GREENSBORO, N.C. — Evan Booth says he’s building bombs as a public service.

The 31-year-old North Carolinian doesn't like to discuss politics. He's not anti-government. He says he just wants people to be informed.

And with his videos of explosive devices and other weapons crafted from items available for purchase beyond the security checkpoint in airports making the rounds across the Internet, it seems he’s accomplishing his goal.

Last month Booth posted to YouTube about 10 videos of weapons he made, and they promptly went viral, sparking debates about security at airports on blogs, niche Web forums and even Russian television and British radio.

His most popular video, “Fragguccino,” shows Booth sitting cross-legged in a friend’s backyard in North Carolina, wearing a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, a jacket and a paintball mask. The video has an embedded timer in the corner to show how quickly he can build a bomb.

With the timer counting upward, Booth disassembles a lithium AA battery and puts the contents in a stainless-steel travel coffee mug. He pours some water in a condom, ties the condom to the inner top of the mug and wraps the contraption in a magazine. As the clock approaches the eight-minute mark, he chucks the coffee mug behind him. It falls to the ground, quietly hisses for about two seconds, then explodes.

The explosion is loud and small, but Booth points out that he used only one AA battery in his tests. With a few more batteries, the explosion could be larger, he said.

The video accumulated 360,051 views before YouTube took it down for violating its policy on depicting harmful activities. That’s frustrating, Booth said, insisting he’s just out to educate the public.

“I consider it research,” he said. “I want to make my research compelling enough to speak for me. People can draw their own conclusions, and I’m going to make it as difficult for you to draw the wrong one as possible.”

While Booth prefers not to say what he thinks of politically charged topics such as post-9/11 security and the role of the government in protecting its citizens, his activities have added to a growing debate about the state of the nation’s security system. He joins a long line of tinkerers, lock pickers, bomb builders, hackers and security experts who have made it their mission to expose what they see as critical flaws in the modus operandi of U.S. agencies like the Transportation Security Administration.