Responding to terrorist Web sites is an extremely sensitive and delicate issue since most of the rhetoric disseminated on the Internet is considered protected speech under the First Amendment. Furthermore, although Web sites belonging to terrorist groups are public, the FBI is precluded from keeping files on them. Agents may surf the Internet but they cannot save material from a Web site on a regular basis unless they are conducting a criminal investigation.

In 1996, under the leadership of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Congress included in the Omnibus Anti-Terrorism Act a requirement that the Justice Department study the extent to which bomb-making instructions are available in the United States either in print, electronic form, or on film. Congress also asked the Justice Depart-ment to analyze the constitutionality of restricting the dissemination of bomb-making materials. The Justice Department concluded in April, 1997, that laws restricting the dissemination of such materials could be constitutional if they were narrowly crafted. A legislative initiative to criminalize the publication of bomb-making materials is expected to pass in the 106th Congress.

In October 1998, Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher filed a complaint against the white supremacist group ALPHA HQ, of Philadelphia, for publishing terroristic threats, harassing messages and ethnic intimidation on its Internet Web page. Among other things, the group published a picture depicting the bombing of Pennsylvania's Reading-Berks Human Relations Council office and featured a picture of the Assistant Director at the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission on the same page as the exploding building.

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