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Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister, made a statement on 14 November 2007 announcing, among other security measures, the intention to ask Internet companies to assist the government in its fight against online terrorist propaganda by finding ways to stop such content.
The Prime Minister stated the 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 proposal comes in line with the European Union efforts to find ways to sanction Web sites that display terror material.
The Home Office said it was not yet clear if Brown's proposal would need new legislation or only different means of enforcing the present one. According to the British law, it is forbidden to publish statements encouraging terrorism or to disseminate any material considered as terrorist, such as bomb-making information. Based on the so-called "notice and take down" procedures, Internet service providers can be required by companies, authorities and even individuals to remove illegal content such as terrorist material or child pornography.
One measure could be the shutting down of allegedly faulty sites including sites hosted abroad. A list of banned sites could be drafted by the government, similarly to the one created by Internet Watch Foundation in 2004 which is up-dated twice a day blocking the access of Britons to overseas child pornography.
Another method could be to ask search engines to filter out prohibited content from their search results, or to find ways to stop key words such as "bomb" from leading to terrorist-related sites.
According to EDRI-member Ian Brown, researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, the proposal is fundamentally a losing one and the proposed measures would have very little effectiveness as terrorist content could still be published through file-sharing networks, discussion forums, or access material by means of sophisticated software programs and proxy servers allowing users to anonymously browse the Internet.
UK Wants Net Companies to Fight Terror (14.11.2007)
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iUjUtJoE-EKmRVrc3la5fFUp_8SgD8STLKU...
PM statement on security measures (14.11.2007)
http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page13757.asp