Glorification of Censorship

1st Official Website Censor

The UK has a very real problem with websites that incite terrorism, and if we are not careful the government's preferred cure could be as bad as the disease itself. Faced with the impossibility of policing material that originates from abroad, the home secretary is now planning to appoint herself the UK's first official censor.

In 2006, the government passed a law banning the display of material that "directly or indirectly" encouraged terrorism.

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I also know, or hope I know, that the decision to close a site will not be left in the hands of humble beat officers, who have after all, previously arrested wearers of anti-Blair t-shirts for "offensiveness". That said, I'm not sure I trust more senior policemen either. After all, it was an officer with the met's obscene publications unit who leant on satirical site thinkofthechildren on the grounds it "could" incite violence. There's a weasel word, if ever there was one: so many things "could" glorify terrorism.

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Sadly, this only catches UK-hosted websites, which are a small proportion of the whole: the most prolific inciters of terrorism lie well beyond the reach of the most dedicated UK copper. This is a biased law, but it's also a figleaf: a symptom of government pretending that something can be done.

Yet government now wishes to do more. Recently, the home office informed me that the government has been working … to develop filtering software [to protect] against illegal material that promotes or encourages terrorism

Herein lies the real risk from terrorism. It's all very well arguing that terrorism sites are pernicious, evil, etc. But what the home office is doing is equally dangerous. Substituting police opinion for due process may be operationally efficient: but it is an erosion of legality.

Replacing a properly enacted power to block banned sites with a filtering process that will permit the home secretary to censor by executive fiat strikes at the core of civil liberties in this country..

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More criticisms Jacqui: You really need to get your sister's house in order

More than a year after Jacqui Smith gave a major speech on counter terrorism, in which she said she wanted jihadi literature removed from the web, the internet industry has seen scant sign of action from the government.

On January 17 2008, Smith told an international conference on radicalisation that material that glorifies terrorism, made illegal under the Terrorism Act 2006, should be blocked. Where there is illegal material on the net, I want it removed, she said.

Earlier that day she had told Radio 4's Today Programme: We need to work with internet service providers, we need to actually use some of the lessons we've learned for example about how to protect children from paedophiles and grooming on the internet to inform the way in which we use it to prevent violent extremism and to tackle terrorism as well. We have a responsibility... to cut off the supply of those who want to look to violent extremism.

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Stopping extremist websites operating was one of the measures unveiled by Tony Blair in the aftermath of the 7 July suicide bombings in London in 2005.

Although the powers were enshrined in law with the Terrorism Act 2006, the Home Office has now admitted that not a single website has been shut down in the past two years.

Under Section 3 of the legislation, a police officer can order that unlawfully terrorism-related material is removed or modified within two working days.

However, Vernon Coaker, a Home Office minister, said: The preferred route of the police is to use informal contact with the communication service providers to request that the material is removed. To date no Section 3 notices have been issued as this informal route has proved effective. Coaker added: Statistics covering the number of sites removed through such informal contact are not collected.

Patrick Mercer, the Conservative backbench MP who obtained the information, said he was shocked that despite spending over £100million on preventing radicalization, not a single extremist website had been closed down.

The Terrorism Act 2006 granted powers for police to compel web hosts to shut down websites promoting terrorism. But the powers have never been used, and forces have instead persuaded providers to take down websites voluntarily, according to the security minister Lord West.

He told the Lords on Wednesday that he could not say how many websites have been censored because no records have been kept.

When we passed the Act in 2006, we laid down a requirement to make such records, but it has not really been done, he said.

When measures against extremist websites were announced, the government suggested ISPs might introduce filtering arrangements similar to the Internet Watch Foundation's blocklist of URLs leading to images of child abuse. No system has emerged, however, and industry sources say the idea is not being discussed.

A Pakistani student was sentenced to six months in prison for sending a DVD containing scenes of terrorist atrocities to his neighbours.

Illegal immigrant Bilal Malik a student at Dundee University, admitted a breach of the peace.

He faces deportation after serving his sentence.

Police have arrested a man on suspicion of encouraging muslims to attack MPs.

The individual is thought to be involved with a website that praised the stabbing of the MP Stephen Timms and published a list of other MPs who voted for the war in Iraq, along with details of where to buy a knife.

West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit arrested the man and conducted a search of his home in the Dunstall area of Wolverhampton. Officers seized computer and electronic equipment, police said.

The man was being questioned under section one of the Terrorism Act 2006 on suspicion of encouraging an act of terrorism.

Detective Chief Inspector John Denley said: We are treating the contents and implications of this blog very seriously, and have taken action this morning to progress our investigation.

The website, Revolution Muslim, was hosted in Bellevue, Washington, and was taken down by the Americans at the request of the Home Office.

The website praised Roshonara Choudhry, who tried to stab Timms to death during a constituency surgery in Beckton, East London.

The website said: We ask Allah for her action to inspire Muslims to raise the knife of jihad against those who voted for the countless rapes, murders, pillages, and torture of Muslim civilians as a direct consequence of their vote.

The statement added: If you want to track an MP, you can find out their personal website after typing their name in this website.

A link on the website took the reader to the site of Tesco Direct for a £15 kitchen knife, similar to that used by Choudhry.

The site also featured videos and statements by Awlaki and by former members of al-Muhajiroun, Anjem Choudary and Omar Bakri Mohammed.

Update: Charged

21st November 2010. See article from guardian.co.uk

A man appeared in court charged with soliciting murder and offences under the Terrorism Act in relation to a blog listing MPs it claimed voted for the Iraq war. Bilal Zaheer Ahmad, from Wolverhampton, was arrested last week over the blog, which allegedly called for action against the MPs.

The details appeared on a website that was said to have radicalised a young woman who went on to stab the former minister Stephen Timms during an advice surgery in east London in revenge for the Iraq war. Ahmad appeared handcuffed as he stood between two security officers in the dock at London's City of Westminster Magistrates' Court.

He was remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey on 29 November.

A law student who posted Islamic terrorist propaganda on the internet after becoming radicalised has been jailed for five years.

Mohammed Gul was pouring petrol on the fire and his actions could have spurred others to commit acts of terror, the Old Bailey heard.

Gul was found guilty of five counts of disseminating terrorist publications following a retrial at the Old Bailey.

Judge David Paget said his sentence had to be a deterrent to others and reflect the seriousness of the crime.

The judge praised the anti-terrorist police who, he said, had a Herculean task in reviewing the huge amount of material found on Gul's laptop. It had involved the biggest review of data ever undertaken by the anti-terrorist branch of Scotland Yard and involved 30 officers over a period of six months, he said.

A campaign has been launched in response to a threat from lone terrorists - individuals with no direct links to groups such as al-Qaeda who are radicalised through information they find online.

The Home Office has launched a website (www.direct.gov.uk/reportingonlineterrorism) where members of the public can report material on the internet which could be used to incite terrorism.

British police will then try to take the information down to prevent the radicalisation of people in the UK. [It seems to be missing the step where someone examines the material to see if it is actually a threat...Complainers are not always right, although the police seem to think so].

Tayside Assistant Chief Constable Colin McCashey, Scotland's head of counter-terrorism, said:

The main cause of concern is the use of the internet. We look at that from two angles. One is that if I was in a country 1,000 miles away I could communicate with would-be terrorists, or people vulnerable to radicalisation, via the internet. This has become more of a threat to us.

The other is that we are aware of people who may be sitting in the comfort of their own home, looking at the internet, who are becoming more aware of what is on the internet.

We might be faced with problem individuals who are not part of a network, who are not connected to al-Qaeda, but who take it on themselves and act as a lone terrorist.

It does not take a great deal of imagination to realise how difficult that is to deal with.

Information leaflets and posters have been sent to every police force in the UK advising the public on how to identify and report offensive or illegal terrorism related content.

Security minister, Baroness Neville-Jones, said that it's vital that online extremism is taken seriously: I want to encourage those who come across extremist websites as part of their work to challenge it and report it through the DirectGov webpage.

By forging relationships with the internet industry and working with the public in this way, we can ensure that terrorist use of the internet does not go unchallenged.

Websites reported to Directgov via its online form are referred to the national Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit. The specialist team of police experts work with industry and partners in the UK and abroad to investigate and take down illegal or offensive material if necessary.

In the last year, reporting through Directgov has led the government to remove content which has included beheading videos, terrorist training manuals and calls for racial or religious violence.

The Reporting extremism and terrorism online website defines what content is of interest:

What makes offensive content illegal

Not all offensive content is illegal.

The Terrorism Acts 2000 and 2006 made it illegal to:

• have or share information that could be useful to terrorists
• share information that urges people to commit or help with acts of terrorism
• glorify or praise terrorism

Examples of what makes terrorist or extremist content illegal are:

• speeches or essays calling for racial or religious violence
• videos of violence with messages of praise for the attackers
• chat forums with postings calling for people to commit acts of terrorism
• messages intended to stir up hatred against any religious or ethnic group
• instructions on how to make weapons, poisons or bombs

Jailing Bilal Zaheer Ahmad for 12 years, Mr Justice Royce said he was sending out a loud and clear warning that Britain would not tolerate extremists preaching messages of hate and violence.

Ahmad who called on Muslims to murder MPs who supported the Iraq war, was the first person to be found guilty of inciting religious hatred under new laws banning the publication of inflammatory material.

The IT worker praised 21-year-old university student Roshonara Choudhry as a heroine for stabbing Stephen Timms in east London in May last year. Ahmad called on other Muslims to follow in her footsteps by attacking and killing politicians who had voted to support the war in Iraq. He posted a full list of MPs and provided an internet link to their personal contact details, suggesting constituency surgeries were a good place to encounter them in person.

The judge told Ahmad: You purport to be a British citizen, but what you stand for is totally alien to what we stand for in our country. You became a viper in our midst willing to go to as far as possible to strike at the heart of our system.

Website should be monitored and material that promotes violent extremism should be removed. A nine-month inquiry by the Commons home affairs select committee concluded the internet is a fertile breeding ground for terrorism and plays a part in most, if not all, cases of violent radicalisation.

ISPs should be more active in monitoring sites and the government should work with them to develop a code of practice for removing material that could lead to radicalisation, the report said.

The inquiry found that the internet played a greater role in violent radicalisation than prisons, universities or places of worship, and was now one of the few unregulated spaces where radicalisation is able to take place.

But it added that a sense of grievance was key, and direct personal contact with radicals was a significant factor. The government's counter-terrorism strategy should show the British state is not antithetical to Islam, the committee said. Keith Vaz, its chairman, said:

More resources need to be directed to these threats and to preventing radicalisation through the internet and in private spaces. These are the fertile breeding grounds for terrorism.

The July 7 bombings in London, carried out by four men from West Yorkshire, were a powerful demonstration of the devastating and far-reaching impact of home-grown radicalisation.

We remain concerned by the growing support for non-violent extremism and more extreme and violent forms of far-right ideology.

He added that a policy of engagement, not alienation would prevent radicalisation and called for the government's counter-radicalisation strategy Prevent to be renamed Engage.

Nick Pickles, director of civil liberties and privacy group Big Brother Watch, said:

Whatever the reason for blocking online content, it should be decided in court and not by unaccountable officials.

There is a serious risk that this kind of censorship not only makes the internet less secure for law-abiding people, but drives underground the real threats and makes it harder to protect the public.