An article about online hate groups in yesterday's Plugged In section contained an outdated address for Raymond A. Franklin's Hate Directory Web site. The authorized site is located at http: //www.bcpl.net/(tilde)rfrankli/ hatedir.htm.
The Sun regrets the error.
The conference room in Ocean City is jammed with more than 100 people, all peering at an enlarged computer screen displaying an ominous image: a man in a white hood holding a pump shotgun.
It's one of dozens of Ku Klux Klan sites on the World Wide Web, but the people studying it aren't hatemongers. They're federal agents, state police and detectives from law enforcement agencies throughout the Mid-Atlantic.
"Just as hate groups can use these Web sites to their advantage, we can use them to ours," says Raymond A. Franklin, a police training instructor in Maryland who teaches a crash course in high-tech hate. "It's free information. These people are going to tell us what they're doing, and we don't even have to send out an investigator. Just click on it at your desktop."
Franklin, assistant director of Maryland's Police and Correctional Training Commission, tracks racists, anarchists, secessionists, neo-Nazis, gay bashers, religious radicals, and anyone else with a hateful ax to grind.
His "Hate Directory," one of the nation's most comprehensive listings of such organizations, lists more than 300 Web sites, newsgroups, chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards that deliver electronic messages of violence or hatred.
"A lot of times these aren't just rednecks in the basement with a personal computer," Franklin says. "We are talking about very serious technological endeavors here. The Internet has given people a very powerful weapon to use for hate."
Just ask 45-year-old Don Black of West Palm Beach, Fla., a computer consultant who manages Web pages for Stormfront - his own white nationalist movement - plus sites for two dozen other white supremacist causes. His own site, mirrored on a Russian server and available in Spanish as well as English, is regarded by academicians as one of the most popular racist sites - with more than one million visitors and counting.
"The political fashion today is the eradication of all vestiges of white culture, and we believe white people throughout the world must unite and stand up for their rights," Black says. "Our purpose with the Web site is to provide information, and for those who are attracted to our point of view, to offer them an online community."
That community includes an online "Aryan Dating Page" that touts itself as a listing of available singles who must be "heterosexual, white gentiles only."
Concern about hate on the Internet - and its implications for crime and domestic terrorism - has been growing as steadily as the use of computers in American homes. The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles reports that the number of Web pages put up by white supremacists and other racist groups have increased about 300 percent in the last year.
Mainstream computer use and easy access to the World Wide Web have had an energizing effect on the racist activities. In California's San Fernando Valley last month, vandals who defaced a synagogue painted on its walls the Web address of the National Alliance, a nationwide racist group.
Extremists have tried to spread their message through mass media for years. But they have often been blocked because mainstream outlets consider their messages in poor taste and most groups don't have money to buy advertising or air time.
Those problems have disappeared with the arrival of the Internet, Franklin says.
"For a relatively inexpensive price tag, you can have a worldwide audience," he said. "The Internet also provides a way to broadcast audio and even video a lot cheaper and more frequently than a radio or TV station. It really has gotten so you need a score card to keep track of every hate group that's out there using the Internet now."
Among the notables is white supremacist David Duke of Louisiana, who found himself unable to afford his local radio show. After establishing a connection with with the National Alliance Web site, Duke broadcasts a regular, Internet-only radio program.
Franklin's list of Web sites is designed not only to help police, but also to educate Web surfers about potential dangers online. Parents should be aware, he said, that a high school student doing a term paper on the Holocaust is likely to stumble across hate group sites that claim that the mass executions didn't happen or were justified.
Some countries have invoked censorship to combat the sites. Canada has criminalized hate speech online, and German law prohibits Web sites that deny the Holocaust. But in the United States, the sites are protected by the Constitution's free speech provisions.
That doesn't mean hate sites can operate free of surveillance by watchdog groups. The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, which recently released a report entitled "The Web of Hate: Extremists Exploit the Internet," has developed the first software filter designed to block hate sites.
The software is due to be released next month, said Jordan Kessler, a research analyst at ADL who specializes in studying hate on the Internet. Once installed on a home computer, the program will block all sites that the ADL has deemed to be directing hatred.
"The ADL is a strong believer in free speech and has no intention of trying to force anyone off the Web," Kessler said. "People have the right to express themselves. But we also have the right to express ourselves and report on what these groups are doing. The filter gives parents some kind of discretion for their children's accessing of the Internet. It's completely voluntary, so it's not censorship."
Some sites that openly advocate violence and, at times, target specific people for bombings or shootings, are likely to become test cases for the limits of free speech. Last week, the Pennsylvania attorney general's office filed a complaint seeking to block a Philadelphia-based hate group, ALPHA HQ, from publishing threatening messages on the Internet.
The group's Web page displayed an artist's rendition of the bombing of a local human relations council office and denounced one of the council's leaders as a "race traitor" who should beware.
Stormfront's Black is named in the Pennsylvania complaint because he is believed to have been involved with ALPA HQ's Web site - an allegation he denies. He said the attempt to shut down the ALPHA HQ is indicative of aggressive tactics by those who he says are stifling free speech.
"We have problems all the time, both from hacker attacks and from denial of service by servers," said Black, who learned about computers during a two-year federal prison term for his part in a bizarre plot to take over the Caribbean island of Dominica and turn it into a base of operations for a white nationalist movement.
"There's a lot of opposition from people who feel we don't have the right to express our views on the Internet. What people may not realize is that some of these attacks generate sympathy. Even people who don't agree with us still recognize our right to operate a Web site. A lot of people on the Web are civil libertarian types who don't like heavy-handed government."
Franklin says the Web has also provided techno-bigots with improved communications - including private, password-protected intranets secured by encryption software.
"For only a few dollars, you can have encryption that exceeds the national encryption standard," he said. "The National Security Agency couldn't break through some of these hate intranets."
Raymond A. Franklin's Web site can be found at http://earthops.org/hatedir.html. For information on the Anti-Defamation League's upcoming Web filter, surf to www.adl.org.
Pub Date: 10/26/98