[Infowarrior] - UK Wants Net Companies to Fight Terror

[Richard Forno]

UK Wants Net Companies to Fight Terror
Wednesday November 14, 3:26 pm ET
By Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press Writer
Britain's Prime Minister Says He Will Enlist Internet Companies to Fight
Online Terror

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071114/britain_terrorism_online.html?.v=2

LONDON (AP) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants Internet companies
to help stifle online terrorist propaganda, he told lawmakers Wednesday, as
officials say they plan to meet leading service providers to find ways of
putting a lid on extremist content.

But the providers argue they already do all they can to fight illegal
terrorist material online, and experts say even powerful filters cannot
block determined users from getting their message out.

"Fundamentally, it's a losing proposition," said Ian Brown, a research
fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, noting that even countries such as
China and Myanmar have had trouble with their online censorship efforts.

The prime minister's proposal comes as the European Union considers ways to
sanction Web sites that display terror propaganda or recruit for terrorist
groups.

Addressing lawmakers, the prime minister said Home Secretary Jacqui Smith
was "inviting the largest global technology and Internet companies to work
together to ensure that our best technical expertise is galvanized to
counter online incitement to hatred."

The Home Office said it would meet leading British Internet service
providers to examine ways of curbing online propaganda, but said Brown's
plan had not yet been considered in detail. Not clear, for instance, was
whether the plan would require new laws or different ways of enforcing
existing regulations.

British law already forbids the publication of statements likely to be seen
as encouraging terrorism or the dissemination of terrorist material, such as
bomb-making information, according to the Internet Watch Foundation, an
EU-funded body that works with the British government to monitor and remove
illegal online content.

Under so-called "notice and take down" procedures, authorities, companies
and individuals can demand that Internet service providers remove content
considered to be unlawful. That includes child pornography, as well
libelous, obscene or terrorist material, the group said.

Although the removal of child pornography is relatively uncontroversial,
service providers have expressed unhappiness at having to shut down their
customers' sites over, for example, allegations of libel, where guilt is
difficult to determine at a glance. They are unlikely to welcome similar
demands over material that allegedly glorifies terrorism.

Besides taking down their own customers' sites, service providers also might
be pressured to block ones hosted abroad. The government might draw up a
list of banned sites, similar to one the Internet Watch Foundation has
maintained since 2004 and updates twice daily to block Britons from visiting
child pornography sites hosted overseas.

Another method might be to persuade search engines like Google Inc. or Yahoo
Inc. to filter out prohibited content from their search results, or manage
their searches so that the words "bomb," "al-Qaida," or "video" did not lead
users to terrorist-related sites.

But both these measures would do little to deter the computer-literate youth
being targeted by al-Qaida, Ian Brown said. He noted that users could still
swap terror-related content through file-sharing networks, discussion
forums, or access material through sophisticated proxy servers and programs
that allow users to browse the Net anonymously.

Efforts to use Internet service providers to police online content amounted
to a "censorship proposal" and was bound to be problematic, said John Gage,
vice president and chief researcher for Sun Microsystems Inc.

"It's one of these things that's going to be very difficult to implement,"
he said.

Associated Press Writer Michael Astor in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, contributed
to this story.