Let’s be clear about this: the UK government’s new initiative for reporting hate, extremism and terrorism online has a very limited shelf-life. On the other hand, what else could government have done?
To be fair to the Home Office, they have made it perfectly clear that “most hateful or violent website content is not illegal. While you may come across a lot of things on the internet that offend you, very little of it is actually illegal.” Good call, and a message it’s good to see reinforced. They also clearly indicate what steps you can take if you really think it falls foul of the indicators of potential illegality: first enquire of website administrators, then hosts, and contact police only as a last resort. The reporting page is here.
The new scheme provides a reporting mechanism direct to a five-person team in Whitehall, within the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) Prevent Delivery Unit. This is the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit, and they will decide if content submitted for review falls foul of legislation, and may be subject to Section 3 of the Terrorism Act (2006). This allows for notice-and-takedown (NTD) of content, although has yet to be used, mainly because it’s so difficult to decide what might, for example, constitute the ‘glorification’ of terrorism, and allied offences.
If we assume for now that there is even an argument for trying to remove certain types of material from the web then there are still problems with this scheme:
- it will probably be hijacked by single-issue groups (at least to start with)
- how does government maintain the visibility of this scheme?
- how are police competent to judge legality?
- it will have no transnational effect
- it won’t actually make any difference to the practical CT objectives of Whitehall
- how is this related to the ‘blacklist’ of sites that the Office of Security and Counterterrorism may or may not maintain?
Notwithstanding its minimal contribution to countering the production and consumption of extremist media, government opens itself up to potential ridicule, although I don’t think anyone’s going to be paying this much attention after a while.
It does have one important function, however. Government has painted itself into a corner over ‘internet terrorism’ and the role of content in radicalisation, etc. It has therefore spent two years trying to meet the challenge of ex-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith when she announced she wanted a zero-tolerance approach to online terrorist content. Pretty much everything else has failed and this scheme does have a communicative effect, even if it has little practical utility. What it can say, if handled properly, is a simple message: you cannot use the UK as a platform for terrorist media without censure. It’s a “sorry, you can’t do that here” statement that could fit snugly into a renewed attempt to demonstrate what exactly it is that the UK stands for.
This approach has worked with online child sexual abuse imagery, mediated by the Internet Watch Foundation, and the UK is no longer regarded as a place where paedophiles can exchange material with impunity. The total volume hasn’t changed but the ability to operate in UK cyberspace has. A similar concept seems to underpin this new initiative, which “aims to make the internet a more hostile environment for terrorists and violent extremists who seek to exploit modern technology.”
The whole thing can be derailed by one poor decision, of course, so the scheme has to be consistent from the start. Hopefully, it won’t actively seek to issue NTDs, let alone pursue prosecutions, and ‘do nothing’ should be the default position, as I always maintain.
In conclusion, this reporting and adjudication mechanism looks to be the ‘least worst’ thing government could have done. It hasn’t announced that this will ’solve’ the problems as they see it, and it hasn’t sought to grab the headlines by launching it. If managed well, this could have some real effect on online behaviours government sees as undesirable. It takes the heat off ISPs and hosting companies, restores a degree of responsibility to consumers, and is unequivocal that there is actually very little content likely to be affected.
At the end of the day, if you don’t like something, don’t read it or watch it. It won’t go away, whatever government does, but you can just go somewhere else, leaving the miniscule minority of ‘problematic’ internet users to do what they’re going to do anyway. They will shift their hosts abroad, as most of them did long ago, and carry on regardless. And they will do so knowing that the UK will not allow them to base their activities there.
The Register has the skinny on the UK’s new Communications Capabilities Directorate (CCD), as mentioned here the other day. Sod the iPad, or whatever it’s called, read this:
Home Office Spawns New Unit to Expand Internet Surveillance
Exclusive The Home Office has created a new unit to oversee a massive increase in surveillance of the internet, The Register has learned, quashing suggestions the plans are on hold until after the election.
The new Communications Capabilities Directorate (CCD) has been created as a structure to implement the £2bn Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP), sources said.
The CCD is staffed by the same officials who have have been working on IMP since 2007, but it establishes the project on a more formal basis in the Home Office. It is not yet included on the Home Office’s list of directorates.
The intelligence and law enforcement agencies have pushed hard for new laws to force communications providers to store details of who contacts whom, when, where and how via the internet.
However, following a consultation last year, when the Home Office’s plans were heavily criticised by ISPs and mobile companies, it was widely assumed progress on IMP would slow or stop. The CCD has continued meeting with industry to try to allay concerns about the project’s costs, effect on customer privacy and technical feasibility.
“The Home Office has long been working with communications service providers to take forward legislation providing for the retention of communications data,” a Home Office spokesman said. “That is continuing.”
“More recently, we have been considering how, in a changing communications environment, lawful acquisition of communications data and interception of communications can continue to save lives, to counter terrorism, to detect crime and prosecute offenders, and to protect the public.”
Officials envisage communications providers will maintain giant databases of everything their customers do online, including email, social networking, web browsing and making VoIP calls. They want providers to process the mass of data to link it to individuals, to make it easier for authorities to access.
Access to communications data is currently governed by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Under European legslation ISPs are required to retain basic information about what their customers do online, but not to open their data packets to record who they contact on Facebook, for example.
The Home Office spokesman added: “This is a diverse range of activity now organised within a single Communications Capabilities Directorate with its focus on work under current legislation.
“The Directorate will continue to consider the challenges posed by new technologies, working closely with communications service providers and others to bring forward proposals that command public confidence and demonstrate an appropriate balance between privacy and security.”
Work is also continuing at GCHQ in Cheltenham on its classified Mastering the Internet programme, which is developing systems and methods for extracting intelligence from the huge volumes of new surveillance data online services can generate.
Perhaps government could demonstrate the need for this before ploughing ahead against the interests of almost everyone consulted? Perhaps ‘command public confidence’ by stating exactly what this project is actually going to do, what safeguards there are, and why on earth we need it. Fat chance. We’ve got a war to fight, don’t you know.
This is totally unsubstantiated but if we are to believe T-Mobile’s Martin Hoskins, who blogs as Data Protector, the Home Office’s pet über-surveillance project, the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP), is not dead. In fact, it may have changed its name, presumably in an attempt to deflect attention from what is a controversial endeavour:
But, back to the point, the really big issue is about what “else” the state does with the powers (and the information) it has acquired. Civil liberties are very important because of the way these powers (and this information) can be misused. Tony Benn didn’t mind if his medical symptoms were on a hospital database, so that the doctors could look after him properly when he was ill, but he was not in favour of the establishment of databases for the control of people. He looks forward to the day when no one thinks it’s necessary to keep all our details on a database and watch everything we do. But I suspect we may have a long wait before that day eventually arrives.
And his thoughts gave me a lot to chew on as I attended (yet) another meeting of the “former” Interception Modernisation Programme a few days later. So you thought the IMP was dead? Well, Home Secretary should think very carefully before repeating some of those immortal lines of Monty Python star John Cleese, in the sketch where Mr Praline returned to the shop with his dead parrot:
“’E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!”
Hmmmmmm, I would expect the Home Scretary to use another line in the sketch, perhaps the line where the owner of the shop said “ No no he’s not dead, he’s, he’s restin’! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn’it, ay? Beautiful plumage!”
I’ll probably return to the examine the plumage of the revamped IMP in another blog. I won’t use its new name yet just in case I’m not supposed to. But, if you creep along past bits of the Home Office today and listen very carefully, just every now and again you can hear the faint refrain:
“The IMP is dead. Long live the CCD!”
You can bet that the ‘D’ stands for ‘database’ but the Cs could be anything. What do you think?
This is a must-read piece in the Telegraph. Those acquainted with my ill-formed ramblings in various outlets will recognise the echoes of my own concerns. If it takes an academic like Professor Ian Walden to start this specific debate, fine, but it’s amazing how little this topic has been addressed in the British media, i.e. the ‘justification argument’ for internet monitoring and surveillance. I endorse Walden’s reasoning in full.
Terrorism and Child Pornography Used to Justify Surveillance Society, Says Academic, 23 Jan 2010
The authorities have taken “advantage of the terrorist bombing in London” to erode civil liberties, according to Professor Ian Walden, an expert on internet communication and online security.
He said today’s “Orwellian” surveillance of our online habits was even more intrusive than the introduction of CCTV on Britain’s streets.
“You can now hide cameras but generally cameras are a physical manifestation of surveillance. With the internet, you are sitting at home which you think is private, but of course it is declared a public space because your service provider knows everywhere you’ve gone, everything you’ve downloaded, it knows everything, potentially”, he told The Daily Telegraph.
His comments come after the Government announced it was pressing ahead with privately held “Big Brother” databases that opposition leaders said amounted to “state-spying” and a form of “covert surveillance” on the public.
The police and security services are set to monitor every phone call, text message, email and website visit made by private citizens. The details are set to be stored for a year and will be available for monitoring by government bodies.
All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer’s personal communications, showing who they have contacted, when and where, as well as the websites they have visited.
Ministers had originally wanted to store the information on a single government run database, but backed down after privacy concerns were raised.
“Once happy to leave cyberspace ‘unregulated’, Governments, including that of the UK, seem increasingly willing to encroach on what we do, say and see over the Internet,” said Professor Walden, head of the Institute of Computer and Communications Law at Queen Mary, University of London.
He warned that increasing use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter will give the authorities access to information about individuals’ private lives.
”As we spend more of our lives online, concerns about the impact of surveillance on rights of expression and privacy are likely to increase,” he said.
Professor Walden, a former trustee on the Internet Watch Foundation, the industry self regulatory body, said that problems such as child pornography, illegal file sharing and terrorism are used to justify ‘Big Brother-like’ scrutiny of all internet activity, even though the vast majority of web users are law abiding.
“The police clearly took advantage of the terrorist bombing in London to get an agenda, which has been around for years, pushed to the forefront” he said.
“They would never have got Government support for data retention, which became a European issue, without the Madrid and London bombings.” The 2004 Madrid bombers used one shared web based email account to make plans, rather than exchanging messages that could be intercepted. Their actions killed 191 people and wounded over 1,000.
“Concerns from civil liberty groups are we will lose the liberties that we thought we had without necessarily notifying us. Why does the data on all of us have to be retained in order to find out about those that are bad?”
He highlighted the danger of laws created to catch dangerous criminals later being manipulated to spy on millions on households.
Local councils have been criticised for using anti-terrorism (RIPA) laws to snoop on residents suspected of littering and dog fouling offences.
“My concern is that its easy policy-making… if you say it’s against terrorism and it’s against child pornography then nobody is going to say no.”
His comments echo those made by Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, who last year accused ministers of interfering with people’s privacy and playing straight into the hands of terrorists, by creating a “police state”
The shift towards greater state control of online content, and how it will impinge on our rights, will be discussed by Professor Walden in his inaugural lecture at Queen Mary, University of London on Wednesday 3 February 2010.
So says Chris Morris, legendary British satirist, whose new jihadi ‘farce’ movie, Four Lions, premiers at Sundance tomorrow. For more details see this post from last January and watch an excerpt here, in which our cunning protagonist demonstrates his strategy for buying large quantities of hydrogen peroxide. Wonderful.
Expect howls of outrage from all quarters, calls for a ban, and general comment and misrepresentation from people who won’t have seen it. I haven’t seen it either but being familiar with Morris’ output over the years I can guarantee that reactions to the film will tell you everything you need to know about how incapable British society is of laughing at itself these days. He never fails to touch the nerve of the moment, and terrorism is certainly it.
