    Matthew Shepard by homophobic bigots implicates federal interests far
    more than the sale of two marijuana cigarettes on a city street corner.
    Yet Congress has not hesitated to mobilize federal law and federal
    resources against the latter crime, despite the existence of concurrent
    state criminal jurisdiction over drug distribution.
        One other criticism of hate crimes legislation is that it somehow
    infringes on the right of free speech. As I have made clear, the
    Leadership Conference takes a back seat to no organization in its
    support of civil liberties, including the liberty of free speech. That
    is why it is important to recognize the distinction between hate speech
    and hate crimes. Until a hate-monger crosses the line from speech to
    action, he is cloaked in the protection of the federal Constitution.
    When he does cross the line, we believe the federal criminal law should
    be available to protect his victims.
        Where is the line between speech and action? As the federal
    prosecution described by my colleague on the first panel makes clear,
    there are times when hate speech takes the form of threats so specific
    and so imminent that law enforcement may appropriately intervene. The
    line is not always bright, especially as we come to grips with the
    promise and perils of the Internet, but we rely on the courts to define
    that line in individual cases.

                                   CONCLUSION

        The aftermath of the Matthew Shepard case, in particular, contains
    a lesson about the promise and perils of the Internet.
        Judy Shepard, Matthew's mother, wrote recently that ``[a]lmost
    overnight [after the killing], memorial Web sites for Matthew
    appeared--but then the huge number of hate-filled messages left at some
    of them forced the Web masters to shut down the guest books.'' Mrs.
    Shepard notes that ``it is in this environment of institutionalized
    intolerance that our senses are bombarded, almost daily, with incident
    after incident of violence and hate.''
        But then she writes, ``For all who ask what they can do for Matthew
    and other victims, my answer is to educate and bring understanding
    where you see hate and ignorance, bring light where you see darkness,
    bring freedom where there is fear, and begin to heal.''
        Judy Shepard is exactly correct. The way to fight those using the
    Web to promote hate is to counter hate speech with more compelling
    speech promoting the vision of an America where we live together in
    mutual respect and celebrate our diversity.

        The Chairman. Mr. Berkowitz, we will turn to you.

                     STATEMENT OF HOWARD BERKOWITZ

        Mr. Berkowitz. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am
    Howard Berkowitz, National Chairman of the Anti-Defamation
    League. I am accompanied here today by Abraham Foxman, National
    Director, by Jess Hordas, ADA's new Washington Director, and by
    Michael Lieberman, the League's Washington counsel. ADL very
    much appreciates this opportunity to testify on hate on the
    Internet.
        Hate groups and extremists have moved quickly to the
    Internet. This is the dark side of the information
    superhighway. What attracts all of these hate groups to the
    Internet is fairly easy to understand. First, it is very cheap.
    Second, it is easily accessible to literally hundreds of
    millions of people. Third, it provides them a new method of
    communication which is far better than what they have had in
    the past. And, fourth, it is anonymous. People can go to their
    Web sites. Nobody knows they have been there, and therefore
    they are very much in every one of our homes 24 hours a day.
        As a vehicle for spreading hate, the Internet is more
    powerful than any extremist of the past decade could have
    imagined. Anti-Semites and racists use the Internet to recruit
    new members and threaten their enemies with violence. Online
    membership firms make it easy to join. Online, they become part
    of an electronic community of like-minded individuals which
    helps to reinforce their hateful convictions.
        While hundreds of hate sites currently online comprise only
    a tiny portion of the World Wide Web, these sites are just as
    easily accessible to the 100 million Americans using the
    Internet as is the Web site of the U.S. Senate. Children who
    explore the Internet, whether visiting Web sites, reading e-
    mail messages, or conversing in chat rooms, run the risk of
    encountering hate. Many hate groups specifically target the
    young. These hateful messages can deeply influence and affect
    impressionable young children, seducing them with very
    sophisticated graphics, rock music, and even crossword puzzles.
        They may stumble on these sites inadvertently. For example,
    a child doing a homework assignment on World War II or the
    Holocaust might enter the term ``holocaust'' into a search
    engine. In response to his query, the search engine will
    provide the child with links to historic Holocaust Web sites,
    but also will include sites prepared Holocaust deniers and
    white Aryan racists.
        The propaganda presented by hate sites is aimed at
    influencing not just attitudes, but also behavior. Hate crimes
    in Chicago, Sacramento, and Los Angeles this summer demonstrate
    how online propaganda can lead to action. Matthew Williams, a
    primary suspect in the murder of a gay couple in Redding, CA,
    and the Sacramento synagogue arsons in June, was drawn into the
    hate movement by white supremacist Web sites.
        Benjamin Smith, a member of the racist and anti-Semitic
    World Church of the Creator who shot at six orthodox Jews and
    murdered a Korean student and a black man over the July 4
    weekend, repeatedly viewed the group's Web site and
    complimented its web master on his work.
        At the Web site of hate group Aryan Nations, Internet users
    can order the extremist book that Los Angeles gunman and former
    Aryan Nations security guard Buford Furrow had in his car at
    the time of his vicious attacks in Los Angeles in August.
        Many of the groups and individuals creating hate sites have
    extensive histories of violence. In the League's written
    statement, we have included additional material on all these
    extremist individuals, groups and movements that I have
    mentioned above.
        But what can be done about hate on the Internet? There are
    no simple answers to this question. We feel strongly that
    censorship is not the answer. The First Amendment's protection
    of free speech shields most extremist propaganda. However, the
    First Amendment does not protect speech that threatens or
    harasses other people.
        What can be done? The ADL carefully monitors and documents
    Internet hate and promotes public awareness of the plans and
    histories of online bigots. In line with our view that exposure
    will lead to the rejection of the haters and their propaganda,
    we continue to publish materials concerning hate on the
    Internet. These can be found on our own Web site, and are
    included in our new report called ``Poisoning on the Web,''
    which has been provided to all members of Congress.
        Additionally, in cooperation with the Learning Company of
    Massachusetts, ADL has released a new software filter. This
    software filter is entitled the ADL Hate Filter. It provides
    parents and others with the ability to block access to Internet
    sites that ADL believes promote hate. It is a site-specific
    filter, not a word-specific one, and it also offers those being
    blocked from the site an educational experience to learn why
    the site is being blocked.
        We have several other recommendations that we think could
    be very helpful in trying to deal with hate on the Internet.
    First, provide education and training for Federal prosecutors
    in the use of Federal criminal civil rights statutes to
    prosecute incidents of bias-motivated threats on the Internet.
    In addition, we urge Congress to enact the Hate Crimes
    Prevention Act. This necessary complementary legislation would
    authorize the Department of Justice to assist local
    prosecutions and, where appropriate, investigate and prosecute
    cases in which bias violence occurs because of the victim's
    sexual orientation, gender, or disability.
        Second, mandate a new study by the Commerce Department's
    National Telecommunications Information Authority on the impact
    of electronic hate on bias crimes. The NTIA's very useful
    December 1993 report, ``The Role of Telecommunications in Hate
    Crimes,'' pre-dates the widespread use of the Internet by these
    organized hate groups.
        Third, provide funds for the Department of Education to
    develop outreach and educational programs to protect our
    Nation's children by teaching teachers how to develop their
    students' critical thinking skills and responsible use of the
    Internet.
        Fourth, civic leaders and politicians should take a
    leadership role in speaking out against bigotry, anti-Semitism
    and racism on the Internet and wherever it occurs. Americans of
    goodwill must join together to reject the efforts of extremists
    to exploit the Internet for their own propaganda purposes.
        Fifth, encourage the ISP's to identify and eliminate hate
    sites that are on the ISPs' programs. And, six, penalize
    knowingly advocating an action of physical violence to an
    individual.
        Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for these hearings and
    for all that you are doing in this area.
        The Chairman. Well, thank you, Mr. Berkowitz. We appreciate
    that.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Berkowitz follows:]

                     PREPARED STATEMENT OF HOWARD BERKOWITZ

          hate on the internet: the anti-defamation league perspective
        Concerns about online extremism are not new. In January 1985, the
    Anti-Defamation League released a report entitled Computerized Networks
    of Hate. Years before the Internet became a household word, that report
    exposed a computerized bulletin board created by and for white
    supremacists and accessible to anyone with a modem and a home computer.
    Aryan Nations, a paramilitary group affiliated with the ``Identity
    Church'' pseudo-theological hate movement, sponsored the bulletin board
    and named it ``Aryan Nation Liberty Net.'' The project was the work of
    two individuals: Louis Beam, then a Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and
    Aryan Nations leader, and George Dietz, the man behind the largest neo-
    Nazi publishing mill in the United States.
        This bulletin board was a forerunner of extremism on the Internet.
    Computerized Networks of Hate detailed five ways the ``Aryan Nation
    Liberty Net'' served the white supremacist movement, all of which
    remain important to extremism on the Internet today. First, the
    bulletin board was designed to draw young people to the hate movement
    with appealing propaganda. Second, the network helped stir up hatred
    against the ``enemies'' of white supremacy. Third, the bulletin board
    was a means to make money. Fourth, the system offered the potential for
    circulating secret, coded messages among extremists, and finally, it
    bypassed embargoes that nations outside of the United States placed on
    hate literature.
        Though Computerized Networks of Hate noted little to suggest that
    Aryan Nation Liberty Net represented a great leap forward in the spread
    of anti-Semitic and racist propaganda, it warned that ``complacency''
    about this development ``would be unwise.'' At the time, Beam wrote
    that the bulletin board was a ``patriotic brain trust'' and boasted
    that ``computers are now bringing their power and capabilities'' to the
    white supremacist movement. ``The possibilities,'' Beam remarked,
    ``have only been touched upon.''
        The same month that ADL released Computerized Networks of Hate,
    white supremacist Stephen Donald (Don) Black was released from prison.
    While serving just over two years, Black had learned to use computers.
    In 1981, Black was arrested with a group of nine other neo-Nazis and
    Klansmen in Slidell, Louisiana, and charged with plotting to invade the
    Caribbean island of Dominica, overthrow its government, and turn it
    into a ``white state.'' He was convicted, and following an unsuccessful
    appeal, he surrendered to Federal marshals in December, 1982.
        In the years following his release, Black gradually withdrew from
    white supremacist activism, eventually becoming a computer consultant.
    However, he did not disavow his racism. It was Black who would launch
    Stormfront, the first extremist hate site on the World Wide Web, a
    decade after ADL reported on ``Aryan Nation Liberty Net.'' ``There is
    the potential here to reach millions,'' Black said of the Internet. ``I
    think it's a major breakthrough. I don't know if it's the ultimate
    solution to developing a white rights movement in this country, but
    it's certainly a significant advance.''
        Initially, Black could find only a handful of other Web sites that
    reflected his anti-Semitic, racist message. Today, hundreds of bigotry-
    laden sites promoting a variety of philosophies have joined Stormfront
    on the Web. The propaganda presented by these sites, from subtle to
    heavy-handed, is aimed at influencing both attitudes and behavior.
        Though it is not always easy to draw a connection between online
    speech and violence, extremist groups with histories of violence have
    extensive Web sites. Additionally, extremists have used the Internet to
    comment favorably on violent acts. One Web site calls John William
    King, convicted murderer of James Byrd, an ``American Hero'' and asks
    readers to ``give thanks to God'' for King's act. Another site's
    ``Memorial'' to gay murder victim Matthew Shepard claims he ``got
    himself killed'' because of his ``satanic lifestyle'' and ``will be in
    hell for all eternity.''
        Many extremist sites target the young. Hate groups such as the
    World Church of the Creator have posted Web sites filled with simple
    propaganda devoted specifically to wooing children. Bigotry-laced hard
    rock and the Internet have proved a natural match for racist Skinheads
    trying to capture the minds of teens.
        While deeply disturbing, the growth of hate and extremism on the
    Internet simply mirrors the expansion of Internet use. What began as a
    small computer network used primarily by scientists and academic
    researchers has become a mass medium. Computers and Internet access are
    in workplaces, homes, schools and libraries, and prices for both are
    falling rapidly. For many Internet users in the United States, going
    online costs nothing. Large numbers of U.S. workers have free access to
    the Internet at their offices. Many U.S. residents use free Internet
    access at their local public libraries, and educational institutions
    regularly connect their students to the Web free of charge.
        Most Internet Service Providers willingly ``host'' their customers'
    World Wide Web pages; in return for a user's access fee, they provide
    nearly unlimited use of the hardware and communications lines necessary
    for creating a site on the Web. Some Web-based services, such as Tripod
    and GeoCities, host Internet users' pages free of charge. All of the
    above provide free, easy-to-use Web development tools, making it
    simple, even for those who know nothing about computer programming, to
    create their own Web pages.
        Beyond low cost and availability, the Internet provides a new type
    of information distribution, since time and distance are compressed.
    Information posted there is available instantaneously, 24 hours a day,
    from anywhere on the planet. The World Wide Web creates the illusion
    that all information is present in the user's computer at the instant
    it is needed. Accessing information has never been easier. What's more,
    the Internet has done more than that, for it has turned every user into
    a potential publisher. It has never been easier for any individual to
    broadcast his or her ideas to the world.
        A worldwide collection of computers linked by high-speed phone
    lines, the Internet displays remarkable versatility, sometimes
    resembling a letter, on other occasions a telephone, and still other
    times a television. Like a printed letter, the Internet provides a way
    to communicate directly with others, near or far, but on the Internet,
    ``E-mail'' (electronic mail) is delivered nearly instantaneously (E-
    mail arrives so much more quickly than standard printed correspondence
    that users of the Internet sometimes call traditional letters ``snail
    mail''). Furthermore, E-mail users pay nothing for the transmission of
    messages; their accounts are charged a flat fee for service, if they
    pay for their accounts at all.
        Like a telephone, the Internet provides a way to communicate in
    ``real time'' with others. A person using a chat room or Internet Relay
    Chat channel to converse with friends can engage in a fast-paced
    conversation, for friends' words appear on the screen mere seconds
    after they've been typed. Like television, the Internet can
    ``broadcast'' information to vast audiences. Millions of Internet users
    can view the same World Wide Web site simultaneously, and Web sites,
    like television programs, are able to transmit text, sound, photos, and
    moving images. The growth of the Internet represents a revolution in
    communication as significant as that begun by the development of the
    printing press in the 15th century. Yet the time needed for its impact
    to be felt has been drastically telescoped. What took centuries is now
    taking place in a matter of a few years.
        Even before Stormfront appeared on the Web, extremists had begun
    exploiting other ways to use the Internet, and these practices continue
    today. Lively conversations take place on numerous extremist Internet
    Relay Chat channels. The USENET, a collection of thousands of public
    discussion groups (or newsgroups) on which people write, read and
    respond to messages, attracts hundreds of thousands of participants
    each day, both active (those who write) and passive (those who simply
    read or ``lurk''). Newsgroups have been compared to community bulletin
    boards. Haters of all sorts debate, rant, and insult their opponents on
    newsgroups with titles such as alt.politics. white-power and
    alt.revisionism.
        Electronic mailing lists (or ``listservs'') flourish as well. Such
    lists are like private ``bulletin boards'' available only to
    subscribers. While some lists keep their subscription information
    confidential, most are easy to join. Postings to some of these lists
    are moderated (i.e., monitored by the list operator who applies certain
    standards of acceptability), but others are entirely unregulated.
        In fashioning their lists, extremists and racists create an
    ``electronic community'' of like-minded people. Before the Internet,
    many extremists worked in relative isolation, forced to make a great
    effort to connect with others who shared their ideology. Today, on the
    Internet, bigots communicate easily, inexpensively, and sometimes
    anonymously with hundreds of fellow extremists. Online, extremists
    reinforce more easily each other's hateful convictions.
        Extremists also use E-mail, which allows them to communicate with
    one another directly, their missives ostensibly hidden from public
    view. In fact, E-mail is not truly private: computer-savvy individuals
    can intercept and read private messages. Some users, nervous about
    eavesdroppers, now use cryptographic programs. Cryptography converts
    written material using a secret code, rendering it unreadable by anyone
    who does not have the means to decode it. With encrypted E-mail,
    extremists have found a secure forum in which to exchange ideas and
    plans. E-mail can also be used to spread hate propaganda. With a
    mailing list and a message, hate mailings can easily reach the
    mailboxes of large numbers of people. Enterprising haters have managed
    to mass-mail hate materials to tens, hundreds, or even thousands of
    unsuspecting people without revealing their identity.
        Though purveyors of hate make use of all the communication tools
    the Internet provides, the World Wide Web is their forum of choice. In
    addition to its multimedia capabilities and popularity with Internet
    users, the Web allows bigots to control their message. Organized haters
    complain about civil rights activists who critique their manifestoes in
    USENET newsgroups and other interactive forums. In contrast, haters can
    refuse to publish critical messages on their Web sites, just as a TV
    station can refuse to broadcast another station's opinions over its
    airwaves. Furthermore, it is impossible for someone surfing the Web to
    know if any particular organization, other than one with a national
    reputation, is credible. Both the reputable and the disreputable are on
    the Web, and many Web users lack the experience and knowledge to
    distinguish between them. Increasingly, Web development tools have made
    it simple for bigots to create sites that visually resemble those of
    reputable organizations. Consequently, hate groups using the Web can
    more easily portray themselves as legitimate voices of authority.

                                   DON BLACK

        Since its creation, Stormfront has served as a veritable
    supermarket of online hate, stocking its shelves with many forms of
    anti-Semitism and racism. In its first two years, Stormfront featured
    the writings of William Pierce of the neo-Nazi National Alliance; David
    Duke; representatives of the Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical
    Review and other assorted extremists. By 1997, Black's site became home
    to the Web pages of other extremists, such as Aryan Nations and Ed
    Fields, racist publisher of The Truth At Last, a hate-filled newspaper.
    He also posted new reprints of white supremacist articles and essays,
    such as The Talmud: Judaism's holiest book documented and exposed.
    Meant to inflame Christians by characterizing the Talmud as primarily
    anti-Christian and filled with ``malice,'' ``hate-mongering'' and
    ``barbarities,'' this particularly scurrilous tract willfully distorts
    and misrepresents an important religious document while demonstrating a
    complete lack of understanding of its history, complexity, and role in
    Jewish religious practice.
        Some of Black's recent efforts have involved the expansion of
    Stormfront: enlarging its collection of links, adding an interactive
    chat room, and housing additional racist Web sites. One of these sites,
    Our Legacy of Truth, offers the text of works such as ``Proof of Negro
    Inferiority'' by Alexander Winchell and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, as
    well as Willie Martin's ``1001 Quotes By and About Jews.'' This
    pernicious compendium of quotations strings together mistranslated
    remarks made by Jews, statements of well-known non-Jews taken out of
    context, and the ravings of anti-Semites, so as to give readers the
    impression that Jews are constantly striving for global control.
    Another site now housed by Black, White Singles, serves as a free
    dating service for white supremacists. ``Women and men listed on WS
    [White Singles] are heterosexual, white gentiles only,'' its Home Page
    declares. Well over 200 men and women have registered for this service,
    many of them submitting pictures of themselves for viewing by
    prospective mates. A third new site at Stormfront, White Nationalist
    News Agency (NNA), posts the text of articles from the Associated Press
    and other reputable news sources, seemingly without legal permission.
    Attached to these articles are the racist and anti-Semitic comments of
    Vincent Breeding, NNA editor and National Alliance activist of Tampa,
    Florida.
        Beyond his additions to Stormfront, Black has begun to help other
    white supremacists by hosting their sites without publicly admitting
    that he is doing so. Unlike sites such as The Truth at Last or White
    Nationalist News Agency, which are housed by Black and are in effect
    part of Stormfront, it is not readily apparent that he services these
    other sites.
        Adrian Edward Marlow of Suisun City, California, maintains one of
    these sites, White Pride World Wide.\10\ In fact, Marlow owns Black's
    Web server, the computer that contains his Web site and makes it
    available to Internet users. Black rents this server from Marlow and
    controls it electronically from a remote location: his home in West
    Palm Beach, Florida.\11\ Marlow also uses his own server to co-host
    white supremacist sites with Don Black.
        Not surprisingly, White Pride World Wide is advertised on
    Stormfront and links to the mailing lists and chat room at Black's
    site. The rest of the site reflects Black's values as well: it includes
    ``1001 Quotes By and About Jews,'' Madison Grant's racist tract The
    Passing of the Great Race and transcriptions of Louis Beam's speeches.
    Like Stormfront, White Pride World Wide also houses other racist Web
    sites, such as Verboten (a German-language extremist site) and
    women.wpww.com (a site created by and for white supremacist women).
        Black hosts a site named Blitzcast, which Stormfront and White
    Pride World Wide recommend for those seeking online, racist audio
    ``broadcasts.'' Using free audio software easily downloadable from the
    Web, visitors to Blitzcast can listen to the speeches of American Nazi
    Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell, the weekly radio addresses of
    National Alliance leader William Pierce, and the ravings of anti-
    Semitic Jew Benjamin Freedman. Also appearing at Blitzcast is Frank
    Weltner, who uses the pseudonym ``Von Goldstein Mohammed'' and runs Jew
    Watch, yet another site hosted by Black.
        Jew Watch organizes its anti-Semitic materials much in the same way
    a popular Web directory might group more benign information. Weltner
    presents accusations that Jews were behind the terrors caused by
    Russia's Communist regime in ``Jews, Communism, and The Job of Killing
    Off the USSR's Christians.'' ``Jewish Genocides Today and Yesterday''
    describes an alleged Jewish plan to deport non-Jews from the U.S. in
    1946. ``90 percent of All United States News-papers Are Owned and Run
    by Jews'' repeats the oft-heard charge that Jews run the media, and
    ``The Rothschild Internationalist-Zionist-Banking-One World Order
    Family'' claims that Jews control the world of finance. Adolf Hitler's
    writings, transcripts of Father Charles Coughlin's anti- Semitic radio
    broadcasts, and the text of Henry Ford Sr.'s bigoted International Jew
    are all available at Jew Watch as well.
        When Marlow created Web sites at more than ten domain names that
    resembled the names of major daily newspapers, another misleading Web
    venture involving Black garnered attention. In October 1998, Marlow
    linked these sites directly to Stormfront. Consequently, Web users
    looking for news about Philadelphia at ``philadelphiainquirer.com,''
    for example, ended up visiting Don Black's site, not the Philadelphia
    Inquirer Home Page (which is located at phillynews.com). Other
    newspapers affected included the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Chicago
    Sun-Times, the Atlanta Constitution, and the London Telegraph.
        As Black's site has grown and he has aggressively continued to
    promote it, an increasing number of Web users have been visiting
    Stormfront. Black told the Associated Press that the number of contacts
    to Stormfront doubled during the domain name incident, to 2,000 per
    day. According to Black, Web surfers have accessed Stormfront more than
    a million times since its debut.
        Web users visiting Stormfront right now will likely find a bold
    advertisement in the lower left-hand corner of their screens. By
    clicking on it, they arrive at the Web site for perhaps America's best-
    known and most politically active racist: Black's mentor, David Duke.

                                   DAVID DUKE

        Like Don Black, David Duke first became an active racist as a teen-
    ager. Soon after, as a student at Louisiana State University, he
    founded the neo-Nazi group White Youth Alliance. After his graduation,
    Duke founded the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and launched a publicity
    blitz that boosted its membership.
        Duke's days as a Klan leader ended abruptly in 1980, after he was
    accused of trying to sell his group's membership list. Duke left the
    Klan to establish and head the National Association for the Advancement
    of White People (NAAWP), which he himself confirmed was simply a Klan
    without robes. Though Duke shed his official role in the NAAWP when he
    became more politically active, he continued to maintain ties to the
    group and its agenda continued to parallel his.
        Running as a Republican, Duke won a Louisiana State Legislature
    seat in January 1989, despite scrutiny and opposition from national
    Republican leaders. While in office, he continued to sell neo-Nazi
    literature. While claiming that he had repudiated racism, Duke made
    statements such as ``Jews are trying to destroy all other cultures.''
    Duke won 43.5 percent of the vote in an unsuccessful 1990 U.S. Senate
    race and 700,000 votes in a 1991 race for the governorship of
    Louisiana.
        After an unsuccessful Presidential bid in 1992, Duke retreated from
    the political arena but continued to concentrate on raising his media
    profile. He tried his luck as a radio talk show host in 1993, but his
    controversial program, the ``David Duke Conservative Hotline,'' proved
    unpopular. Two years after Duke failed to raise the $7,000 needed to
    continue broadcasting his program, he established The David Duke Report
    Online, a less costly venue for disseminating his views.
        David Duke has embraced the Internet as a key to the future of the
    white supremacist movement. An article featured prominently at his
    site, ``The Coming White Revolution--Born on the Internet,'' outlines
    his high hopes that the Internet will ``facilitate a world-wide
    revolution of White awareness.''
        Concerned that the ``non-white birthrate,'' ``massive
    immigration,'' and ``racial intermarriage'' will ``reduce the founding
    people of America into a minority,'' Duke boasts at his Web site about
    the ``genetic potential'' of ``our people,'' stressing the ``innate
    intellectual and psychological differences'' between whites and Blacks.
        In another piece posted at his site, ``Race and Christianity,''
    Duke writes, ``I truly believe that the future of this country,
    civilization, and planet is inseparably bound up with the destiny of
    our White race. I think, as the history of Christianity has shown, that
    our people have been the driving force in its triumph.''
        In November 1998, Duke renamed and redesigned his site. The site,
    now simply called David Duke, pictures Duke amid colorful images of an
    American flag, the Lincoln Memorial, Mount Rushmore, and the White
    House. A ``David Duke Biography'' portrays the former Klan leader as a
    respectable citizen, listing the awards and degrees he has received and
    pointing out that he is a ``publicly-elected Republican official''
    (Duke currently serves as the Chairman of the St. Tammany, Louisiana,
    Republican Parish Executive Committee). Duke's site also sells his
    autobiography, My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding; Duke
    promises to personally autograph all copies of the book ordered from
    the site.
        Though Duke's site does not possess the depth or breadth of a site
    like Stormfront, his well-known name may attract curious, potential
    extremists browsing the Web. This is particularly troublesome
    considering Duke's expressed belief in the Internet as a white
    supremacist recruitment tool and his recent offline activities.
        After years spent denying his racism in order to advance in
    politics, Duke has once again openly embraced the white supremacist
    movement. In a July 1997 article published by The Tallahassee Democrat,
    he acknowledged that his politics were becoming ``more radical'' in
    reaction to what he referred to as a `` `growing undercurrent' of white
    frustration.'' Most disturbing are his speeches given in 1997 and 1998
    at four separate events sponsored by the National Alliance, a group the
    Anti-Defamation League has identified as the single most dangerous
    organized hate group in the United States today.
                             the national alliance
        The National Alliance (NA) was originally established as the
    ``Youth for Wallace'' campaign in support of the failed 1968
    Presidential bid of Alabama Governor George Wallace. After Wallace
    lost, the group was renamed the ``National Youth Alliance.'' In 1970,
    William Pierce, a former American Nazi Party official, joined the
    group, and in 1974 (around the time that David Duke founded his Knights
    of the Ku Klux Klan), Pierce took the reins and dropped the word
    ``Youth'' from the organization's name.
        Now in his mid-60's, Pierce still leads the group out of a compound
    in West Virginia. Using the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald, he authored the
    novel The Turner Diaries, which details a successful world revolution
    by an all-white army, and the systematic extermination of Blacks, Jews,
    and other minorities. Many extremists regard The Turner Diaries as an
    explicit terrorism manual, and the novel is believed to have inspired
    several major acts of violence, including the April 1995 Oklahoma City
    bombing. Pierce continues to encourage violence, viewing it as the
    ultimate solution to what he terms ``the Jewish problem.'' His weekly
    radio program, American Dissident Voices (ADV), is rife with incendiary
    speech. Between his novels and his broadcasts, Pierce provides bigots
    with both an ideological and a practical framework for committing acts
    of mass destruction.
        The National Alliance is currently the largest and most active neo-
    Nazi organization in the nation. In the past several years, dozens of
    violent crimes, including murders, bombings and robberies, have been
    traced to NA members or appear to have been inspired by the group's
    propaganda. At the same time, the organization's membership base has
    experienced major growth, with its numbers more than doubling since
    1992.
        The NA's current strength can be attributed to several factors: its
    willingness to cooperate with other extremists (such as David Duke);
    its energetic recruitment and other promotional activities; its
    vicious, but deceptively intellectualized propaganda, and a skillful
    embrace of the Internet.
        A former physics professor at Oregon State University, Pierce was
    quick to understand the potential power of the Internet. Today, the
    NA's site is one of the best-organized and most informative hate sites
    on the Web. It promotes Pierce's Nazi-like ideology: biological
    determinism, hierarchical organization, an emphasis on will and
    sacrifice, and ``a long-term eugenics program involving at least the
    entire populations of Europe and America.''
        In the section of its site entitled ``What is the National
    Alliance?,'' the NA calls for the creation of ``White Living Space''
    purged of all non-whites and demands the formation of a government
    ``wholly committed to the service of [the white] race and subject to no
    non-Aryan influence.'' On the site, this section is reprinted in
    Swedish, Dutch, and German, as are French and German translations of
    The Turner Diaries and the text of selected ADV broadcasts in Swedish.
        Also included on the NA's site are Pierce's anti-Semitic screed
    ``Who Rules America'' (a particular favorite among online bigots) and
    articles from the NA's print publications, Free Speech and National
    Vanguard. These documents contain familiar themes: America is in
    decline, its vital essence polluted by non-Aryans, and only the
    revolutionary program of the NA can save it.
        The NA Web site also features an online version of the NA's
    National Vanguard Books catalog, which offers an extensive selection of
    racist and anti-Semitic books, videotapes, and cassettes. These items
    are divided into categories such as ``National Socialist Revolution'';
    ``Race: Science and Sociology''; and an especially long list of
    materials concerned with ``Communism, Zionism, Feminism, and the
    Jews.''
        Visitors can order books from the National Alliance by downloading
    a user-friendly order form from the NA site, printing it out, and
    sending it to the NA with payment. Additionally, ``any White person (a
    non-Jewish person of wholly European ancestry) of good character and at
    least 18 years of age who accepts as his own the goals of the National
    Alliance'' can apply for membership using the Web, by downloading and
    printing out a membership form and mailing it to the group. Users can
    also find items relating to a particular topic by plugging in key words
    to the site's search engine; over 250 items turned up when searching
    for the term ``Jews.''
        NA sympathizers have also increased the group's exposure by using
    public Internet forums, sending unsolicited E-mail messages, and
    disrupting USENET newsgroups. In the ``Reviews and Commentaries''
    section of the Web site for Amazon.com, visitors are invited to comment
    on books they have read. In at least two reviews (no longer at the
    site), NA supporters promoted their organization's message. Reviewing
    The Turner Diaries, one of these sympathizers urged other readers to
    ``contact the author's organization, the National Alliance, and get
    involved in the struggle for self-determination and freedom for our
    people.'' Another commentary lamented that whites who ``just sit on
    their butts all day and allow the Jewish takeover of the U.S. to
    continue unchallenged really need to read the chapter called the `Day
    of the Rope.' Everyone else who wants to fight needs to join the
    [NA].''
        In October 1994, thousands of people in four states received an
    unsolicited E-mail message containing NA propaganda from an untraceable
    address. An action like this is considered a serious breach of
    ``netiquette'' (responsible Internet use). The NA disavowed this act
    but noted its interest in sending unsolicited messages in its
    newsletter.
        A similar transmission of another National Alliance piece occurred
    in 1995, on the eve of the Jewish High Holy Days, and again in February
    1998, when hundreds of people received an unsolicited E-mail message
    containing the transcript of Pierce's ADV program entitled ``Bill,
    Monica, and Saddam.'' In it, Pierce claimed that by writing about the
    Monica Lewinsky affair, the ``Jewish media bosses'' harmed President
    Clinton, who ``would do whatever they told him to do,'' but ``had
    screwed up so many times that he had become a liability for them.''
        Those sympathetic to the NA have also targeted specific
    institutions, such as Southwest Texas University. In April 1998, three
    Black students there were charged with raping two white students at a
    dormitory party. The campus NAACP chapter voiced opposition to the
    charges and criticized school administrators for a ``rush to
    judgment.'' In response, a National Alliance supporter sent 16,000
    unsolicited E-mail messages to students and faculty calling on the
    NAACP to apologize to ``victims of rape'' and all white women. ``The
    truth is,'' the E-mail read, ``White people in this country are under
    attack by an ever-growing population of black criminals.'' NA
    sympathizers have also posted thousands of messages to USENET
    newsgroups, seeing them as a way to broadcast their message widely. In
    its July 1995 Bulletin, the NA encouraged ``the Alliance's seasoned
    cybernauts'' to spread its Web site address ``as widely as possible.''
        In a 1996 speech to the NA's Cleveland unit, Pierce described the
    NA's organized effort to dominate discussions in USENET newsgroups. He
    outlined the operations of an ``Alliance Cybercell,'' a group of NA
    supporters active in USENET newsgroups. ``We have organized members
    working as teams, not identifying themselves as Alliance members but
    going into these discussion groups and virtually taking them over,''
    Pierce explained. These cell leaders ``decide what discussion groups
    they want to get into * * * analyze the situation, analyze the types of
    propaganda that have been presented by the other side and we go in
    there and just tear them apart.'' Though Pierce encouraged online NA
    supporters to shift their recruiting activities from public debate to
    private discussions, one still finds NA members descending on USENET
    newsgroups and other public forums where they believe they might find
    sympathizers, spewing their hateful propaganda and inviting people to
    visit the NA Web site.
        NA members correspond privately via E-mail not only with potential
    recruits, but also with each other. The organization claims to have
    established a ``Rapid Response Team (RRT),'' a group of NA volunteers
    who are contacted via E-mail to respond to special situations.
    According to the NA, this team serves many purposes, from gathering
    information to quickly alerting other NA members in their area when an
    ``emergency'' arises.

            NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF WHITE PEOPLE

        While David Duke has recently allied himself with the National
    Alliance, his NAAWP has also jumped on the Internet bandwagon. Duke
    once described the NAAWP as ``a perfect foil for me.'' Around 1990,
    soon after his successful run for the Louisiana State Legislature, he
    resigned from leadership of the group, but he still remained active
    behind the scenes. Duke's campaign treasurer, Paul Allen, became the
    NAAWP's leader, and the office for Duke's unsuccessful 1991
    gubernatorial campaign served as the group's headquarters. The NAAWP
    has described Duke as ``former NAAWP President and still, best friend
    to the organization,'' and Duke's Web site proudly identifies him as
    ``founder and former National President of the NAAWP.''
        The NAAWP portrays itself as a non-profit ``white rights''
    organization that defends white interests and rights in the same
    fashion that the NAACP works for the ``Advancement of Colored People.''
    Unlike some groups that proudly embrace the label of ``racist,'' the
    NAAW is more subtle in its hate. As early as 1985, the NAAWP encouraged
    its followers to mute their white supremacist views and ``never refer
    to racial superiority or inferiority, only talk about racial
    differences, carefully avoiding value judgements.'' The NAAWP North
    Carolina chapter Web site responds to the question ``Is the NAAWP a
    `hate group'?'' with a firm ``absolutely not.'' At the national NAAWP
    site, a group leader writes, ``I don't condemn black people. I want the
    best for them, both from a compassionate Christian-point-of-view, and
    because if they escape from the cycle of poverty, drugs, and crime,
    then we too will be better off.'' According to the NAAWP Michigan
    chapter, ``the NAAWP doesn't stand for hating anyone, and more
    importantly it never has. It's about building a new, better society. A
    homogeneous community where everyone contributes, everyone benefits,
    and all share a common set of values and cultural beliefs.''
        The NAAWP, like David Duke, has tried to hide its hate, but its
    racist and anti-Semitic views, like those of its founder, are evident.
    NAAWP News, the group's newsletter, has regularly published articles
    with titles like ``Anti-Semitism is normal for people seeking to
    control their own destiny''; ``Jewish control of the media is the
    single most dangerous threat to Christianity,'' and ``Why most Negroes
    are criminals.''
        On its Web sites as well, the NAAWP shows its true colors. ``Tired
    of Black History Month, Martin Luther King Day, Miss Black USA, Black
    Entertainment Network, The United Negro College Fund, [and] Affirmative
    Action?'' asks the NAAWP Arkansas chapter site. The Hawaii chapter's
    site calls gays ``the worst predators on [sic] our children'' and
    declares, ``the Jesse Jacksons of this World just want White Women
    around to Pimp for Money and Drugs and to make the White Man Pay.''
        The National NAAWP Web site offers particularly clear examples of
    the bigotry that underlies the NAAWP's talk about ``white rights.'' It
    presents an anti-Semitic essay by National Alliance member Kevin Alfred
    Strom with the comment, ``this essay is a real call to all arms for all
    the races and nations of the world to rise up against these hypocrites,
    deceivers and tyrants--the j*ws [sic].'' The site also posts another
    essay by Strom, ``The Beast as Saint,'' which purports to discredit Dr.
    Martin Luther King, Jr. as a plagiarizer and a patron of prostitutes. A
    third document at the site, ``Jews, Jews, Jews,'' offers ``proof that
    the Jew really does control the media'' in the way of a list of
    ``Jewish CEO's.

                                  KU KLUX KLAN

        NAAWP members sometimes attend rallies organized by an older,
    better-known hate group: the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). For more than 130
    years, the Klan has provided a model for extremists by actively
    practicing and promoting bigotry, intimidation and violence.
        The strength of America's oldest hate group has fluctuated, peaking
    and receding at various times in American history, coinciding with the
    rise and decline of social and economic discontent in the nation. The
    economic, political and cultural changes in the South after the Civil
    War, the dislocations in the early 1920's and the struggle for civil
    rights in the 1950's and 1960's all fueled Klan growth.
        In recent years, as a result of the counteractions of law
    enforcement and civil rights groups, changing fashions in the extremist
    movement, and internal power struggles, the Klan has lost much of its
    clout. David Duke's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which fell into
    decline when Don Black went to jail, underwent a major split in 1994.
    Other large, national Klans active in the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's
    have also disintegrated. For instance, a 1987 Southern Poverty Law
    Center legal victory effectively dismantled the United Klans of America
    after its members lynched a Black teen-ager, Michael Donald. A 1993
    court order disbanded the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
    after group members pelted civil rights activists with rocks and
    bottles during a brotherhood march in Forsyth County, Georgia.
        Still, in the 1990's, Klan members remain active and violent,
    planning terrorist bombings and burning Black churches. In April 1997,
    three Klan members were arrested in a plot to blow up a natural gas
    refinery near Fort Worth, Texas. Three more men with links to the Klan
    were arrested in February 1998 for planning to poison water supplies,
    rob banks, plant bombs, and commit assassinations. In a July 1998 court
    judgment, the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, its South Carolina
    state leader Horace King, and several other Klansmen were held
    responsible for their roles in a conspiracy to burn down a Black
    church.
        Like other white supremacist groups, the Klan has turned to the
    Internet as a means to revitalize their movement and attract a new
    cadre of supporters and activists. ``Up until last month, the Knights
    of the Ku Klux Klan Realm of Florida was very small,'' writes Brian K.
    Bass of his Klan group. ``But now we have a website up, and our numbers
    are growing dramatically. We picked up 6 new members in just the last
    two weeks, and have other applications under consideration. I feel that
    this is due to the website.'' On the Web, some Klan factions favor the
    toned-down rhetoric associated with the NAAWP and other hate groups
    trying to appear mainstream. The first Klan page on the Web belonged to
    a group that adopted this strategy: Thom Robb's Knights of the Ku Klux
    Klan.
        Robb's site presented a ``kinder, gentler'' Klan that teaches white
    racial pride but professes to be neither anti-Black nor anti-Catholic.
    Whites ``have a right to be proud of their race'' the site explains,
    adding that the popular image of a racist Klan is a lie deliberately
    spread by the liberal media.
        Nonetheless, Robb's site relied on traditional Klan themes: whites
    are victims of intolerance who face racial extinction from a horde of
    Blacks and foreigners eager to intermarry and destroy American culture
    and religion; America should belong to Americans, not Asians, Arabs or
    Jews. Furthermore, early incarnations of Robb's site reprinted the
    ``Franklin Prophecy,'' a vile, anti-Semitic speech falsely attributed
    to Benjamin Franklin.
        Today, Robb's Klan site reflects even stronger efforts to appear
    respectable, particularly in stating, like Duke, that the Klan's goal
    should be ``political power.'' This ``political power'' is to be used
    to combat ``anti-white and anti-Christian propaganda'' and to promote
    ``White Christian civilization.'' Robb remains dismissive of the Klan's
    violent image, claiming his group ``is well known through out [sic] law
    enforcement for being non-violent.''
        Some Klan members are not content with this toned-down language.
    One unabashedly bigoted Klan with more than a few Web sites, the
    Knights of the White Kamellia was founded in Louisiana in 1993. This
    group seeks to ``maintain and defend the superiority of the White
    race,'' maintain ``a marked difference between the White and Negro
    race,'' prevent the government ``from falling into the hands of the
    Negro and or the ungodly,'' and educate ``against miscegenation of the
    races.''
        Many other Klans are also now on the Web. Web users can find a
    membership application for the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,
    perhaps today's most vocal and active Klan, at that group's Web site. A
    few sites use the old Klan moniker ``Invisible Empire,'' among them
    America's Invisible Empire of Alabama and Pennsylvania's Invisible
    Empire KKK. Smaller regional groups, such as the Southern Cross
    Militant Knights and the Northwest Knights, are active on the Internet
    as well.
        While the Klans on the Web represent different factions and espouse
    various viewpoints, their Web sites are formatted in similar ways. Most
    Klan sites contain a membership application, a list of upcoming
    rallies, a statement of principles, an explanation of customs (such as
    cross burning), and a spurious account of Klan history. At many sites,
    the three latter items are adaptations, if not direct appropriations,
    of the materials originally posted at Robb's Klan sites. In fact, Robb
    threatened another Klan group with legal action for posting a document
    that Robb claims belongs exclusively to his Klan.
        Furthermore, some Klan sites link to other Klan sites with which
    they are not affiliated. For instance, the North Georgia White Knights
    Web site links to many chapters of the Knights of the White Kamellia,
    the New Order Knights, and the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The site
    for America's Invisible Empire links to the Web pages of the Northwest
    White Knights and Knights of the White Kamellia, among others. Such
    links, as well as the similarities between KKK sites, demonstrate the
    bonds among the different Klan factions, despite their infighting.

                            IDENTITY CHURCH MOVEMENT

        The Identity Church movement, a pseudo-theological manifestation of
    racism and anti-Semitism on the far right, first came to light in the
    U.S. during the late 1970's and early 1980's, though its roots lie in
    the late years of the last century, with the British movement known as
    Anglo-Israelism.
        Anglo-Israelism held that white Anglo-Saxons are descended from the
    Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Adherents to this doctrine believed that
    England and the U.S. are the true Israel in which Biblical promises to
    the ``Chosen People'' are to be fulfilled. The Identity movement takes
    the position that white Anglo-Saxons--not Jews--are the real Biblical
    ``Chosen People;'' that Jews are the descendants of a union between Eve
    and Satan; and that the white race is inherently superior to other
    races. Identity believers assert that Blacks and other nonwhites are
    ``mud people,'' on the same spiritual level as animals, and therefore
    without souls.
        A nationwide movement, Identity has filled dozens of ``churches''
    with its hate. Additionally, Identity has become the ``religion'' of
    choice for many hate groups, including Aryan Nations and the Posse
    Comitatus, in addition to some factions of the Ku Klux Klan.
        Numerous Identity ``churches'' have established a Web presence in
    recent years, among them America's Promise Ministries, Stone Kingdom
    Ministries, and Kingdom Identity Ministries. Many of these
    organizations have made good use of the Web to market their pamphlets,
    books, and videotapes to their supporters. America's Promise Ministries
    offers Web users a vast online catalog of books, pamphlets, audio
    tapes, and video tapes filled with their racist beliefs. Along with a
    section full of online Identity books and book reviews, the Stone
    Kingdom Ministries Web site lists hundreds of ``Bible Studies on
    Audiocassettes'' for sale. Among bumper stickers, decals, charts, and
    other merchandise, the Kingdom Identity Ministries Web site retails
    Identity-based books written for children. Also at the Kingdom Identity
    site, Web users can enroll in a correspondence course, which consists
    of studying almost 300 pages of Identity materials, to receive a
    ``Certificate in Christian Education.''
        With links to these ``churches'' at its Web site, the bimonthly
    newspaper The Jubilee of Midpines, California, serves as a national
    umbrella publication for Identity believers. Like the Web sites for
    those groups, the Jubilee site puts the power of the Web to use to
    raise funds. In addition to selling books and videotapes that the
    Jubilee guarantees ``you won't find in the B. Dalton bookstore,''
    visitors to the Jubilee site can sign up for subscriptions to the
    newspaper's print edition; buy advertising in its print or online
    versions, and purchase inexpensive, long distance telephone service
    that will benefit The Jubilee.
        While some Identity ``churches'' focus on the Web's commercial
    potential, paramilitary Identity groups such as the Posse Comitatus and
    Aryan Nations have used it to encourage action.

                                POSSE COMITATUS

        William Potter Gale created an Identity group named Posse
    Comitatus, which means ``power of the county'' in Latin. Other Posses
    unaffiliated with Gale sprang up in its wake, particularly during the
    1970's and 1980's. Loosely affiliated bands of armed anti-tax and anti-
    Federal government vigilantes and survivalists, these Posses believed
    that all government power is rooted at the county, not Federal, level.
        Because they are convinced that the Federal government is
    controlled by ``enemies'' (usually Jews), Posse adherents resist paying
    taxes as well as other duties of law-abiding citizens. Aspects of the
    Posse's ideology, most notably its fierce hostility to Federal
    authority, reverberate among today's militia and common law court
    activists.
        In the 1970's, Posses attracted Klan members and other anti-Semites
    (among them David Duke), and in 1983, these groups gained nationwide
    attention when active Posse member Gordon Kahl murdered two Federal
    Marshals in North Dakota and became a fugitive. When Kahl died in a
    shootout with Arkansas law enforcement officers, Posses and other
    Identity groups made him a martyr.
        In 1991, James Wickstrom, an Identity minister and Posse leader
    based in Michigan, was convicted of plotting to distribute $100,000 in
    counterfeit bills to white supremacists at a 1988 Aryan Nations event.
    He was released from prison in 1994 and today runs a Posse Web site
    with fellow Identity ``Pastor'' August Kreis of Pennsylvania.
        At his Posse Web site, Kreis calls ``the occupying forces'' of the
    ``zionist [sic] or jewish [sic] occupied government'' the enemies of
    ``We the People'' and describes them as the reason that the government
    has ``grossly overstepped its bounds.''
        Kreis and Wickstrom also use their Web site to editorialize about
    current events. Written by Kreis, ``Villain or American Folk Hero?''
    voices support for alleged abortion clinic bomber Eric Robert Rudolph.
    Kreis claims that ``those who call themselves Identity'' and ``a
    growing consensus of conservative Christians'' believe Rudolph has
    ``done the will of * * * God.''
        In justifying Rudolph's alleged actions, Kreis stresses that ``it
    is * * * an inarguable matter of Scriptural mandate that those involved
    with [abortion] have committed capital murder--a crime punishable by
    DEATH!'' Kreis maintains that ``several hundred [Jewish Occupational
    Government] agents'' are chasing Rudolph to ``execute him'' on the
    spot, and he urges ``the proud European White folk living in this
    country'' to ``rise up against this tyrannical, parasitic [Jewish]
    communist government.'' Perhaps Rudolph engenders greater sympathy
    among this group because he himself may be an Identity believer: in
    1984, he and his family spent several months at the Schell City,
    Missouri, Church of Israel compound run by Identity preacher Dan
    Gayman.
        With regard to the brutal murder on October 23, 1998, of Dr.
    Barnett Slepian of upstate New York, likely targeted because he
    performed abortions, Kreis and Wickstrom comment, ``Not much needs to
    be said. The justice in the `putting to DEATH' of this jewish [sic]
    abortionist says it all! * * * Pray that other True Israelite Warriors
    across this land continue to rid our country of these murdering
    bastards!''

                          ARYAN NATIONS AND THE ORDER

        A contemporary of Posse Comitatus co-founder William Potter Gale,
    Wesley Swift was a Klan organizer who served as an aide to Gerald L.K.
    Smith, for many years America's most notorious peddler of anti-
    Semitism. During the 1950's, Swift was a leader of a Los Angeles church
    called the ``Anglo-Saxon Christian Congregation.'' When Swift died,
    ``Rev.'' Richard G. Butler proclaimed his ``Church of Jesus Christ
    Christian'' (CJCC the direct successor to Swift's church. In the early
    1970's, Butler formed a new group around his church: Aryan Nations
    (AN). Since then, he has held court at a 20-acre AN/CJCC compound in
    Northern Idaho, anticipating the creation of an exclusively white
    ``national racist state'' in the Pacific Northwest. At its Web site, AN
    preaches that God's creation of Adam marked ``the placing of the White
    Race upon this earth''; and that ``the twelve tribes of Israel'' are
    ``now scattered throughout the world'' and are ``now known as the
    Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Teutonic, Scandinavian, Celtic peoples.'' As a
    corollary, all non-whites are seen as inferior, but it is the Jews who
    are singled out as the special object of AN's ``theologically'' based
    hatred.
        AN vilifies Jews as ``the natural enemy of our Aryan (White) Race.
    This is attested by scripture and all secular history. The Jew is like
    a destroying virus that attacks our racial body to destroy our Aryan
    culture and the purity of our Race.''
        Citing the Book of Revelation, AN envisions a ``battle'' being
    fought ``between the children of darkness (today known as Jews) and the
    children of light * * * the Aryan Race, the true Israel of the bible.''
    According to AN, there will ``soon'' be a ``day of reckoning,'' in
    which ``the usurper will be thrown out by the terrible might of
    Yahweh's people, as they return to their roots and their special
    destiny.''
        In this struggle between the Jews and ``the children of light,'' AN
    claims that the Jews have a surrogate: the United States Government,
    often referred to as ``ZOG'' (Zionist Occupied Government). In 1996, AN
    posted to its site an ``Aryan Declaration of Independence,'' which
    declared, ``the history of the present Zionist Occupied Government of
    the United States of America is a history of repeated injuries and
    usurpations * * * [all] having a direct object--the establishment of an
    absolute tyranny over these states.'' Holding ``the eradication of the
    White race and its culture'' as ``one of its foremost purposes,'' this
    ``ZOG'' is accused of relinquishing the ``powers of government to
    private corporations, White traitors and ruling class Jewish
    families.''
        AN perceives itself as literally surrounded by enemies: vigorously
    fighting back is not only a solution to its problems, but a duty.
    According to AN, those whites who resist ``ZOG'' are ``chosen and
    faithful,'' and the white ``Racial Nation has a right and is under
    obligation to preserve itself and its members.''
        Although primarily an Identity group, AN embraces a neo-Nazi
    philosophy. Richard Butler himself has praised Hitler, and at the AN
    Web site, which announces, ``WE BELIEVE in the gam-ma'di'on * * * a
    cross formed of four capital gammas * * * in the figure of a
    swastika,'' he is pictured giving the raised stiff-arm Nazi salute.
        One of the most ambitious Identity Web sites, the AN site contains
    a membership application, a substantial book catalog, an online
    ``Literature Archives'' of hateful texts, and a long list of links to
    other hate sites.
        AN is no stranger to violence. During the early 1980's, several of
    Butler's followers joined members of the neo-Nazi National Alliance and
    some Klan splinter groups to form a secret organization called The
    Silent Brotherhood, also known as The Order, which planned to overthrow
    the U.S. government.
        To raise money for its planned revolution, The Order engaged in a
    crime spree involving murder, counterfeiting, bank robberies, and
    armored-car hold-ups. Ostensibly, the group's activities ended with the
    death of its founder and leader, Robert J. Mathews, in a shootout with
    Federal agents in December 1984 and the incarceration of many of its
    members. Yet The Order has taken on a new life on the World Wide Web,
    serving as inspiration for today's Identity adherents and other white
    supremacists.
        Hosted by the same Internet Service Provider as the AN Web site,
    the 14 Word Press Web site is devoted to the work of David Lane, an
    imprisoned member of The Order. Lane's best-known legacy is the ``14
    words'': ``We must secure the existence of our people and a future for
    White children.'' Despite the fact that Lane is a convicted felon
    serving a 190-year sentence in a high-security prison, his writings,
    including pieces from his monthly Focus Fourteen newsletter, can reach
    millions through the Internet. Among his columns, many of which are
    offered at the 14 Word Press site, is a sympathetic letter to convicted
    Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

                                   NEO-NAZIS

        The symbols associated with Hitler's Nazis are attractive to bigots
    on the Web because they suggest anti-Semitism in an immediate, forceful
    way to the general public.
        Like Identity ``churches,'' neo-Nazis use the Web to market
    merchandise, selling items emblazoned with the instantly recognizable
    symbols of Hitler's Nazi party. Naming itself for the Shutzstaffel, the
    elite section of the Nazi Party that ran Hitler's extermination camps,
    the online store SS Enterprises specializes in selling Nazi-related
    paraphernalia, including newly-designed T-shirts, pins, patches, hats,
    stickers, flags, belt buckles, arm bands, and helmets bearing
    swastikas, the initials ``SS,'' a German eagle, or an iron cross. Also
    available are Nazi patches, pins, rings, and hats designed during
    Hitler's era. Like the T-shirt a music fan might buy at a rock concert,
    one shirt reads ``Adolf Hitler European Tour 1939-1945,'' listing the
    nations that Hitler invaded during those years. Other white supremacist
    T-shirts sold by SS Enterprises feature racist slogans such as ``If we
    knew they were going to be this much trouble, we'd a picked our own
    damn cotton!!'' or depictions of Klansmen behind phrases like ``Boyz N'
    the Hood.'' Another shirt depicts a ``Black Family Tree'': a tree with
    nooses hung from it, seemingly ready for a Klan-style lynching.
        At Our Hero's Library Web site, twenty something neo-Nazi Tom Smith
    proudly displays a picture of his ``Aryan hero,'' Adolf Hitler, flanked
    by animated, swirling swastikas. Hosted by Don Black's Stormfront,
    Smith's site features numerous Hitlerian essays covering topics such as
    eugenics and ``Aryan'' culture. Amidst photos of Jews with their eyes
    blacked out, he lists Jewish ``powerlords'' and posts a Jewish
    ``surname index.'' ``Before buying anything always check to make sure
    the company is not j*wish [sic],'' Smith writes. Seeing Jewish
    conspiracies everywhere, he calls Bob Dole, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot,
    and Pat Buchanan Jewish ``marionettes''; blames Jews for schoolyard
    violence in Arkansas, and declares them responsible for the conflict
    between Ireland and Britain. ``The J*w has been and is always very
    aware of the conflict amongst non-j*ws, and is tireless in his pursuit
    of trying to profit from the internal feuds of his enemies,'' Smith
    writes. ``When these feuds are not [innate] in and of themselves, the
    j*w creates new feuds via his presence in each of the opposing
    countries to create a new profit-scenario for himself.'' Also available
    at Our Hero's Library are downloadable copies of Smith's extensive
    messages to USENET newsgroups, the Internet's system of electronic
    bulletin boards.
        Other neo-Nazis on the Web represent more established organizations
    and have been active in the white supremacist movement much longer,
    since the days of American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell.
    Following Rockwell's assassination by a disgruntled party member in
    1967, Matthias (Matt) Koehl took over his American Nazi Party, renaming
    it the National Socialist White People's Party. In 1970, NSWPP member
    Frank Collin started his own group, the National Socialist Party of
    America (NSPA), made famous by its attempts to march through the
    predominantly Jewish town of Skokie, Illinois in 1977. Another former
    NSWPP member, Harold Covington joined the NSPA in the mid-1970's. At
    that time, Gary ``Gerhard'' Lauck, who went on to found the NSDAP-AO (a
    German acronym meaning National Socialist German Workers Party--
    Overseas Organization), was also a member of Collin's group. Covington
    took over the NSPA in 1980, after Collin was sentenced to seven years
    in prison for sexually abusing children. In 1982, Koehl dropped the
    name NSWPP in favor of the name ``The New Order,'' and Covington's NSPA
    disbanded. In 1994, Covington founded a new group using the old name
    once used by Koehl: NSWPP. Today, Covington and Lauck both have a
    presence on the World Wide Web.
        Harold Covington was one of the first neo-Nazis on the Web,
    establishing a site as early as 1996. Covington's original site defined
    National Socialism as ``a world view for White People'' and listed
    guiding principles such as ``Racial Idealism'' and ``The Upward
    Development of the White Race.'' The site listed ``Ten Basic Principles
    of National Socialism,'' which urged ``Aryan'' racial purity and
    conquest of the world. Covington lauded Rockwell at length and provided
    links to other white supremacist sites.
        ``Gerhard'' Lauck has also been online for many years. In the early
    days of cyberspace, Lauck's materials were circulated on a closely
    guarded computer network named the ``Thule Network,'' a bulletin board
    system similar to the ``Aryan Nation Liberty Net.'' In order to gain
    access to the network, prospective users had to pass a loyalty test and
    a background check. According to some estimates, over 1,500 neo-Nazis
    in Germany had access to Lauck's propaganda via the ``Thule Network,''
    which remains active today.
        In 1995, Danish authorities, acting on international warrants,
    arrested Lauck and agreed to extradite him to Germany, where he was
    sentenced in 1996 to four years in prison for inciting racial hatred by
    disseminating anti-Semitic and racist material. Lauck was released in
    March 1999 and deported to the United States.
        While he was in jail, Lauck's Web site featured the headline,
    ``Free Gerhard Lauck!'' The site said about Lauck's arrest and
    imprisonment: ``these illegal and reprehensible acts by the anti-White
    authorities are a direct assault upon ALL pro-White organizations. YOU
    are under attack now! If International Jewry is allowed to kidnap
    Gerhard Lauck their next step will be to systematically silence all
    pro-White leaders, organizations, and members worldwide one by one.''
        Like other neo-Nazis, Lauck has expressed intense approval for
    Hitler and hatred for Jews. He has stated that ``anything that is bad
    for the Jews is good for us'' and told a Danish audience that ``the
    Jews were treated too nicely in the concentration camps.'' Yet buried
    among the Nazi-themed books sold at his Web site were a group of texts
    that question whether the Holocaust took place, bearing titles like
    ``Auschwitz: Truth or Lie?'' and ``Did Six Million Really Die?''

                                HOLOCAUST DENIAL

        Why would an anti-Semitic neo-Nazi such as Gerhard Lauck deny that
    the Holocaust took place? A July 1996 message from fellow neo-Nazi
    Harold Covington to his National Socialist White Peoples Party E-mail
    mailing list provides some possible reasons. Covington comments, ``take
    away the Holocaust and both the National Socialists and the Jews become
    very different people, almost reversing roles.''
        Viewing the Holocaust as a ``seemingly bottomless gold mine in the
    form of `reparations' which has financed murderous Israeli aggression
    in the Middle East and numerous anti-White Jewish institutions,''
    Covington wonders: ``without the Holocaust, what are the Jews?'' His
    answer: ``Just a grubby little bunch of international bandits and
    assassins and squatters who have perpetrated the most massive, cynical
    fraud in human history.''
        Likewise, Covington thinks the general public would be ``stunned
    with admiration for the brilliance of Adolf Hitler'' \29\ if it
    believed the Holocaust did not happen. Paraphrasing prominent Holocaust
    historian and Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt, he declares
    that ``the real purpose'' of Holocaust denial is ``to make National
    Socialism an acceptable political alternative again.
        Since 1979, when Willis Carto founded the Institute for Historical
    Review (IHR), a sizable Holocaust denial movement has surfaced.
    Holocaust deniers make the mendacious claim that the account of Nazi
    genocide universally accepted by legitimate historians is false, either
    in its entirety or in most of its central facts. To support this claim,
    they distort and even fabricate history.
        Unlike Harold Covington, most in the Holocaust denial movement try
    hard to mask the anti-Semitism underlying their claims. Instead, hoping
    to make their views seem respectable, they pretend that their sole goal
    is to ``correct'' the historical record. Posing as historians and
    cloaking themselves in ersatz scholarship, the deniers claim that the
    Holocaust is a Jewish fabrication, not the product of Nazi hatred.
        Holocaust deniers' thousands of pages of propaganda on the Web,
    presented as academic fact or in the guise of free and open ``debate,''
    take particular advantage of many Web users' difficulty distinguishing
    between reputable and disreputable Web sites.
        When ADL first reported on Holocaust denial Web sites in 1996, only
    three existed: Greg Raven's IHR site, Bradley Smith's site for the
    Committee for Open Discussion of the Holocaust Story (CODOH), and the
    Zundelsite, which promotes the work of Canadian Holocaust denier Ernst
    Zundel. Today, these sites are still among the most significant
    manifestations of Holocaust denial on the Web, but have been joined by
    more than a dozen others, as well as numerous sites with Holocaust-
    denial materials alongside other hateful propaganda.

                        INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW

        The California-based IHR, which split with Willis Carto in 1993,
    remains the world's single most important outlet for Holocaust-denial
    propaganda. While the IHR seeks to gain credibility by working under
    the guise of scholarship and impartiality, many of its staffers and
    Editorial Advisory Committee members often participate in pro-Nazi and
    anti-Jewish activities. Current director Mark Weber was an activist in
    the National Alliance during the 1970's, and editorial advisor Robert
    Faurisson was convicted three times of violating French hate-crime laws
    because of his anti-Semitic activities. Other active participants in
    IHR include David Irving, the leading Holocaust denier in England, and
    Ernst Zundel, Canada's most notorious neo-Nazi.
        From 1996 to 1998, IHR Associate Director Greg Raven housed
    extensive IHR materials at his ``personal'' Web site, which he claims
    is ``not supported, sponsored, or financed by the Institute for
    Historical Review.'' Raven's ``personal'' site continues to exist,
    though he moved all of his IHR materials to a separate, ``official''
    IHR site in March 1998.
        The IHR Web site contains hundreds of online ``revisionist''
    pamphlets, books, and articles, as well as a complete index of the JHR.
    Among IHR's leaflets, one finds ``Auschwitz myths and facts,'' which
    claims that ``Auschwitz was not an extermination center'' and that
    ``the story of mass killings in `gas chambers' is a myth.'' Many JHR
    articles are reprinted in their entirety, including ``Is The Diary of
    Anne Frank genuine?'' Additionally, IHR publishes the full text of a
    few books at its site, such as Did Six Million Really Die? by British
    ``revisionist'' Richard Harwood.

                            BRADLEY SMITH AND CODOH

        Formerly the ``Media Project Director'' for IHR, longtime Holocaust
    denier Bradley Smith joined current IHR leader Mark Weber in founding
    the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) in 1987. On his
    Web site, Smith presents himself as an intellectually honest gadfly
    with no ax to grind.
        Smith works hard to create the image of a man who wants to
    encourage reasonable debate among reasonable people. His admission that
    ``the Hitlerian regime was antisemitic [sic] and persecuted Jews''
    seems meant to show that it is intellectual honesty, not anti-Semitism,
    that leads him to deny that ``the German state pursued a plan to kill
    all Jews or used homicidal `gassing chambers' for mass murder.''
        For many years, Smith has been at the center of the deniers'
    college outreach program. He first drew public attention when about 70
    college newspapers published his Holocaust denial ads, which he still
    regularly sends to campus editors, in the early and mid-1990's. All of
    these ads are reprinted at the CODOH Web site.
        At first, Smith's ads featured long essays that outlined the
    deniers' position, such as Mark Weber's ``The `Jewish soap' myth.''
    Smith's first widely published ad stated ``the figure of 6 million
    Jewish deaths is an irresponsible exaggeration, and * * * no execution
    gas chambers existed in any camp in Europe which was under German
    control.'' This ad went on to note that the ``purpose'' of accounts of
    the Holocaust is ``to drum up world sympathy and political and
    financial support for Jewish causes, especially for the formation of
    the State of Israel.'' Another early CODOH ad claimed ``The U.S.
    Holocaust Memorial Museum displays no convincing proof whatsoever of
    homicidal gas chambers.''
        Upset about the high cost of these lengthy ads, Smith soon realized
    the power of the Internet. He began to place brief, inexpensive ads in
    school papers that merely listed his Web site and E-mail addresses. Not
    only did these ads cost less money, they also hid Smith's agenda. In
    addition, Smith tried to draw his readers' attention with misleading
    slogans such as ``Ignore the Thought Police'' and ``Judge for
    yourself.''
        Smith's savvy marketing technique was tailor-made for students,
    many of whom are comfortable with the Internet, predisposed against
    authority, and willing to challenge received wisdom. Students
    responding favorably to these deceptive ads would realize Smith's
    intention to deny the Holocaust only after visiting the CODOH Web site,
    where they would receive his message without mediation.
        Once at the CODOH site, students are targeted further. They are
    urged to distribute CODOH leaflets on their campuses and fight what
    Smith calls the ``Campus Thought Police'' (that is, legitimate
    Holocaust historians). Also, students are offered a set of links and
    asked to ``choose a major'' such as ``Mathematics,'' ``Science,'' or
    ``Politics.'' By clicking on a ``major,'' they are linked to Holocaust
    denial articles specially tailored to their areas of interest. Also
    presented is an innocuous-sounding section titled ``Hot Links to Higher
    Learning,'' which contains links to a variety of Holocaust denial
    sites; Smith classifies such sites as ``Social, Political and
    Historical Activism & Commentary.''
        The CODOH Web site today contains a vast amount of Holocaust-denial
    information. Visitors to the site can look for any one of over 1,000
    separate documents using one of the site's eight search tools, such as
    its index of articles by subject and its chronological list of
    additions. Particularly troublesome are the sections titled ``War
    Crimes Trials'' and ``The Tangled Web: Zionism, Stalinism, and the
    Holocaust Story.'' ``War Crimes Trials'' offers articles that attack
    the objectivity and legal validity of the post-war Nuremberg Trials,
    where much information about the Holocaust first became public, and
    where the basic history of the genocide was first established. ``The
    Tangled Web'' suggests that Jews were responsible for Bolshevism in the
    Soviet Union while linking Zionism to Fascism. CODOH manages to present
    Jews as both International Communist conspirators and ultra-nationalist
    bigots who willingly cooperated with violent anti-Semites.

                               ZUNDEL AND RIMLAND

        Another longtime ``revisionist,'' Ernst Zundel has been the leading
    Holocaust-denial propagandist in Canada for more than two decades. In
    the early 1970's, Zundel penned pro-Nazi materials under the name
    Christ of Friedrich, including the book The Hitler We Loved and Why. In
    the late 1970's, ads for his Samisdat Publishers Ltd. in George Dietz's
    neo-Nazi Liberty Bell magazine (based in West Virginia) offered
    Holocaust-denial books for sale, and Zundel wrote articles for Liberty
    Bell and another Dietz publication, White Power Report. In the early
    1980's, the German government named Zundel as one of the world's
    largest distributors of neo-Nazi material. Mid-1995 marked the debut of
    the Zundelsite. Though Zundel, a German citizen, lives in Canada, the
    site has been hosted by an Internet Service Provider in California.
    Zundel has denied that he operates the Zundelsite. Rather, he claims,
    the site is run by his ``webmaster,'' Dr. Ingrid Rimland of California.
    Currently, the site is called ``Ingrid Rimland's Zundelsite'' and
    declares, ``the Zundelsite, located in the USA, is owned and operated
    by Dr. Ingrid A. Rimland, an American citizen.'' Regardless of who
    actually maintains the Zundelsite, its agenda is clearly that of its
    namesake.
        From its first appearance on the Internet, the Zundelsite made its
    Holocaust denial agenda unambiguous, challenging assertions that there
    ``was a Fuhrer order for the genocidal killings of Jews, Gypsies and
    others''; disputing the fact that gas chambers were ``designed for the
    express purpose of targeting groups of human beings,'' and refusing to
    believe that ``the numbers of victims claimed to have been killed are
    anywhere near the number of people who actually died in concentration
    camps of whatever cause.'' The site rejects claims that ``World War II
    was fought by the Germans to kill off the Jews as a group,'' arguing
    that these are ``deliberately planned, systematic'' deceptions
    ``amounting to financial, political, emotional and spiritual
    extortion.''
        Early editions of the Zundelsite provided readers with Zundel's
    writings on ``revisionism,'' including the text of his newsletters,
    book reviews and editorials. The site today focuses mostly on other
    sources of Holocaust denial propaganda, though it continues to sell
    audio and video tapes featuring Zundel.
        The Zundel site contains an archive of daily ``ZGram'' E-mail
    messages sent by Ingrid Rimland to the site's supporters; almost a
    thousand messages are archived, dating back to early 1996. A passionate
    admirer of Zundel, Rimland shares his views on the Holocaust, seeing it
    as an extortion ``racket'' run by Jews for the purpose of financing
    Israel and humiliating Germany and Germans.
        Both Zundel and Rimland lived through the defeat of the Nazis, and
    both lament it. Rimland holds high hopes that Holocaust ``revisionism''
    will help revive the image of Hitler as a man who made Germany ``the
    most progressive and advanced Nation of its time.'' In her view,
    teaching the facts of the Holocaust is emblematic of a systematic
    assault against people of German descent. ``Holocaust teaching,'' she
    writes, ``is * * * child abuse. It is adult abuse. It is ethnic abuse.
    I want to go on record that it is soul-abuse.'' Additionally, unlike
    many other Holocaust deniers, who go to great lengths to deny the anti-
    Jewish sentiment that fuels their views, Rimland has openly voiced her
    approval for anti-Semitism, calling it ``a responsible and, indeed,
    unavoidable response to relentless provocation against the gentile
    culture and tradition conflicting with a Jewish culture and
    tradition.''
        The Zundelsite also reprints a book originally published by
    Zundel's Samisdat press: the infamous ``Leuchter Report.'' Despite the
    fact that he has publicly acknowledged his lack of scientific
    credentials, Fred Leuchter claimed to have taken scientific ``samples''
    from death camp gas chambers that prove they could not have been used
    to exterminate people. Notwithstanding the discredited nature of
    Leuchter's work, deniers like Zundel still pass his report off as fact,
    and the IHR continues to market it as ``essential revisionist
    reading.'' Also posted at the Zundel site is the fallacious ``Rudolf
    Report,'' by German ``scientist'' Germar Rudolf, which defends
    Leuchter's work. Rudolf also claims to have taken ``samples'' from
    masonry in gas chambers and found no trace of poison gas.

                                   AHMED RAMI

        One high-profile Arab Holocaust denier is Swedish-based Moroccan
    exile Ahmed Rami, creator of the Radio Islam Web site. Once a
    lieutenant in the Moroccan military, Rami reportedly played a leading
    role in a failed 1972 coup d'etat and fled, gaining political asylum in
    Sweden. In 1987, Rami began using a public access Swedish radio station
    to broadcast Radio Islam, ostensibly a public relations program for
    Sweden's Muslims but in fact a vehicle for unvarnished anti-Semitism.
        Rami has rationalized his bigotry as support for Palestinian
    causes. While he has become a source of embarrassment for serious
    Palestinian activists, Holocaust deniers have unabashedly and
    enthusiastically associated with him. Rami spoke at the 1992 IHR
    conference and has often been praised by Ingrid Rimland, among others.
        Off the air from 1993 to 1995, Rami's program returned in 1996, the
    same year that he established the Radio Islam Web site. From the start,
    Rami's site offered visitors anti-Semitic material in English, French,
    German, Swedish and Norwegian. Early versions of the site described the
    ``so-called `holocaust' '' as a tool used by ``Zionists'' to win
    ``sovereign rights to oppress and vilify other people,'' namely
    Palestinians. These ``Zionists,'' according to Radio Islam, have a
    monopoly over ``information services in the West'' and bribe Western
    politicians to support them in their ``Anti-Arab and anti-Moslem
    racism'' and ``hatred against everything German.''
        Today, visitors to the Radio Islam site are greeted with a
    statement that seems to deny Rami's extremism: ``No hate. No violence.
    Races? Only one Human race.'' Yet his site has become even more bigoted
    than ever and demonstrates the implicit connection between Holocaust
    denial and other forms of anti-Semitism. Radio Islam promotes a myriad
    of anti-Semitic works in addition to those of Holocaust deniers such as
    Robert Faurisson, Greg Raven, John Ball, and Bradley Smith.
        The Radio Islam site continues to portray the Holocaust as part of
    a Jewish conspiracy to draw the world's attention away from ``the
    ongoing Zionist war waged against the peoples of Palestine and the
    Middle East'' and ``Zionism's totalitarian and racist backgrounds.'' To
    support this theory, it provides numerous anti-Semitic texts that
    allege Jewish conspiracies for political domination, such as The
    Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
        Expanding on the anti-Semitism expressed by its denial of the
    Holocaust, Radio Islam equates ``Jewish Racism,'' envisioned as Jewish
    prejudice against Muslims, with ``Jewish `Religion,' '' as outlined by
    the Talmud. Visitors to Radio Islam can read ``The Truth About The
    Talmud'' by Michael A. Hoffman II and Alan R. Critchley, which asserts
    that Jews are impelled, by religious law, to mistreat and attempt to
    dominate non-Jews. The Nature of Zionism by Vladimir Stepin, also
    available at the Radio Islam site, declares that Zionism rests on three
    basic beliefs: that Jews are ``God's chosen people''; that all others
    are ``merely two-legged animals (goys),'' and that ``Jews have both the
    right and the obligation to rule the world.''
        Furthermore, according to Radio Islam, the Jews are not the
    ``chosen people'' for they are not `` `descendants' of the mythic Jews
    of the Bible.'' Rather, today's Jews are ``descended from Mongolians
    and other Asiatic peoples who had adopted `Judaism' as their `religion'
    over 1,000 years ago and had become know as `Jews.' '' Often advanced
    by Identity believers, this theory alleges that most, if not all,
    Ashkenazic Jews descended from the Khazars, an obscure Turkic people
    whose leaders converted to Judaism in the eighth century. While
    Identity adherents employ this theory in order to bolster their
    assertion that Anglo-Saxon whites are actually the biblical Church of
    Israel, Rami uses it to demonstrate that the ancestors of the Jews were
    not from Palestine, implying that Israel has no right to exist.

                          WORLD CHURCH OF THE CREATOR

        In 1973, Ben Klassen announced the birth of the Church of the
    Creator, publishing a 511-page book entitled Nature's Eternal Religion.
    In it, Klassen wrote, ``we completely reject the Judeo-democratic-
    Marxist values of today and supplant them with new and basic values, of
    which race is the foundation.'' Sharing the Identity movement's view
    that non-whites are subhuman ``mud people,'' Klassen believed ``that
    which is good for the White Race is the highest virtue'' and ``that
    which is bad for the White Race is the ultimate sin.'' ``Rahowa,'' an
    acronym for ``Racial Holy War,'' was Klassen's battle cry and remains a
    rallying point for ``Creators'' today. The heart of his ``religious
    creed'' was ``total war'' against Jews and non-whites, ``politically,
    militantly, financially, morally and religiously.''
        Under Klassen's leadership, Church of the Creator grew slowly but
    steadily. That growth stopped abruptly two decades later, in 1992, when
    George Loeb, a Church Reverend, was convicted of first-degree murder
    for killing Harold Mansfield Jr., an African-American Persian Gulf War
    veteran. In 1994, Mansfield's family, represented by the Southern
    Poverty Law Center, won $1 million in damages from Klassen's Church.
    Klassen appears to have anticipated this lawsuit, as he tried to rid
    the group of its assets and committed suicide in 1993.
        Continuing legal problems forced Klassen's successor, Richard
    McCarty, to dissolve the group. In two separate incidents in
    California, police averted potential bombing sprees that were to be
    directed at Jews, Blacks, and homosexuals. In both cases, the would-be
    terrorists were closely affiliated with branches of Klassen's Church.
        Church of the Creator was reborn in 1996 with the emergence of the
    young, charismatic Matt Hale as its leader. Following Hale's ascension
    as Pontifex Maximus (an ancient Roman title designated for the Church's
    supreme leader), the Church of the Creator became known as World Church
    of the Creator. Aggressive pamphleteering ensued; new local chapters
    were created, and membership has grown. Since Hale's ascension,
    Creators have been arrested in Florida for attacking an African-
    American boy and his father.
        Additionally, WCOTC spawned dozens of sites on the World Wide Web,
    probably because most of its members are young and computer-literate.
    While Klassen was in his 70's when he led the Church, Hale is in his
    20's, and he has taken his Church onto the Web with a vengeance.
        At the group's main site, a document entitled ``Expanding
    Creativity on the Net'' (referring to the racist, anti-Semitic
    ``religion'' practiced by WCOTC) outlines Hale's plan for an ``Internet
    Blitzkrieg.'' Calling the WCOTC central site ``one of the finest White
    Power pages out there,'' Hale asserts that the Internet ``has the
    potential to reach millions of White People with our message and we
    need to act on that immediately.''
        ``We call on all Creators and White Racial Comrades to go to
    [Internet discussion groups] and debate and recruit with NEW people,''
    he declares, ``post our URL everywhere, as soon as possible.''
        Updated frequently, the WCOTC Home Page features books for sale,
    articles about WCOTC, editorials by Hale from The Struggle newsletter,
    and Hale's weekly ``Voice of The Struggle'' audio-on-demand broadcasts.
    The site makes WCOTC membership easy, providing a membership form,
    dozens of ``contact points'' in the United States, and a lengthy
    membership manual that covers topics from a WCOTC ``Wedding Ceremony''
    to ``Dealing with Law Enforcement.''
        According to this manual, ``the inferior mud races are our deadly
    enemies, and the most dangerous of all is the Jewish race.'' Creators
    are urged to ``relentlessly expand the White Race, and keep shrinking
    our enemies.'' Also spreading anti-Semitism, the ``Jew Watch'' section
    of the site contains the full text of Henry Ford's hate tract The
    International Jew. The online version of FACTS That the Government and
    the Media Don't Want You to Know, a pamphlet widely distributed by
    WCOTC, claims that Jews control the media, promotes the myth of a
    ``Kosher Food Tax,'' and reprints spurious anti-Semitic documents
    purportedly penned by Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.
        Connected in a ``Creator Webring'' (which links WCOTC sites, one to
    the next, in a virtual circle), the World Church subsidiary sites serve
    a variety of purposes, though they share significant content with the
    group's main site. Many World Church sites have been housed at
    WCOTC.COM, which claims to be ``dedicated to hosting all the WCOTC Web
    Pages all over the White World.''
        A formerly active World Church site highlights WCOTC's aggressive
    recruiting techniques: World Church of the Creator Kids! With a site
    like this, easily accessible to young Web surfers, the danger to
    impressionable youngsters posed by hate's reach on the World Wide Web
    becomes evident. The WCOTC Kids! site (subtitled ``Creativity for
    Children!'') utilized enticing graphics to lure young Web users. For
    instance, the site posted a picture of a white family next to the
    phrase, ``The purpose of making this page is to help the younger
    members of the White Race understand our fight.'' While many of the
    documents at the site were copied directly from the WCOTC membership
    manual, one--``What It Means To Be A Creator''--is an adaptation of a
    membership manual piece, ``The Essence of a Creator.'' The children's
    version of this hateful tract simplified and tones down its language,
    making its racist ideology easier for children to understand.
        Also available at the Kids! site were ``Coloring Pages'' and
    ``Crossword Puzzles.'' Children were urged to ``have fun'' solving
    these puzzles while helping ``educate'' themselves ``in the Creed of
    Creativity.'' Kids are encouraged to E-mail the site so that Creators
    can ``answer any questions'' they might have about the crosswords. It
    is suggested that youngsters print out and color illustrations bearing
    calligraphic, medieval designs, apparently upheld by WCOTC as artistic
    accomplishments of the ``white race.''
        At the White Berets Web site, a drawing of white men holding guns
    and a WCOTC flag is set against a green, camouflage background. It
    describes the Church's ``security legions,'' composed of ``White
    Berets'' and ``White Rangers,'' who are charged with providing
    ``security services for members and Church property.'' Though these
    uniformed militants are urged to ``abide by the law of the land,'' they
    are instructed to own a handgun, practice ``martial arts,'' and school
    themselves in ``police communications.''
        The White Berets site also links to a ``Frequently Asked
    Questions'' pamphlet about racist Skinheads (violent, shaven-headed
    youths). In fact, the ``White Berets'' pictured at the site are
    themselves racist skinheads: they have shaved heads, wear suspenders,
    and sport combat boots. WCOTC has courted racist skinheads since the
    1980's, a few WCOTC sites are specifically designed to target that
    element of the white supremacist ``movement.''
        Visitors must click ``OK'' in a window that declares ``Whites
    Only'' before entering the Skinheads of Racial Holy War site, where
    they are greeted by a drawing of a giant WCOTC ``White Beret'' crushing
    a tiny, Hasidic Jew in his closed fist. The Web site for the SS
    Bootboys, who are referred to as the WCOTC ``Church Band,'' also
    reflects a skinhead theme. This group of skinhead musicians, which has
    been active in the San Francisco area since the mid-1990's, plays what
    it calls ``WP metal'' [white power heavy metal music]. In addition to
    racist and anti-Semitic articles by William Pierce and Don Black, the
    SS Bootboys site provides Web users with audio recordings of the
    group's songs to download, such as ``Coon'' and ``White Patriot.''
        Along with these WCOTC skinhead sites, Resistance Records, a racist
    Skinhead rock-and-roll record label, has long had a site on the Web.
    Resistance was founded by three Church members, and its former
    president, George Eric Hawthorne, has been described as ``a top honcho
    in the Church of the Creator.'' While the Resistance Records site was
    one of the first racist skinhead sites on the Web, there are now dozens
    of sites that promote skinheads and their hate-filled brand of rock
    music.

                                  RACIST ROCK

        The skinhead phenomenon originated in the early 1970's, when groups
    of menacing-looking, shaved-head, tattooed youths in combat boots
    appeared on the streets of England. For some, the racist and
    chauvinistic attitudes held by these gangs developed into a crude form
    of Nazism with a penchant for violence, exemplified by frequent,
    racially motivated attacks on Asian immigrants (``Paki-bashing'') and
    homosexuals (``fag-bashing'').
        In the years that followed, the Skinhead movement spread from
    England to the Continent and beyond. Racist Skinheads are found today
    in almost every industrialized country whose majority population is of
    European stock, though not all Skinheads are racists. Skinheads are
    almost uniformly white youths in their teens and twenties, who respond
    to the movement's seductive sense of strength, group belonging and
    superiority over others.
        Generally, neo-Nazi Skinheads' views have varied. Some believe in
    orthodox Nazi ideology, while others adhere to a mixture of racism,
    populism, ethnocentrism and ultranationalist chauvinism, along with a
    hodgepodge of Nazi-like attitudes.
        Their numbers have gown substantially since Neo-Nazi Skinheads
    first appeared in the United States during the mid-1980's. Predictably,
    this growth has been matched by violence: since 1987, racist Skinheads
    have committed at least 43 murders in the United States as well as
    thousands of lesser crimes such as beatings, stabbings, shootings,
    thefts, and synagogue desecrations. In addition to World Church of the
    Creator, Skinheads in the U.S. have also linked up with other
    established hate groups, such as Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan, and
    Tom Metzger's White Aryan Resistance (WAR). On November 12, 1988, three
    members of a skinhead gang in Portland, Oregon, killed an Ethiopian
    immigrant, Mulugeta Seraw. In a suit brought by the Southern Poverty
    Law Center and ADL, it was later shown that Metzger and his son John
    had incited these Skinheads to murder Seraw. A jury awarded Seraw's
    family $12.5 million in damages, one of the largest civil verdicts of
    its kind in U.S. history.
        A major aspect of Skinhead life is devotion to bands that play
    ``oi'' white power music, a hard-driving brand of rock and roll whose
    lyrics pound home a message of bigotry and violence. Music is the
    Skinhead movement's main propaganda weapon and its chief means of
    attracting young recruits. Skinhead use of the Internet has almost
    exclusively focused on racist music. Bigotry-laced hard rock and the
    Internet have proved a natural match in being used by white
    supremacists trying to capture the minds of youngsters.
        Bigoted music companies sell their hateful music on the Web. The
    Tri-State Terror Web site peddles Aryan vs. Alien by the group Mudoven,
    which features a cover photo depicting corpses from Nazi concentration
    camps. According to that site, over 900 copies of this release have
    already been sold. Also available there are Racially Motivated Violence
    by Angry Aryans and Murder Squad by Blue-Eyed Devils, which displays a
    photo portraying three lynched Jews on its cover.
        The huge Plunder and Pillage Web site serves as two fans' tribute
    to white power music. These lovers of racist rock, who go by the names
    ``Plunder'' and ``Pillage,'' give their fellow fans the latest news on
    new releases and concert appearances of Skinhead bands; reviews of the
    latest white power records; reports on recent concerts; lyrics from
    various albums and transcripts of their interviews with over a dozen
    music groups. The Plunder and Pillage site also provides racist rockers
    a historical perspective in ``Oi! The Classics,'' which features
    reviews of and sound clips from early ``oi'' albums that have ``earned
    a spot in every skinhead's record collection.''
        The Skinhead who maintains The White Pride Network registered his
    site under Ian Stuart's name in order to hide his identity. At his
    site, he goes by the name ``Micetrap.'' Though he cloaks himself with a
    pseudonym, Micetrap doesn't hide his hateful views. Claiming to ``have
    been involved in the skinhead movement for many years,'' Micetrap
    declares the Holocaust ``the biggest financial scam in history'' and
    glorifies the Skinhead movement as ``a sub-culture built for pissed off
    Pro-White youth to rebel against the ZOG system.''
        Formerly known as Whitepower, The White Pride Network features
    Micetrap's reviews of the latest racist rock records and houses the
    page for ``Patriot Video Services,'' which stocks video tapes of white
    power bands performing. In addition to music-oriented pages, The White
    Pride Network pays tribute to Hitler; posts some of William Pierce's
    allegations of Jewish media control, and contains a ``Skinhead Cyber
    Tattoo Parlor,'' which pictures racist designs etched in ink on
    Skinheads' arms, backs, and skulls. Micetrap also encourages his
    supporters to become active, offering to sell them E-mail addresses and
    space for Web sites, connecting them with each other in his ``Personal
    Ads & Pen Pals'' section, and giving them advice on how to use Internet
    Relay Chat (IRC).
        Though not a Skinhead, Alex Curtis also uses the Internet as a tool
    to bring together and motivate the ``youth of the Aryan Struggle.''
    Along with racist Skinheads and WCOTC devotees, Curtis, who is still in
    his mid 20's, represents the new, young face of white supremacy on the
    Web.

                                  ALEX CURTIS

        Alex James Curtis, an anti-Semitic and racist activist based in San
    Diego, is a rising star among bigots on the Web. Originator of the
    Lemon Grove (San Diego) Ku Klux Klan, Curtis has described himself as a
    history student at San Diego State University.
        The Nationalist Observer Web site is the online version of the
    print publication of the same name, which was founded by Curtis in
    1996. Curtis is the editor of this online edition, posting his ``Lead
    Editorials'' from the print edition as well as content available
    exclusively online. Curtis also includes transcripts of his telephone
    hotline message; an archive of hateful articles by propagandists such
    as David Lane of The Order and neo-Nazi Matt Koehl, and a catalog of
    racist audio and video tapes. Additionally, readers can find Curtis'
    ``White Power Manual,'' which suggests white supremacist propagandizing
    strategies and offers assistance to aspiring hatemongers.
        Curtis believes Jews have corrupted the white race, using the media
    to convert whites into ``comfort-loving cowards'' who ``sit passively''
    as Jews and minorities seize power. His Nationalist Observer ``Tribute
    to Jewry'' consists of a picture of ``Jew York City'' being destroyed
    by an atomic bomb under the caption ``The quickest way to exterminate 6
    million vermin!''
        Curtis thinks the answer to whites' problems is separatism.
    ``Racial separation seeks the preservation of life, whereas racial
    integration is the realization of the death of peoples,'' he writes.
    According to Curtis, white supremacists should not regard themselves as
    U.S. citizens, but as members of the white race who should concentrate
    on ``moving into separatist areas or assisting in dismantling the
    system.'' He envisions a ``race-centered'' state in which ``citizenship
    and residency will be explicitly stated as restricted to those of pure
    White ancestry.''
        He feels that only the elite of the white supremacist movement
    should participate in creating this state. ``We believe the Aryan
    struggle to be an elite one,'' Curtis writes on the Nationalist
    Observer Home Page. ``We don't promote democratic or mass appeals. We
    support the unity of our movement and the revolutionizing of our spirit
    into a combined force to take back control of our Race's destiny, by
    any means necessary.''
        Unity among white supremacists is central to Curtis' vision. He
    sees many different white supremacist movements as part of a single
    ``White Nation.'' ``We go by names such as White nationalists, White
    separatists, Skinheads, National Socialists, Ku Klux Klansmen, and
    Identity Christians, or others,'' Curtis writes, ``but these people who
    put White Racial survival as their highest priority are members of the
    White Nation.''

                               HOMOPHOBIA ONLINE

        Many racist and anti-Semitic Web sites also contain anti-gay
    propaganda, but some Web pages, in particular C.N.G. (Cyber
    Nationalists Group) and S.T.R.A.I.G.H.T (Society To Remove All Immoral
    Godless Homosexual Trash), focus their hatred primarily on gays and
    lesbians. Perhaps the most vile and best-known anti-gay Web site is God
    Hates Fags, which is maintained by Benjamin Phelps, grandson and
    compatriot of Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) leader Fred Phelps.
        Incorporated May 15, 1967 as a not-for-profit organization adhering
    to Calvinistic Baptist beliefs, WBC (which is located in Topeka,
    Kansas) is well-known for picketing the funerals of AIDS victims and
    others it perceives as homosexual or connected to homosexuality. God
    Hates Fags contains an archive of photos depicting Fred Phelps and his
    supporters picketing, carrying signs bearing slogans such as ``No Fags
    in Heaven''; ``Thank God for AIDS,'' and ``2 Gay Rights: AIDS and
    Hell.'' According to God Hates Fags, WBC has ``conducted some 10,000
    such demonstrations during the last five years at homosexual parades
    and other events,'' including the funeral of slain University of
    Wyoming student Matthew Shepard.
        The site reprints dozens of flyers promoting its activities,
    including a few regarding Shepard. One states:

            Matt Shepard now believes the Bible. He checked into Hell Oct.
            12 [1998] where the worm that eats on him never dies and the
            fire is never quenched * * * Not the wealth of the world, nor
            an act of Congress, nor a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, nor
            all the prayers of mankind, nor any power on earth--can buy
            Matt Shepard a drop of water to cool his tongue or ease his
            pain--or ease his sentence a day short of eternity.

        Citing the Book of Romans, WBC asserts that the Bible deems gays
    and anyone who supports them ``worthy of death.'' The group believes
    the activities of gays and their supporters encourage God's anger
    against humankind. Addressing homosexuals, WBC states, ``it was your
    ilk who brought destruction on Sodom, and it will be your ilk who fuels
    God's wrath to the point that there will be no remedy.''
        Reflecting a conspiracy-oriented outlook, WBC declares that gays
    have an ``agenda'' they are trying to impose on an unsuspecting public.
    This agenda involves ``desensitizing the public,'' convincing people
    ``to affirm their filthy lifestyle,'' and turning them away from
    Christianity. WBC believes, homosexuality is no longer classified as a
    mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association only because
    gays used ``guerrilla theater tactics'' at that group's convention for
    two successive years. WBC also believes that gays ``infiltrate the
    house of God to try to make themselves look holy,'' and calls religious
    congregations that welcome gay members, ordain gay ministers, or
    perform gay marriages, ``fag churches.''
        While WBC's anti-gay activities have received much press coverage,
    its anti-Semitism has gone largely unnoticed. According to God Hates
    Fags,

            The only true Jews are Christians. The rest of the people who
            claim to be Jews aren't, and they are nothing more than
            typical, impenitent sinners, who have no Lamb. As evidence of
            their apostacy [sic], the vast majority of Jews support fags.

        In 1995, WBC picketed a synagogue in Kansas because it was holding
    a commemoration for victims of the Holocaust, including homosexuals.
          ``militias'' and ``common law'' courts: ``patriots'' online
        In mid-1994, bands of armed right-wing militants calling themselves
    ``militias'' began to appear in several states. Often spouting mistaken
    interpretations of early American history to justify their actions,
    militia members are united in their obsession with ``protecting''
    Americans' Constitutional rights, which they claim the Federal
    government has trampled. A variety of activists make up the militia
    movement. There are those militia adherents who merely discuss the
    Constitution and perceived Federal intrusions. Others trade conspiracy
    theories at gun shows. At the extreme are members of heavily armed
    paramilitary units.
        ``Common law court'' adherents declare themselves exempt from the
    laws of the United States. Using pseudo-legal theories based on
    selective--and often bizarre--interpretations of the Bible, the Magna
    Carta, state and Federal court decisions, and the U.S. and state
    constitutions, these activists present a serious threat to the rule of
    law by using phony liens, money orders, and documents in an attempt to
    defy the authority of legitimate courts.
        Militia activists and common law court adherents refer to
    themselves as ``patriots.'' Like anti-Semites and racists, these
    ``patriots'' have a fondness for historical distortions and conspiracy
    theories (such as the contention that the Federal Reserve runs the
    United States). Elements of overt anti-Semitism and racism have
    frequently surfaced in the ``patriot'' movement, which has been
    inspired by the activities of the Identity group Posse Comitatus.
        Though many ``patriots'' deny the movement's racial and religious
    bigotry, its intolerance is apparent on the Web. For instance, though
    the Patriot Knowledge Base Web site states that ``the enemy'' is ``not
    the Jewish masses,'' it posts the Protocols of the Learned Elders of
    Zion, one of the world's most widely circulated anti-Semitic works.
    Similarly, the U.S.A. The Republic page links to the vicious Identity
    site God's Order Affirmed in Love while claiming ``We Are Not Anti-
    Semitic.''
        Even though militia membership dwindled following the Oklahoma City
    bombing in 1995, militia members continue to plan bombings and
    robberies. Meanwhile, new militia-oriented Web sites continue to
    appear. Likewise, despite the fact that legitimate authorities have
    cracked down on unlawful common law court activities, common law court
    advocates persist in threatening violence and common law Web sites are
    still active. Currently, there are more than a hundred ``patriot''
    sites on the Web.
        Common law Web sites often post legal jargon out of context and
    link to reputable law sources, leading readers to misinterpret actual
    law. For instance, Dr. Tavel's Self-Help Legal Clinic, called ``The
    Disneyland of the web for patriots and freedom fighters!'' by the
    extremist publication Spotlight, links to online records of state and
    Federal rules, procedures, and laws. Visitors are encouraged to
    interpret this information based on fallacious common law principles
    and then use it in a court of law, even when under oath as part of a
    jury. The Legal Clinic posts a document entitled ``The Citizens Rule
    Book--Jury Handbook,'' which encourages jurors to judge cases based on
    their own understanding of ``natural, God-given, Common or
    Constitutional Law'':

            You--as a juror--armed merely with the knowledge of what a
            COMMON LAW JURY really is and what your common law rights,
            powers and duties really are, can do more to re-establish
            ``liberty and justice for all'' in this State and ultimately
            throughout all of the United States than all our Senators and
            Representatives put together. WHY? Because even without the
            concurrence of all of your fellow jurors, in a criminal trial,
            you, with your single vote of ``NOT GUILTY'' can nullify every
            rule of ``law'' that is not in accordance with the principles
            of natural, God-given, Common or Constitutional Law.

        Numerous common law sites also promote anti-government activists as
    ``sovereign citizens'' answerable only to God and thus immune from
    state or Federal jurisdiction. Some offer a racist twist to this
    formulation, arguing that there are two classes of citizens:
    ``Sovereign'' white citizens, whose rights are God-given, and
    ``Fourteenth Amendment'' citizens, non-whites whose citizenship is
    granted only by the Fourteenth Amendment.
        Militia Web sites express paranoid fantasies about a power-hungry
    government trying to impose tyranny on its citizens, a government often
    portrayed as a pawn of the United Nations or the vaguely defined ``New
    World Order.'' False depictions of militia members as the true
    defenders of liberty and democracy abound.
        For instance, one Militia of Montana Web site declares that group
    ``an educational organization dedicated to the preservation of the
    freedoms of ALL Citizens of the State of Montana and of the United
    States of America.'' Yet the militia held ``the tyranny of a run-away,
    out of control government'' responsible for usurping those freedoms.
        The ``Articles of the Alliance Of the Southeastern States Militia''
    claim that group's members ``stand against all enemies of the
    Constitution and Bill of Rights, both foreign and domestic.'' The group
    appears to consider the government one of these ``enemies'': it pledges
    to actively resist whatever it feels constitutes ``unconstitutional use
    of our armed forces * * * against the America people'' and promises to
    ``fight the New World Order, and any of its proponents, to the bitter
    end.''
        Many militia Web sites provide resources to help their readers
    become more active. For example, the Citizen Soldier Web site contains
    a ``Militia/Survivalist'' post exchange page, which links to the Web
    sites of weapons suppliers, as well as military manuals that cover
    topics including ``combat training.'' The Minnesota Minutemen Militia
    site allows supporters to ``enlist'' online by filling out a simple
    form. The American Patriot Network and California Militia Web sites,
    among others, feature real-time chat rooms in which ``patriots'' can
    communicate with each other, and the United States Theatre Command Web
    site maintains the ``Eagleflight'' electronic mailing list, which often
    contains messages urging violent action from various militia members
    across the nation.
        Militia and common law court propagandists on the Internet have
    openly expressed sympathy for ``patriot'' activists on trial for
    committing, or planning to commit, acts of violence. These sites lend
    credence to the anti-government movement by focusing on those who have
    actually come face to face with the government. Militia and common law
    Web sites have provided biased accounts of trial proceedings involving
    North American Militia of Southwest Michigan member Bradford Metcalf
    and the Montana Freemen, among others.
        On November 18, 1998, members of the Montana Freemen, a group of
    common law court adherents notorious for their 81-day standoff with the
    FBI in 1996, were convicted on criminal charges including bank and mail
    fraud and armed robbery. During the trials that led to these
    convictions, the Fully Informed Grand Jurors Alliance (FIGJA) Web site,
    maintained by Georgia common law guru Elder Burk Hale and former
    Militia of Montana member Kamala Susan, kept Web users abreast of the
    latest happenings ``at the request of family and friends of the
    `Freemen' prisoners.'' Erroneously citing laws in support of the
    Freemen's cause, Hale posted photos of Freeman Ralph Clark, who he
    alleges was ``tortured'' by his jailers, as well as ``Common Law
    Affidavits'' written by other incarcerated Freemen.
        On the same day as the Freemen decision, Bradford Metcalf was
    convicted of conspiring to possess machine guns; threatening to assault
    and murder Federal employees, and plotting to damage and destroy
    Federal buildings using explosives. As with the Freemen case, anti-
    government Web sites, such as Patriots Under Siege and Caged Patriots:
    An American Disgrace, kept militia sympathizers updated on the trial's
    progress and voiced support for its defendant.
        In April 1996, Oklahoma Constitutional Militia leader Ray Lampley,
    his wife, Cecilia, and their friend John Baird were convicted of
    plotting to bomb ADL's Houston office, the Southern Poverty Law Center
    in Alabama, welfare offices, abortion clinics, and gay bars. Also the
    leader of the Universal Church of God in Hanna, Oklahoma, Ray Lampley
    has expressed intensely anti-Semitic and anti-government views and
    visited Elohim City, an encampment on the Oklahoma-Arkansas border
    associated with the Identity movement.
        Writing on the Web about the Lampley trial, Indiana-based militia
    figure Linda Thompson declared that the trials of Lampley and other
    militia figures were fixed by what she sees as a corrupt Federal
    government that pays informants to help convict anti-government
    activists:

            At the defense table, the jury will see the ``nut'' or target
            and his ``co-conspirators'' and the jury will hear the babbling
            and crazy ``confidential'' tapes played, as they look at the
            ``nut'' and his ``friends'' while the ``good-guy informant''
            tells them how all these folks were planning to do nasty
            terrible things. The ``good-guy informant'' of course will be
            backed up by ``good-guy law enforcement'' who will parade a lot
            of evidence, whether it is relevant or not, to support this
            public bastion of integrity, their informant, emphasizing how
            good his work was. The Ray Lampley case is a good example of
            this that most are familiar with.

        Two weeks prior to his arrest, Ray Lampley told a group in Tulsa,
    ``If you want to have freedom in this country, you are going to have to
    shed somebody's blood for it.'' He also suggested that he had been
    attempting to acquire bomb-making materials. ``I only wanted one bag
    [of ammonium nitrate fertilizer,]'' he said, ``because I realized that
    one bag is enough to blow up several Federal buildings if you know the
    right thing.''
        Where did Lampley learn the ``right thing'' that told him ``one bag
    is enough'' to blow up several buildings? According to law enforcement
    authorities, he likely retrieved this information from bomb-making
    manuals. Several of these are available on the Internet.
                              bomb-making formulas
        In November 1995, Ray Lampley, Cecilia Lampley, and John Baird
    began construction of a bomb with the help of the bomb-making manual
    entitled ``Homemade C-4.'' When the FBI arrested the conspirators, law
    enforcement agents recovered the bomb-making manuals Anarchist's
    Cookbook and Homemade Weapons, in addition to the ``Homemade C-4''
    text, from the Lampley residence.
        Many of these bomb-making instructions are available online.
    Numerous pages devoted to terror manuals are currently present on the
    Web, and explosives enthusiasts regularly post information at USENET
    newsgroups.
        Additionally, some white supremacist sites, such as Death 2 ZOG
    (Zionist Occupation Government), have posted bomb-making instructions.
    Covered with Nazi and World Church of the Creator symbols, this site
    urged its readers to ``Kill the jew [sic] pig before it's too late''
    and proclaimed its support for ``black on black violence.'' Death 2 ZOG
    contains downloadable copies of bomb-making manuals such as ``Jolly
    Roger Cookbook,'' ``The Big Book of Mischief,'' and ``Anarchy
    Cookbook.''
        William Powell's legendary Anarchist's Cookbook, first published in
    1971, has inspired many Web pages. Though Powell's book has not been
    available on the Web in its entirety, a number of Web pages contain
    works named after it, such as ``The Anarchist Cookbook IV,'' otherwise
    known as the BHU Pyrotechnics Cookbook. Explosive-related sections of
    this document, which is widely available on the Web, include ``Making
    Plastic Explosives,'' ``Napalm,'' and ``Revised Pipe Bombs 4.14.''
    ``The Anarchy Cookbook IV'' also contains instructive information about
    lock picking, computer ``hacking,'' and robbing Automated Teller
    Machines.
        Many versions of another popular online manual, the Terrorist's
    Handbook, include a disclaimer that warns, ``don't try anything you
    find in this document!!! Many of the instructions doesn't [sic] even
    work.'' Yet these directions are posted nonetheless, instructing
    readers how to construct ``High Order Explosives'' such as ``Ammonium
    Nitrate,'' ``Dynamite,'' and ``TNT'' as well as ``Molotov Cocktails,''
    ``Phone Bombs,'' and other destructive devices. Significantly, this
    Handbook also includes a ``Checklist for Raids on Labs,'' concluding
    that ``in the end, the serious terrorist would probably realize that if
    he/she wishes to make a truly useful explosive, he or she will have to
    steal the chemicals to make the explosive from a lab.''
        According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Federal
    agents investigating at least 30 bombings and four attempted bombings
    between 1985 and June 1996 recovered bomb-making literature that the
    suspects had obtained from the Internet. In these investigations, the
    possession of bomb-making literature has been taken by law enforcement
    authorities as strong circumstantial evidence that this literature has
    been used to plan crimes.
        Like other extremist material on the Internet, bomb-making manuals
    are readily accessible to children. In fact, these tracts have already
    been accessed by eager, impressionable youngsters. The Washington Post
    has described discussions among 14-year-olds about ``which propellants
    are best to use, which Web sites have the best recipes and whether tin
    or aluminum soda cans make better bomb casings.'' Furthermore, children
    have used recipes found on the Web to create and detonate bombs. For
    example, two 15-year-old boys from Orem, Utah, landed in a juvenile-
    detention center after they constructed a pipe bomb using online
    instructions. Similarly, three high school students in Ogden, Utah, who
    ignited a bomb at a Jehovah's Witnesses church later told police they
    learned how to make the device from a Web page devoted to the
    Anarchists Cookbook.

                       RESPONDING TO HATE ON THE INTERNET

        As an organization dedicated to the eradication of bigotry in all
    its forms, the Anti-Defamation League has long been concerned about the
    propagation of racism, anti-Semitism, and prejudice on the Internet.
    After all, this medium allows extremists easy access to a potential
    audience of millions. In numerous reports, the League has detailed the
    ways bigots are using the Internet to promote and recruit for their
    cause, communicate more easily and cheaply and reach new audiences--
    particularly the young.
        Practically and legally, combating online extremism is enormously
    difficult. The First Amendment's protection of free speech shields most
    extremist propaganda, and Internet Service Providers, the private
    companies that host most extremist sites, may freely choose whether to
    house these sites or not. When providers choose not to host hateful
    sites, these sites migrate easily to the computers of services without
    such restrictions. Furthermore, the size of the Web, which contains
    hundreds of millions of distinct pages, complicates efforts to identify
    extremist material. Hundreds if not thousands of Web pages, some of
    which are not listed by search engines, contain bomb-making formulas.
        What follows are answers to 10 frequently asked questions regarding
    regulation of hate on the Internet.

        Why can't the government ban use of the Internet to spread hateful
    and racist ideology in the United States?

        The Internet is probably the greatest forum for the exchange of
    ideas that the world has ever seen. It operates across national
    borders, and efforts by the international community or any one
    government to regulate speech on the Internet would be virtually
    impossible, both technologically and legally.
        In the United States, the First Amendment to the Constitution
    guarantees the right of freedom of speech to all Americans, even those
    whose opinions are reprehensible. In a number of recent decisions, the
    Supreme Court has reaffirmed that our government may not regulate the
    content of Internet speech to an extent greater than it may regulate
    speech in more traditional areas of expression such as the print media,
    the broadcast media, or the public square. While courts may take into
    account the Internet's vast reach and accessibility, they must still
    approach attempts to censor or regulate speech online from a
    traditional constitutional framework.

        What kind of hate speech on the Internet is not protected by the
    First Amendment?

        Internet speech that is merely critical, annoying, offensive, or
    demeaning enjoys constitutional protection. However, the First
    Amendment does not provide a shield for libelous speech or copyright
    infringement, nor does it protect certain speech that threatens or
    harasses other people. For example, an E-mail or a posting on a Web
    site that expresses a clear intention or threat by its writer to commit
    an unlawful act against another specific person is likely to be
    actionable under criminal law. Persistent or pernicious harassment
    aimed at a specific individual is not protected if it inflicts or
    intends to inflict emotional or physical harm. To rise to this level,
    harassment on the Internet would have to consist of a ``course of
    conduct'' rather than a single isolated instance. A difficulty in
    enforcing laws against harassment is the ease of anonymous
    communication on the Internet. Using a service that provides almost-
    complete anonymity, a bigot may repeatedly E-mail his victim without
    being readily identified.
        Blanket statements expressing hatred of an ethnic, racial, or
    religious nature are protected by the First Amendment, even if those
    statements mention individual people and even if they cause distress in
    those individuals. Similarly, denial of the Holocaust--though
    abhorrent--is almost never actionable under American law. The
    Constitution protects the vast majority of extremist Web sites that
    disseminate racist or anti-Semitic propaganda.

        Has anyone ever been successfully prosecuted in the United States
    for sending racist threats via E-mail?

        There is legal precedent for such a prosecution. In 1998, a former
    student was sentenced to one year in prison for sending E-mail death
    threats to 60 Asian-American students at the University of California,
    Irvine. His E-mail was signed ``Asian hater'' and threatened that he
    would ``make it my life career [sic] to find and kill everyone one
    [sic] of you personally.'' That same year, another California man pled
    guilty to Federal civil rights charges after he sent racist E-mail
    threats to dozens of Latinos throughout the country.

        Has anyone ever been held liable in the United States for
    encouraging acts of violence on the World Wide Web?

        Yes. In 1999, a coalition of groups opposed to abortion was ordered
    to pay over $100 million in damages for providing information for a Web
    site called ``Nuremberg Files'' which posed a threat to the safety of a
    number of doctors and clinic workers who perform abortions. The site
    posted photos of abortion providers, their home addresses, license
    plate numbers, and the names of their spouses and children. In three
    instances, after a doctor listed on the site was murdered, a line was
    drawn through his name. Although the site fell short of explicitly
    calling for assault on doctors, the jury found that the information it
    contained amounted to a real threat of bodily harm.

        Can hate crimes laws be used against hate on the Internet?

        If a bigot's use of the Internet rises to the level of criminal
    conduct, it may subject the perpetrator to an enhanced sentence under a
    state's hate crimes law. Currently, 40 states and the District of
    Columbia have such laws in place. The criminal's sentence may be more
    severe if the prosecution can prove that he or she intentionally
    selected the victim based on the victim's race, nationality, religion,
    gender, or sexual orientation. However, these laws do not apply to
    conduct or speech protected by the First Amendment.

        May commercial Internet Service Providers (ISP's) prevent the use
    of their services by extremists?

        Yes. Commercial ISP's, such as America Online (AOL), may
    voluntarily agree to prohibit users from sending racist or bigoted
    messages over their services. Such prohibitions do not implicate First
    Amendment rights because they are entered into through private
    contracts and do not involve government action in any way.
        Once an ISP promulgates such regulations, it must monitor the use
    of its service to ensure that the regulations are followed. If a
    violation does occur, the ISP should, as a contractual matter, take
    action to prevent it from happening again. For example, if a
    participant in a chat room engages in racist speech in violation of the
    ``terms of service'' of the ISP, his account could be cancelled, or he
    could be forbidden from using the chat room in the future. ISP's should
    encourage users to report suspected violations to company
    representatives. The effectiveness of this remedy is limited, however.
    Any subscriber to an ISP who loses his or her account for violating
    that ISP's regulations may resume propagating hate by subsequently
    signing up with any of the dozens of more permissive ISP's in the
    marketplace.

        May universities prevent the use of their computer services for the
    promotion of extremist views?

        Because private universities are not agents of the government, they
    may forbid users from engaging in offensive speech using university
    equipment or university services. Public universities, as agents of the
    government, must follow the First Amendment's prohibition against
    speech restrictions based on content or viewpoint.
        Nonetheless, public universities may promulgate content-neutral
    regulations that effectively prevent the use of school facilities or
    services by extremists. For example, a university may limit use of its
    computers and server to academic activities only. This would likely
    prevent a student from creating a racist Web site for propaganda
    purposes or from sending racist E-mail from his student E-mail account.
    One such policy--at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana--
    stipulates that its computer services are ``provided in support of the
    educational, research and public service missions of the University and
    its use must be limited to those purposes.'' Universities depend on an
    atmosphere of academic freedom and uninhibited expression. Any decision
    to limit speech on a university campus--even speech in cyberspace--will
    inevitably affect this ideal. College administrators should confer with
    representatives from both the faculty and student body when
    implementing such policies.

        How does the law in foreign countries differ from American law
    regarding hate on the Internet? Can an American citizen be subject to
    criminal charges abroad for sending or posting material that is illegal
    in other countries?

        In most countries, hate speech does not receive the same
    constitutional protection as it does in the United States. In Germany,
    for example, it is illegal to promote Nazi ideology. In many European
    countries, it is illegal to deny the reality of the Holocaust.
    Authorities in Denmark, France, Britain, Germany, and Canada have
    brought charges for crimes involving hate speech on the Internet.
        While national borders have little meaning in cyberspace, Internet
    users who export material that is illegal in some foreign countries may
    be subject to prosecution under certain circumstances. An American
    citizen who posts material on the Internet that is illegal in a foreign
    country could be prosecuted if he subjected himself to the jurisdiction
    of that country or of another country whose extradition laws would
    allow for his arrest and deportation. However, under American law, the
    United States will not extradite a person for engaging in a
    constitutionally protected activity even if that activity violates a
    criminal law elsewhere.

        What are Internet ``filters'' and when is their use appropriate?

        Filters are software that can be installed along with a Web browser
    to block access to certain Web sites that contain inappropriate or
    offensive material. Parents may choose to install filters on their
    children's computers in order to prevent them from viewing sites that
    contain pornography or other problematic material. ADL has developed a
    filter (ADL HateFilterTM) that blocks access to Web sites
    that advocate hatred, bigotry, or violence towards Jews or other groups
    on the basis of their religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or
    other immutable characteristics. HateFilterTM, which can be
    downloaded from ADL's Web site, contains a ``redirect'' feature which
    offers users who try to access a blocked site the chance to link
    directly to related ADL educational material. The voluntary use of
    filtering software in private institutions or by parents in the home
    does not violate the First Amendment because such use involves no
    government action. There are also some commercially marketed filters
    that focus on offensive words and phrases. Such filters, which are not
    site-based, are designed primarily to screen out obscene and
    pornographic material.

        May public schools and public libraries install filters on computer
    equipment available for public use?

        The use of filters by public institutions, such as schools and
    libraries, has become a hotly contested issue that remains unresolved.
    At least one Federal court has ruled that a local library board may not
    require the use of filtering software on all library Internet computer
    terminals. A possible compromise for public libraries with multiple
    computers would be to allow unrestricted Internet use for adults, but
    to provide only supervised access for children.
        Courts have not ruled on the constitutionality of hate speech
    filters on public school library computers. However, given the broad
    free speech rights afforded to students by the First Amendment, it is
    unlikely that courts would allow school libraries to require filters on
    all computers available for student use.

        The Chairman. We will finish with you, Mr. Roy, and then I
    will have a few questions for you.

                    STATEMENT OF JOSEPH T. ROY, SR.

        Mr. Roy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of the Southern
    Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, I want to thank the
    committee for inviting us here today. My name is Joseph Roy. I
    am Director of the Intelligence Project at the Center.
        Basically, we are a non-profit, private law firm out of
    Montgomery that for the last 20 years has tracked these hate
    organizations and reported on them. We have developed the
    largest database file in the country which houses hundreds of
    thousands of activities, identification of members,
    photographs, news reports, court records, and other items of
    interest to the law enforcement community.
        With this information, we develop trends, write stories
    about who is involved in the movement, where they are from,
    what they believe, and what their motivations are. And we
    publish this four times a year and send it out free to about
    50,000 law enforcement agencies and other people.
        Part of the trend that we have been noticing for the last
    few years is a disturbing one. The number of hate groups for
    the last 2 years has gone up about 26 percent. This comes at a
    time when historically these numbers should be down, with a
    good economy, low unemployment and things of this nature. In
    the past, these groups have not thrived very prosperously.
        We attribute most of this growth to the Internet, which has
    stimulated new recruiting, new technology, and a tremendous
    weapon in the arsenal of these hate groups reaching an audience
    that would probably never in their lives have come across these
    organizations or their ideology.
        In 1995, there was only one Internet site, Stormfront, on
    the Internet that we were aware of. And since that time, in
    just a very short period of time, in the last 4 years or so,
    that has grown 60 percent. There were 163 sites in 1997 that we
    tracked. There were 254 sites in 1998, which is a 60-percent
    increase. We expect that number to go up again for 1999 when we
    report out on the sites.
        Another thing that we have noticed about the Internet and
    the use of it by these organizations is they are getting a lot
    better. I can remember when we first started aggressively
    tracking the Internet, the sites were slow. Their links didn't
    work half the time. There was a lot of confusion as to how to
    insert graphics into the pages and audios and other things.
    That is not the case anymore.
        The sites we see now--and my co-panelists here, we had
    conversations about it--they are very slick. They use all the
    bells and whistles that technology affords to them. They are
    tracking their own sites. They are monitoring the number of
    hits each site is receiving, and they are also finding out
    where these hits are coming from to see who is interested in
    their site, just like any other site in cyberspace would.
        They have a much better networking capability where they
    share information, where they are able to share e-trees,
    publish notices, announce events. They use PGP encryption to
    communicate with their membership and other people in the
    movement, you know, so they are not the same old guys that we
    saw 4 years ago struggling to get up on the Web site.
        And one of the things we have also noticed is how cost-
    effective the Internet is. Back several years ago in the early
    1990's, we had a civil suit against the Invisible Empire
    Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which we bankrupted in North
    Carolina. And I spent several months auditing their financial
    records and it was obvious that they were spending probably
    $2,000 or $3,000 a month to publish a newsletter that went out
    every month to about 5,000 or 10,000--it varied--members and
    supporters that got their newsletter.
        With the Internet technology, this same group, were it in
    existence today, could reach millions, potentially, for about
    $50 a month, plus it offers people who would never join their
    ranks, never get a tattoo--it offers them the anonymity to sit
    in their den and to spew this hatred and download the
    information they want and to share it with their friends and
    like thinkers.
        Another alarming trend that we have noticed is the
    targeting of young children and young adults by these
    organizations. The movement leadership, the old guys that have
    been around for a long time, see the Internet as a new
    recruiting field and where the leadership of the movement in
    the future is going to come from. These are people that are
    headed off to college with their laptops. They are not the
    beer-bellied, red-neck, toothless stereotypical hater that we
    have seen in the past. These are tekkies that they are looking
    for. They don't want the old stereotypical hater.
        Keep in mind also that of all the hate crimes that were
    reported last year, only 15 percent of the hate crimes
    committed in this country--and that is our best estimate--were
    committed by people who actually belong to any organization.
    The rest were Bob down the street, or Fred with a fax line, or
    somebody who is out there looking to get into this movement.
    These are very recruitable people. There were over 8,000 hate
    crimes reported, which is not all of them, certainly, but the
    people that committed these hate crimes come from a culture
    where these groups will meet some kind of success in recruiting
    them.
        It is pretty easy to categorize who falls into the shadow
    of these hate organizations. They are people not much different
    from you and I, but they are people who are angry, they are
    frustrated, they are afraid. They are looking to regain control
    of their lives. If they are young kids, they are looking for
    acceptance. That is why guns and scapegoating are such a
    powerful part of the recruitment of these organizations because
    it gives instant empowerment. It gives them control. It makes
    them feel like they are doing something to regain direction in
    their lives.
        And there is something out there for everybody. We see
    sites that are wrapped in religion, like Christian Identity
    which teaches that Jews are the actual spawn of Satan and that
    white people are the lost tribe of Israel, and that anything
    that is not white are beasts of the field.
        If Christianity is not your bent, there are groups like
    World Church of the Creator that teaches that religion is a
    joke that the Jews are playing on white people and has been
    going on for 2,000 years. The list is endless.
        There is hate music. There were over 50,000 CD's sold by
    one organization that were CD's that you can't go down to the
    local record store and pick up. And there is a political
    correctness air that we see pop up occasionally during the
    movement, where they have become a lot more media-savvy. They
    say, we are not racist, we are racialists; we are not
    segregationists, we are separatists; we don't hate anybody, we
    just love white folks. And they try to use orderly, reasonable
    arguments in their Web sites to bring these people in.
        Finally, the solution to this type of problem is one that
    has to be very guarded, we think. I think the aggressive
    tracking and identification of these sites, reporting on them
    to the law enforcement community and to the proper authorities,
    is something that is critical. I think criminal and civil
    litigation needs to continue and develop new ways to attack
    these problems as they show up.
        Software filters are an immediate relief, but the one
    problem that we have discussed with other organizations is the
    fact that there is high maintenance on it. These groups move
    around very, very quickly. Of the 254 groups that we reported
    on for 1998, more than half of them are gone or moved to
    another site or another provider. To replace them, though, we
    have already identified another 100 to 150 sites to take their
    place for the next reporting. This is an ever-evolving, ever-
    changing environment they are in.
        The Internet has provider policing that goes on that kicks
    a lot of these groups off their Web sites. That is another
    relief that we can take advantage of, but basically this is not
    a one-time, fix-all cure that can be taken to the Internet. It
    is like a new infant, and the Internet is in its infancy and we
    must protect it from the virus of hate and from attack from the
    hate peddlers out there that want to recruit our children.
        But we have to be careful not to stunt its growth. We have
    to use education, supervision, and parental involvement. You
    know, boiling water at one time was new technology. We didn't
    quit using it. We took our kids aside and said, this will hurt
    you, this will burn you, but it will also feed and clothe and
    warm you. And that is the approach I think we should take to
    the Internet.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Roy follows:]

                    PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOSEPH T. ROY, SR.

        Good morning. My name is Joseph T. Roy, Sr. and I am the Director
    of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which
    is located in Montgomery, Alabama. At the Center, we have been tracking
    and studying hate groups for the last two decades. Over the years, we
    have built the largest data base on these groups and their activities
    in the world. In order to educate the public and law enforcement as to
    the nature of white supremacist and other hate groups, we publish the
    Intelligence Report, which is sent out free four times a year to almost
    50,000 law enforcement officers, among others.
        We are here today to discuss the role of the Internet in
    disseminating racial and religious intolerance and promoting violence.
    In the past few years, the Center has been intensively monitoring the
    Internet and the increasingly important role it plays in recruitment
    and propagandizing for hate groups. We have seen how this technology
    has been adopted wholesale by such groups, and the remarkable and
    unprecedented access this has afforded these groups to teenagers and
    other potential recruits. This access is all the more frightening
    because of changes in how America parents its children.
        Today, when parents send an errant child to his bedroom, little
    Johnny is not alone. With a few clicks of his computer mouse, he can
    join a large crowd of people who want to be his friends. He meets them
    in Internet chat rooms, on Web pages where their propaganda is posted,
    on E-mail lists where messages are forwarded to large groups of people.
    Too often, what these ``friends'' are offering up to Johnny--whose
    parents today are often working, or too busy to monitor his activities
    closely--is a smorgasbord of violent hate propaganda. The people who
    want to talk to your children are Tom Metzger, the head of the racist
    White Aryan Resistance in California, Matt Hale, leader of the neo-Nazi
    World Church of the Creator, and a host of other professional white
    supremacists and revolutionaries.
        The outcome can be disastrous. In South Carolina, what was once a
    tiny neo-Nazi band known as the Knights of Freedom put up a World Wide
    Web page last fall, and as a result it has managed to grow into a real
    group of more than 100 dues-paying members, a large number of them high
    school and college students. In Littleton, Colorado, the two youths who
    opened fire on their classmates at Columbine High School may well have
    been inspired, in some part, by neo-Nazi propaganda they encountered on
    the Net. It seems clear that they found plans for building pipe bombs
    and other weapons there.
        Although hate on the Internet has received a great deal of
    attention lately, it's wise to remember that the very first hate site
    on the net, known as Stormfront and run by a former Klansman who served
    time in federal prison, went up just over four years ago. Since then,
    there has been a veritable explosion in the number of such sites. Just
    last year, the number of ``hate sites''--sites based on hatred of such
    groups as blacks, Jews and homosexuals--jumped by almost 60 percent,
    from 163 at the end of 1997 to 254 in late 1998. The leading reason for
    this growth is obvious. A few years ago, a Klansman, for instance,
    needed to put out substantial effort and money to produce and
    distribute a shoddy pamphlet that might reach 100 people. Today, with a
    $500 computer and negligible other costs, that same Klansman can put up
    a slickly produced Web site with a potential audience in the millions.
        The propaganda power of such sites is, in other ways too,
    unprecedented. When a teenager visits one of the many Holocaust denial
    sites, for instance, he or she is not typically confronted with crude
    expressions of anti-Semitism. Instead, the visitor finds well-written
    essays by allegedly renowned historians, analyses by a so-called gas
    chamber expert concluding that there were no Nazi death camps, and so
    on. There is nothing to suggest that all serious historians find such
    theories to be pure malarkey. In the same way, organized white
    supremacist groups often put up Web material that portrays the groups
    not as haters, but as simple white pride civic groups concerned with
    social ills. Add to that some of the high-tech bells and whistles these
    sites often include--arcade-style games, chat rooms, bulletin boards,
    music, real-time videos and so on--and it becomes understandable how
    these sites can be genuinely attractive, especially for rebellious
    teens.
        Consider, for example, the ``Creativity for Children'' Web site put
    up by Matt Hale's World Church of the Creator. The title page, which
    says its purpose is to awaken white youth to ``our fight,'' is written
    in childlike handwriting, a kind of Sesame Street for haters. On
    another site, you've invited to play ``Sieg Heil,'' a computer game
    where you become an Aryan hero battling to thwart scientists creating a
    ``cross-bred'' race. On a third, you can watch a real video of
    Skinheads taunting an apparently retarded black man.
        A growing number of hate sites are carrying clips or even entire
    songs from white power bands. You can't find this kind of music, which
    features extremely racist and violent lyrics, in your local record
    store. But you can hear tracks from many of these CD's by visiting
    certain Web sites, and you can order them over the Net. Along with the
    propaganda found on hate sites, this racist music--some 50,000 CD's of
    which are sold in the United States annually--can be very effective at
    reaching young people. There are reports that the two students who
    attacked Columbine High School were fans of ``extreme music'' genres
    known as Gothic/Black Metal/Death Metal, music that was always violent
    and rebellious, but which today is increasingly influenced by white
    power themes.
        The Net is proving useful to the organized white supremacist
    movement in other important ways, as well. In the 1980's, groups like
    the White Aryan Resistance made efforts to recruit racist Skinheads as
    the ``shock troops'' of the movement. The result was a number of deaths
    and a larger number of people hurt--but no real advancement of white
    supremacy as a political movement. Today, the aging cadre of white
    supremacist leaders recognize this lack of progress and are
    concentrating instead on a different kind of youthful recruit: the
    bright, college-bound teenager who is seen as a potential leader and
    movement-builder of tomorrow. The Net gives white supremacists
    unprecedented access to precisely these teens, who live in their
    parents' homes and have computers in their bedrooms.
        These children are largely middle- and upper-middle-class youths
    who wouldn't be caught dead at a Klan rally--or whose parents would
    make sure they weren't. The Net, with its promise of privacy, lowers
    any social inhibitions they might have had about consorting openly with
    racists and other haters. Where these teens would likely have met
    social disapproval if they expressed anti-Semitic or racist ideas at
    home or in school, they are able to propound such ideas over the
    Internet in a welcoming environment. Unlike older forms of debating
    ideas--in public forums or classrooms or even over the family dinner
    table--talk on the Internet is often limited to those who already agree
    with one another. There is no real exchange of ideas on
    www.whitepower.com.
        What can be done about hate on the Net, which the Supreme Court has
    clearly ruled is protected speech under the First Amendment? One
    approach is that taken by the Anti-Defamation League and others, who
    have developed software packages capable of filtering out many hate
    sites. This is a useful tool, but the fact is that many computer-savvy
    teens are probably going to be capable of finding technical ways around
    the filters. There also are other difficulties in trying to limit these
    sites by technological means. Hate sites today are frequently booted
    off private servers with ``no-hate'' policies like America On-Line, and
    so their Web addresses tend to change very frequently as they move
    around to new servers. Almost half of the 254 hate sites that were
    monitored by the Intelligence Project in 1998 have gone off line or
    changed their internet address. Over 100 new sites have been discovered
    as well. This means that constant changes are required to update the
    filtering software, which in turn requires a large force of programmers
    and monitors. Finally, one can ask parents to monitor every moment
    their kids are on the Net, but this is, I think, unrealistic. With
    large numbers of single-parent families, with almost 50 percent of
    American women in the work force, and with people in general working
    longer hours to make ends meet, it is difficult to picture the parent
    who has time to keep track of all his or her child's Net explorations.
        I The only real inoculation is communication. Parents need to talk
    to their children about these sites and what they represent. Hate sites
    that claim there was no Holocaust can serve as a catalyst for a
    discussion of what Nazi Germany was all about. The racism found on
    white supremacist sites can spark a family exchange about the nature of
    racism and the need to celebrate, not fear, racial and other
    differences in America. Extreme homophobia like that displayed on
    www.godhatesfags.com can be used to talk about sexual differences
    between people. The alternative is to try to ignore these sites and to
    hope your child does not come across them--a hope that is increasingly
    unrealistic. History shows us that ignoring ugly social problems like
    racism does not make them go away. On the contrary, burying one's head
    in the sand is a sure way to guarantee the spread of hate.

      (1) Editorial, Intelligence Report, No. 94, Spring 1999.
      (2) Internet Hate Site List, Intelligence Report, No. 93, Winter
        1999.
      (3) Story on Hate Sites and Related Litigation, Intelligence Report,
        No. 93, Winter 1999.
      (4) Story on Hate Sites, Intelligence Report, No. 89, Winter 1998.

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        The Chairman. Let me just ask a few questions. Mr. Gennaco,
    I am most impressed by your efforts in securing the first
    conviction of a hate crime assailant for acts undertaken on the
    Internet, and I am also encouraged to hear that the conviction
    you secured in that matter has recently been affirmed on
    appeal.
        Is the statute you utilized to prosecute the defendant--
    that is, 18 U.S.C. section 245, which is a 30-year-old civil
    rights statute that pre-dates the creation of the Internet--is
    that an adequate tool to pursue those who engage in illegal
    threats and harassment on the Internet, and what did you view
    as the strengths and weaknesses of that statute insofar as you
    utilized it to prosecute illegal activity on the Internet?
        Mr. Gennaco. Mr. Chairman, 18 U.S.C. 245 did prove to be an
    adequate statute in order to enforce the law in the two cases
    that I have prosecuted, and that was in large part because the
    victim class in both the UC-Irvine case and the Cal State-Los
    Angeles case were involved in federally-protected activities;
    that is, they came within one of the categories demarcated
    under 18 U.S.C. 245.
        In the first instance, the students were attending a public
    institution, which is one of the federally-protected
    activities. And in the second case, the professors were engaged
    in employment at a public institution, which was also covered
    by 18 U.S.C. 245.
        The Chairman. Well, now, it was reported this August that
    the Department of Justice was supportive of a proposal that
    would allow Federal agents to obtain search warrants on a
    lesser showing than probable cause to search through computers
    for passwords and to override encryption programs. Now, would
    this proposal, if ultimately enacted, be of assistance in
    Federal prosecutors' efforts to respond to hate crimes on the
    Internet?
        Mr. Gennaco. Mr. Chairman, I think that it could be of
    assistance. As the perpetrators of hate crimes over the Net
    become more sophisticated, it becomes more difficult to track
    down and trace the perpetrators, including identification
    numbers and locator information. In fact, there are new
    technologies that allow senders of e-mail to send e-mail from
    anonymous sites which mask effectively the perpetrator and make
    it very difficult for technicians to track down individuals who
    are responsible for those threats.
        The Chairman. Now, all of you have heard my opening remarks
    on some of the suggestions that I have made, or at least
    thoughts on possible approaches that Congress might pursue
    without treading at all on the First Amendment, we hope, to
    better enable Federal prosecutors to respond to hate on the
    Internet.
        I would like each of you to tell me your thoughts
    specifically on a proposal that would criminalize the knowing
    or intentional advocacy on the Internet of the commission of a
    crime of physical violence against the person or the property
    of any individual or group or class of individuals. Can we
    start with you, Mr. Roy?
        Mr. Roy. Well, the Law Center supports the efforts that
    everybody is making in this arena. We feel like that civil
    litigation and criminal prosecution, whenever possible, are
    good things to do. We have been doing it for a long, long time.
    But these groups are still with us and the reason they are
    still with us is because this is handed down from generation to
    generation, and that is why we say education is so important.
        You can't legislate morality. You can only encourage people
    to do the right things and offer the children that come out of
    this movement a viable alternative. What we have put a lot of
    effort into is providing schools with curricula to teach
    diversity. We have just put out ``Responding to Hate in the
    Schools,'' and we encourage law enforcement everywhere.
        I have been doing this for--this is my 14 year. One thing
    that I have learned about the law enforcement community is that
    they are very able, willing and ready to prosecute these crimes
    if they are given the proper constitutional vehicle to do it.
        The Chairman. Thank you.
        Mr. Berkowitz.
        Mr. Berkowitz. I believe, as I understand it, that if an
    individual over the Internet is specifically advocating action
    of physical violence to an individual, then we would be in
    favor of that type of legislation.
        The Chairman. OK. Mr. Henderson.
        Mr. Henderson. Mr. Chairman, you raise an interesting and
    difficult question. Let me just say in response to Mr.
    Gennaco's comments to you, 18 U.S.C. section 245 does have two
    limitations. One, as he noted, it requires individuals to be
    engaged in a federally-protected activity, and unless that is,
    in fact, taking place, it does not permit a prosecution by
    Federal officials. Second, the statute does not cover crimes
    directed to persons because of their disability status or their
    sexual orientation or their gender. And those are two issues
    that we think are adequately addressed in proposed amendments
    to the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
        Now, with respect to your question, Mr. Chairman, I think
    there are a couple of issues. One, when you focus on the
    knowing and intentional conduct of individuals, that is
    helpful. Specificity is, in fact, needed, but I think the
    second element is one in which you suggest the individual must
    be taking activity specifically for purpose of generating
    violence or harm. If that can be established, I would think
    that those are two useful elements that would perhaps encourage
    some of our member organizations to look more closely and more
    favorably at the statute. There are others who would still
    express some concern.
        So I think from the standpoint of the Leadership
    Conference, we would like to take a closer look at the
    proposal. We do think that the more specificity and the
    narrower the scope of application, the better, and we are
    committed to examining it in greater detail.
        The Chairman. Thank you.
        Rabbi Cooper.
        Rabbi Cooper. Chairman Hatch, I think I can echo almost all
    the other comments that were made before. You know, this has
    not been a quiet summer for us. The Wiesenthal Center was
    Furrow's first and main target.
        Michael Gennaco is a very important partner for our efforts
    at the Museum of Tolerance, and I think in this area, through
    our training of law enforcement, our Tools for Tolerance
    program, and trying to spread the message of tolerance, that is
    basically our pedagogical and educational mandate.
        When it comes to the area of stiffening the laws and
    narrowing the distance between the new technologies and our
    commitments here, we are going to be looking to the people in
    the field, like this brilliant U.S. attorney, for the signal.
    If they feel that they need, in the day-to-day fight, in the
    expanding online fight, more expansion along with the general
    hate crimes expansion, then certainly our Center would back it.
        We are trying to continue our approach in a consortium of
    getting as much input as we can from the people at the U.S.
    attorney's office in Southern California and around the
    country, at the same time trying to do the same balancing act
    that you and your committee try to do everyday, balancing First
    Amendment rights with the need to protect our kids and our
    community.
        And I just might add one additional image for us to
    consider, which is I know every parent in America was wondering
    where was Eric Harris' father when this kid was downloading all
    of this information teaching him how to make bombs, et cetera,
    et cetera. And we leave this hearing this morning, I am still
    not sure that if the next potential Eric Harris' mother is
    looking over his shoulder, that we have the necessary
    partnering from everyone involved with this issue.
        In other words, I think the U.S. Senate is taking
    leadership here. We have the brilliant civil servants, but if
    we don't have partners from the online community to help
    parents, even with the phenomenal software available from the
    ADL and the rest, we are going to see these kinds of events
    repeating themselves over and over and over again.
        So I commend everything that you are trying to achieve
    here. I hope at the next set of hearings, we will have the
    important leaders of the Internet community sitting with us in
    order to try to work out a community-based approach to a
    problem that is not going to go away.
        The Chairman. Thank you.
        Mr. Gennaco.
        Mr. Gennaco. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would echo my
    fellow panel members with regard to the proposal that you have
    set forth. As I am sure you are aware, Mr. Chairman, there is a
    body of law that puts outside of First Amendment protection
    direct and immediate incitement to violence by anybody, whether
    it is over the Internet or any other medium. And I believe a
    carefully crafted legislation that would prevent such behavior
    and would not impinge upon the First Amendment would be a
    helpful weapon in our arsenal against hate.
        To echo what Mr. Henderson said again, with 245, just to
    elaborate on my comments, while I was able to use 245 in the
    two scenarios that we successfully prosecuted, I can envision
    hypotheticals in which I would not have had 245 available to me
    in a prosecution. For example, in the UC-Irvine case, if the
    victims had been attending a private school and, in fact, the
    threat had been because of the sexual orientation of students
    at that facility, 245 would not have been available.
        The Chairman. Thank you very much. Now, let me just ask one
    other question because it is an important question. I would
    like you to address generally where you think the best
    solutions lie in our efforts to combat hate on the Internet.
        Is each of you of the conviction that heightened
    responsibility by Internet companies and parents through self-
    policing as well as anti-hate filters provides the key, or is
    the ultimate answer to be found in a legislative response that,
    while vigilantly respecting the boundaries of the First
    Amendment, may assist prosecutors in combatting illegal threats
    and harassment and that assist Internet companies in
    terminating those sites that illegally incite violence through
    hate speech?
        Can we start again with you, Mr. Roy?
        Mr. Roy. I think certainly that the Internet providers are
    the obvious place to start. One of the things that we have seen
    out in the Internet community is an effort by a number of these
    groups to develop their own domain, their own ISP's, to where
    they can't be kicked off. And for providers to have a ``no
    hate'' policy and push them in that direction is certainly
    fine. If we had them all in one spot, it would make our lives a
    lot easier.
        But I think that it is going to take a combination of
    things. I think that we need some regulations that may or may
    not exist to be retooled or developed, you know, to combat
    this. But I think initially and ultimately, it is going to be
    the providers that police cyberspace, and some of them do a
    really good job and some of them are making no effort at all.
        The Chairman. Thank you.
        Mr. Berkowitz.
        Mr. Berkowitz. Yes, Senator. I don't think there is a
    silver bullet and I don't think there is an either/or. I really
    believe that this is a new challenge, one of the most difficult
    challenges that we face in continuing to make sure that the
    pluralistic democracy that we all cherish continues.
        For all the reasons that were mentioned here, I think that
    we have to find the answers, and it is not going to come with
    just one answer. Yes, we have developed a hate filter and we
    think it is a good one and we think it does a very good job.
    Should it be mandatory? It is a very difficult thing to say. I
    don't think that it should be unless you have the ability of
    either librarians or teachers to override the filter.
        Should it be on all library computers? No. If there are
    some libraries, as I understand it, that have computers for
    children under the age of 15 and other computers for those over
    the age of 15, you maybe can find some kind of age level to
    deal with that. Do you need to train teachers and librarians to
    a greater extent in how to deal with the Internet and problems
    of the Internet? Absolutely.
        I think that legislation is important. I think that Senator
    Feinstein's legislation as it relates to bomb-making
    instructions on the Internet will be a valuable tool. A number
    of the ones that you have mentioned, I think, will also be
    valuable. So I don't think it is going to be one solution.
    Certainly, the ISP's are going to have to be brought into the
    situation, and as Mr. Roy stated, I think that if we can
    isolate the hate groups on their own ISP's, we will be able to
    control them to a greater extent. All of this has to be done
    within the framework of protecting the First Amendment in every
    single instance.
        The Chairman. Thank you.
        Mr. Henderson.
        Mr. Henderson. Mr. Chairman, this is an important hearing,
    and I really do commend you on behalf of the Leadership
    Conference for having initiated this discussion. I note that it
    takes place on the second day of the trial of a white
    supremacist charged with the murder of James Byrd in Texas from
    the dragging death last year. So what we are attempting to do
    today by focusing attention on this problem, I think, is really
    commendable and important.
        Having said that, I think there is no simple solution and
    answer to your question specifically about what must be done. I
    think all of us have emphasized a combination of a number of
    approaches that we think when taken together will make a
    significant start in trying to address the problem. We in the
    Leadership Conference have emphasized the importance of
    education and more speech, and we still believe that that is
    the first among many options that we would encourage pursuing.
        I do think that you have suggested a range of additional
    steps that might be taken, including collaboration with the
    online supporters of Internet sponsors and others to talk about
    ways, consistent with the First Amendment, of trying to address
    the problem. But the emphasis on family responsibility, on
    training, on civic participation, on the role of religious
    groups and the religious community, all have to be added
    together in developing a comprehensive approach to the problem.
    And we stand ready to work with you as you continue to pursue
    solutions to this difficult issue.
        The Chairman. Thank you.
        Rabbi Cooper.
        Rabbi Cooper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I note here that on
    the top 10 active bomb-making sites right now that only one of
    them would be on a racist server. So, clearly, if the Internet
    community would act to get rid of the other nine, we won't
    remove or eliminate the problem, but we would, I think, put a
    significant crimp on terms of the links between hate music and
    other youth-oriented sites. And that is an action which I think
    all Americans are behind.
        The only question is will the Internet community do this on
    their own or do they have to be pushed by the U.S. Congress.
    And I think after the events starting with Columbine, most
    Americans want action. We prefer if we don't have to come to
    the Government. But if not, possibly in this area alone, some
    basic common sense and regulation may be necessary.
        Obviously, everyone here agrees with the basic idea that
    the answer to hate speech is more speech. But I would suggest
    to everyone when you go home tonight and you go online, take a
    look at a site called mlking.org, as in martinlutherking.org.
    It is the perfect address for your average teenager who is
    going to go home and do a research project on one of the
    greatest Americans in the history of our country. It took us
    about 4 or 5 minutes at the Wiesenthal Center to figure out
    that this is a site that was developed, put up and maintained
    by Stormfront, one of the leading white supremacist groups.
        And so what we are talking about in terms of the challenge
    is the basic approach of answering hate speech with more speech
    is an unprecedented challenge when we look at the Internet. The
    manipulation of information, sometimes the stealing of domains,
    the fact that there is no online librarian, that all
    information is flat--you put in the word ``Holocaust'' or
    ``Martin Luther King, Jr.,'' and if there isn't a librarian or
    parent around, we don't quite know what they are going to end
    up getting.
        So we have all seen this tremendous growth of the Internet.
    We all welcome it. Everyone in this room utilizes the Internet,
    and I still feel that in a sense there is an empty chair here
    today, and that is the Internet community themselves. We need
    their collective genius, we need them at the table as partners.
        And again I want to commend, Senator Hatch, you and your
    entire committee for revisiting this issue again, and we are
    going to have to come back again and again until we come up
    with, at the end of the day, an unscientific approach of where
    we draw the line between hate and speech.
        One last comment, if I may. When we use the term ``hate
    speech''--and Mr. Henderson made a very important distinction
    between speech and action--let's also understand that when we
    are talking about the Internet, it is not only hate speech, but
    the posting of information that has to do with terrorism,
    mayhem, violence and other illegal activity and, as such,
    interwoven with the issues of the First Amendment.
        We will need the continued leadership of your committee,
    and I commend you for bringing us together this morning.
        The Chairman. Well, thank you. I might mention that we did
    invite representatives of the Internet service community to
    testify today and they respectfully declined. We are hopeful
    that we can get them in sometime in the future because we do
    need their viewpoint on what should be done here, and perhaps
    we can do that just with a panel for them. We are not trying to
    railroad anything here. We want to solve these problems to the
    extent that they can be solved. As you know, they don't go away
    easily. We will give them another opportunity to testify, but
    it needs to be noted that we did invite them.
        Mr. Gennaco, we will end with you.
        Mr. Gennaco. Mr. Chairman, as a prosecutor on the front
    line I also commend you for directing focus to this issue.
    There is one other thing that I think is an important component
    of ways to address the situation and that is to continue to
    support partnerships. In Southern California, we have a good
    working partnership with both local prosecutors, with the
    Museum of Tolerance.
        As a result of the partnership that we have formed, I think
    we are able to share intelligence, techniques, and expertise in
    various areas to combat the problem. And I think it is this
    synergy that is as a result of this partnership that causes me
    optimism that we can beat this problem.
        The Chairman. Well, we are appreciative. I think this
    hearing has been very valid and very important today. As you
    can see, we are thrashing around trying to find some way of
    solving these problems because they are going to get worse. We
    know that there are a lot of offensive things on the Internet.
    There are a lot of wonderful things, too. What we want to do is
    find some way, within the constraints of the First Amendment,
    to resolve some of these problems so that our kids are not
    beset with this type of garbage day in and day out. And as you
    know, it is a very difficult thing to do.
        I presume that many ISP's don't want to get involved
    because they know that it would be a never-ending journey for
    them, and they also worry about legal liability for taking
    people off the Net, perhaps, or worry about whether or not they
    are making the right decisions, or worry about whether they
    will be criticized for taking some off the Net who, in the eyes
    of many, should not be taken off the Net.
        It is a very, very difficult set of problems as far as I
    can see, and especially when you consider the importance of the
    First Amendment. Every one of you have expressed a certain
    degree of solicitude for the First Amendment, as we all should,
    and every one of you have been champions of the First
    Amendment.
        On the other hand, there are limitations that society does
    provide as to what can or cannot be done under the First
    Amendment. And something has to be done, it seems to me, to at
    least help our children in this society to have a better chance
    to be hate-free, to be pornography- and obscenity-free and, of
    course, to be free of some of the evil influences that I think
    almost any reasonable person in our society would call evil.
        We are seeing more and more acts of violence in our society
    committed by juveniles. That is why this juvenile justice bill
    is so important. You know, many in the media and many who have
    political points to make are trying to make that bill into a
    gun bill. That is a very small part of it. That bill does an
    awful lot of things that could help to resolve the problems of
    juvenile justice. And we are probably going to go into a
    conference this week, and I am hopeful that I can get something
    out that will be supported by the vast majority of people in
    the Congress.
        If one side wants to play the gun issue all the way
    through, we will never get it done. If either side wants to, we
    are never going to get it done. So it is very important that we
    have the wisdom of people like yourselves in these processes
    and with regard to these problems so that we can get to the
    bottom of what should be done, what can be done, and how we
    should do it.
        So we would like to keep the record open so that you folks,
    having heard my opening remarks and the opening remarks of
    Senator Leahy, and having heard each other, might be willing to
    give us more of your advice and counsel so that we can do what
    is best here, because if I don't miss my bet, you folks are as
    concerned about all these principles as anybody I know. And you
    are experts in this area and I think all of you are noted for
    having done very, very important and worthwhile things in this
    particular area. So that is why we called on you. It has been a
    very helpful committee meeting and I am very grateful to all of
    you for putting in the time and effort to give these excellent
    statements to us today and answer the questions.
        So with that, we will adjourn until further notice. Thanks
    so much.
        [Whereupon, at 12:01 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

                                A P P E N D I X

                                  ----------

                             Questions and Answers

                                  ----------

          Responses of Michael Gennaco to Questions from Senator Leahy

        Question 1. The Department of Justice seems to have made effective
    use of the Internet in the context of various online investigations,
    such as the ``Innocent Images'' efforts to combat distribution of child
    pornography through the Internet. Has the Department used the Internet
    to gather evidence of criminal activity on the part of hate groups in
    the United States?
        Answer. The Department has used the Internet to gather evidence of
    criminal activity on the part of hate groups or perpetrators of hate or
    terrorism in the United States. For example, a review of messages sent
    over the Internet helped locate additional threats and victims in a
    recent hate crimes threats prosecution. In another case, review of a
    militia group's Internet communications resulted in additional federal
    charges being lodged against members of that group.

        Question 2. Does the Internet provide the Department of Justice
    with access to information published online that makes it easier for
    you to monitor potential domestic terrorist activities organized by
    hate groups in the United States?
        Answer. The Department of Justice does not engage in the regular
    federal monitoring of hate groups in the United States unless it is
    pertinent to investigative actions undertaken by the FBI pursuant to
    the Attorney General's guidelines for investigations. In situations
    where there have been allegations of criminal activity by certain hate
    groups or there has already been evidence developed of criminal
    activity by members of hate groups, the open source material on the
    Internet may be searched in order to locate additional information
    about the criminal activity alleged.
                                   __________

         Responses of Howard Berkowitz to Questions from Senator Leahy

        Question 1. How has your organization been able to use the Internet
    to gather information about organized hate groups in the United States?
        Answer. The Anti-Defamation League monitors the Web sites, USENET
    newsgroups, E-mail mailing lists, and chat rooms used by extremists to
    spread their message and communicate with each other. Most online
    information created by hate groups is openly available. There are
    neither practical nor legal barriers to the collection of most of this
    material.

        Question 2. Has the Internet helped your organization find out
    information such as events or gatherings organized by hate groups in
    the United States?
        Answer. The Internet consistently, provides the Anti-Defamation
    League with relevant, timely information about hate group rallies and
    gatherings nationwide.

        Question 3. Has your organization used the Internet as an
    organizing tool opposing hate groups or events organized by hate
    groups? Can people use the Internet to join or support your
    organization?
        Answer. At the Anti-Defamation League Web site, a Web user can find
    contact information for any of our 30 regional offices, report an anti-
    Semitic incident to us, or make a donation. Additionally, our site
    contains publications such as ``Prejudice: 101 Ways You Can Beat It!,''
    which proposes specific, concrete actions people can take in the fight
    against hate. Also present on the ADL homepage is our Legislative
    Action Center, which allows Web users to E-mail Members of Congress
    about priority issues of concern, such as the Hate Crime Prevention Act
    or anti-Semitism in Russia.

        Question 4. Does your organization use the Internet, including web
    pages or e-mail lists, as an education tool to teach people about the
    damage hate and hate groups can do?
        Answer. The full text of all ADL reports exposing hate and hate
    groups is posted on our Web site, where it is available free of charge.
    It is our hope that these reports will lead the public to reject hate
    groups and their propaganda.

        Question 5. I understand that your organization has developed a
    product called ``HateFilter,'' which parents can install on their home
    computers if they want to prevent their children from being exposed to
    web sites that advocate hatred or intolerance.
        I understand that there is a fairly robust market for these kinds
    of tools, including close to a dozen like HateFilter and perhaps two
    dozen or more Internet Service Providers that filter hate speech as
    part of the Internet service they sell to dial-up customers. Are these
    options useful tools for families who are concerned about hate speech
    on the Internet? Do they work on web sites outside of the United States
    as well as on hate sites in the U.S.?
        Answer. Though there is no single solution to the problems posed by
    online hate, filtering software is a useful tool. The ADL's HateFilter
    is a frequently-updated, site-specific filtering device, effectively
    blocking hate sites selected by ADL researchers both in the United
    States and outside the country. Unlike other filtering software
    products, HateFilter empowers parents who want to restrict their
    child's access to hate--and encourages parents to teach their children
    about the nature of bigotry and the hatemongers who promote it. It
    offers users who try to access a blocked site the chance to visit a
    special portion of the ADL Web site, where they can find basic
    information about hate and hate groups.

                      Additional Submission for the Record

                                  ----------

     Prepared Statement of Karen Narasaki, on Behalf of the National Asian
                       Pacific American Legal Consortium

                                I. INTRODUCTION

        The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (Consortium)
    respectfully submits this statement to urge the Senate Committee on the
    Judiciary to respond to the growing problem of hate crimes and hate
    groups on the internet by ensuring that S. 622, the Hate Crimes
    Prevention Act of 1999 (HCPA), is enacted this session without
    amendment.
        The Consortium and its Affiliates--the Asian American Legal Defense
    and Education Fund (AALDEF), the Asian Law Caucus (ALC), and the Asian
    Pacific American Legal Center (APALC)--have been the leading
    authorities on hate crimes against Asian Pacific Americans (APA's).
    Every year, the Consortium and its Affiliates produce the nation's only
    nongovernmental, comprehensive report and analysis on anti-Asian
    violence. Additionally, we monitor bias-motivated incidents against
    APA's, collect data, provide technical assistance to victims of hate
    crimes, conduct educational outreach efforts on the general problem of
    hate crimes and collaborate with government agencies, civil rights
    groups and community organizations to improve data collection, police
    training on the identification of hate crimes, and community response
    to hate acts.
        This statement first discusses hate on the internet directed at
    APA's, in particular a precedent-setting case which successfully
    invoked federal hate crime laws to prosecute an individual for sending
    hate e-mail messages to 60 students at a public university. Second, the
    statement provides examples of hate messages aimed at APA's on
    websites. Third, the statement recounts the deaths of three APA hate
    crime victims as demonstrative evidence that hate violence is growing
    increasingly brutal and deadly; is not disappearing despite a booming
    economy; and, is perpetrated increasingly by individuals with
    connections to hate extremist groups. These groups have been turning to
    the internet to incite violence, recruit youth, and target minorities
    via anonymous e-mail and broadcast hate messages over websites. The
    Consortium strongly supports HCPA as a powerful statement that America
    will not tolerate hate.

            II. USE OF E-MAIL MESSAGES TO PURVEY HATE AGAINST APA'S

        The incident that led to the nation's first successful federal
    prosecution of a hate crime over the internet occurred in September
    1997, when Richard Machado sent a threatening e-mail to members of an
    APA student group at the University of California at Irvine. Machado
    warned the students that if they did not leave campus, ``I personally
    will make it my life career to find and kill every one of you
    personally.'' The Consortium's Affiliate, the APALC, monitored the
    trial that followed.
        Sixty APA students sued Machado over violation of their civil
    rights pursuant to federal hate crimes laws. At trial, several of the
    students who received the e-mail testified that they believed the
    threat was real. They said they feared walking alone around campus and
    were scared that they may be physically harmed. They felt isolated and
    vulnerable even though APA's comprised roughly 50 percent of the campus
    population; several testified that they had not reported the crime
    because they believed that no action would arise from their disclosure.
    On February 1998, Machado was found guilty and convicted on a
    misdemeanor count and sentenced to one year in prison.
        One of the laws which the students were able to rely upon was 18
    U.S.C. Sec. 245, a 30-year-old federal statute, to bring their case
    because Machado singled them out because of their race and intended to
    interfere with their federally protected right to a public education.
    In the same year, hate e-mail incidents were reported by students
    across the nation including Indiana University, Stanford University and
    the University of Southern California.
        The Consortium believes that the Kennedy-sponsored bill, the Hate
    Crimes Prevention Act of 1999 (S. 622), would address this gaping hole
    in federal protection and urges the Senate conferees to pass it without
    any weakening amendments before the session adjourns.

              III. USE OF WEBSITES TO BROADCAST HATE AGAINST APA'S

        The Consortium is monitoring a rise in websites sponsored by hate
    groups, especially white supremacist organizations, which are beginning
    to include APA's in their vitriol against minority groups.
        The majority of hate messages remain directed against Jews and
    blacks. However, groups who target hate against one group are likely to
    strike at all minorities. A case in point follows in the website titled
    ``Better Than Auschwitz,'' where the author spews the following hate
    diatribe:

            ``I don't have a flying f----k about what anyone thinks. I have
            been f----ked over an uncountable number of times by the mud
            people, and the jews which overlook them. * * * There are no
            blacks, mexicans, there are no asians, there are no ``kosher
            people''. There are only niggers, spics, gooks and kikes. I
            have never met a descent person from the above, and so choose
            not to refer them as people anymore, but things; monsters.
            Everyone that is not white deserves to be melted down in a f--
            --king oven.'' \1\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ See http://www.yoderanium.com/webhome/deathdlr/.

        The websites reflect xenophobia and show the perverse extremes of
    the affirmative action debate. Despite the number of generations who
    have lived in the United States, cultural assimilation and innumerable
    contributions made to society from high technology to science,
    moviemaking and architecture and more, APA's still are considered the
    perpetual foreigners posing an outside threat to their own homeland.
    The perceptions are not mere misunderstandings. As was the case in
    1982, when bat wielding, unemployed Detroit workers thought a Chinese
    American was Japanese, these perceptions can be lethal. The following
    website fosters the same type of hate that likely would engender
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    animosity toward any person of Asian descent:

            A cartoon sketches an Asian man with slanted eyes, buck teeth
            and a menacing grin rubs his hands in delight as he stands next
            to a poster advertising the sale of property with the words
            ``Sold'' written over it. Overhead, the message reads, ``Do you
            think that those rice-nibblin' little Nips have ceased being
            sneaky and dreaming of world domination just because WWII is
            over? * * * Don't be a fool * * * today, just like yesterday *
            * * BEWARE THE YELLOW PERIL!'' \2\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \2\ See http://www.resist.com.

        In the following two cases, the hate mongers push the envelope on
    free speech protections by promulgating hate, yet stopping short of
    encouraging immediate and specific violent acts at an identifiable
    group. In the ``Voice of White America,'' one site posts in capital
    letters, ``Hordes of Incoming Asians are Taking Over our West!!'' next
    to a headshot of an unidentified Asian man. When the photo is clicked,
    a kung-fu-type cry sounds over the speaker. Under the title, the
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    message reads:

            ``We are being flooded with Chinese and Filipinos! These people
            stick to their own, and stick up for their own, AT THE EXPENSE
            OF EVERYONE ELSE! The San Francisco city & county government
            now has equal numbers of Asian and White employees. When Asians
            come into power, they do not hire fairly, they hire MORE
            ASIANS! And affirmative action give them the blessing to do it!
            * * * The number of exclusively Chinese language businesses,
            city areas, and theme parks is expanding at an ALARMING rate!
            WAKE UP, AMERICA! * * * \3\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \3\ See http://members.aol.com/tsaukki/taketake.htm.

        Similarly, in ``Our Racial Hatred,'' an author by the name of Shaun
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    W. states,

            ``Why is it that for five years, while I went to college here
            in California, I felt like an exchange student living in China?
            * * * Since being around them in school, I've learned to really
            hate the little yellow bastards.'' \4\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \4\ See http://www.resist.com/Aourracialhatred.html.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                  IV. THREE APA DEATHS IN THE PAST SIX MONTHS

        In its annual 1997 audit, the Consortium and its Affiliates
    reported 481 anti-Asian incidents, including two murders. In the past
    five years during which the Consortium and its Affiliates have
    monitored bias-motivated violence, there have been approximately two
    hate crime murders per year.
        The Consortium is alarmed that in the past 6 months, the Asian
    Pacific American community has seen THREE particularly vicious attacks
    on members of its community. Of the three deaths, two were caused by
    individuals with clear ties to white supremacist groups. Both groups
    spread hate propaganda online.
        One of the men murdered was a 26-year-old Korean student, Won Joon
    Yoon. Yoon was killed during the racially motivated shootings that took
    place in Illinois and Indiana this past July. The gunman, Benjamin
    National Smith, was an active member of the World Church of the Creator
    (WCOTC). The WCOTC has used the internet as means of organizing,
    publishing its hate materials and recruiting. The group's current
    campaign is called ``Operation Internet Blietzkrieg,'' which exhorts
    its members to use the internet extensively to spread their hate
    messages. One of the fastest growing white supremacist organizations in
    the country, WCOTC now has over 40 chapters across the country and
    abroad.
        Another man shot to death was 39-year-old Joseph Ileto, a Filipino
    American letter carrier. Ileto was gunned down by Buford Furrow, who
    had hours earlier walked into a Jewish Community Center and shot five
    victims, including three young children. Furrow confessed to shooting
    Ileto because he looked Hispanic or Asian. Furrow had ties to the Aryan
    Nation and The Order. According to the Anti-Defamation League, ``the
    Aryan Nation perceives itself as literally surrounded by enemies:
    vigorously fighting back is not only a solution to its problems, but a
    duty.'' The Aryan Nation has a prolific website including a youth corp
    section, news updates, state offices contact information, audio and
    video tape catalog, language translations of their website and links to
    other hate sites, among other things.
        The Consortium believes that while hate on the internet was not
    directly responsible for these men's deaths, it contributed to the
    climate of hate that influenced and goaded the perpetrators toward
    their ultimate acts of murder.

                                 IV. CONCLUSION

        One of the nation's leading experts on anti-Asian violence, the
    Consortium believes that hate crimes is a serious national problem that
    requires federal government involvement to supplement the traditional
    state role of policing crimes. Hate crimes are unique in that they
    strike not only at the victim, but at all members of the community to
    which the victim belongs. Consequently, the impact of hate crimes has
    more far-reaching effects than the ordinary crime. With the advent of
    the internet, the ability of hate extremist groups to spread hate,
    communicate with each other and organize will only continue to be
    enhanced.
        Whereas in the past, hate mongers primarily relied on public
    rallies, marches, and leafleting to spread their messages, the favored
    communication tool is now the internet. For a few hundred dollars, any
    individual may purchase a computer, acquire an e-mail account and sign
    up with an Internet Service Provider to host their World Wide Web page,
    sometimes for free. The expenses are little; one Southern Poverty Law
    Center investigator reported that the rise in chapters are often due to
    one individual setting up shop.
        The federal government has an important role to play in the
    prevention of hate crimes. By passing the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of
    1999, Congress can and should send a strong symbolic statement that the
    nation does not tolerate hate; furthermore, the law puts potential
    criminals on notice that they will be sentenced with stiffer penalties
    if they target any innocent person for violence on the basis of their
    race, religion, national origin, as well as sex, disability and sexual
    orientation.
        Hate Crimes Prevention Act will also allow for enhanced cooperation
    between the federal and state law enforcement agencies similar to the
    joint federal-state partnerships forged after the enactment of the
    Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996. That initiative led to successful
    investigative and prosecution efforts in church arsons nationwide after
    the lifting of restrictions placed on federal prosecutors. Hate Crimes
    Prevention Act needs to be passed to lift the undue restrictions which
    bar federal prosecutors from adequately addressing hate crimes.
        Based on the foregoing, the Consortium urges the Members of this
    Committee to continue its support of S. 622, the Hate Crimes Prevention
    Act of 1999, in its current form as it heads for a joint conference and
    ensure that it is enacted into law before the end of this legislative
    session.