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Deutsch: Filterung des Internets als Teil der britischen Präventionsstrategie

The UK Home Office has recently published its new version of the Prevent Strategy aimed at countering terrorism, which includes worrying suggestions about the necessity of Internet filtering.

Besides the fact that one can read in the Prevent Strategy that "Internet filtering across the public estate is essential", the document also suggests the Home Office's intention to consider "the potential for violent and unlawful URL lists to be voluntarily incorporated into independent national blocking lists, including the list operated by the Internet Watch Foundation".

The document seems to ignore issues related to transparency, censorship or accountability as well as the technical and financial consequences, in one more attempt to solve a series of social problems by blocking access to the Internet as the source of all evils.

The strategy takes no consideration of the fact that, as UN Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue pointed out in his Report on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, website blocking would be a violation of rights to freedom of expression.

Furthermore, what is even more worrying is the tendency towards ignoring legal means in establishing the unlawfulness of a site and blocking it. The strategy says nothing about the legal process leading to blocking the access to a site - quite the contrary, there seems to suggest the need for collaboration between law enforcement authorities and the Internet industry that would result in voluntary removal on Internet content.

"This work will require effective dialogue with the private sector and in particular the internet industry. It will also require collaboration with international partners: the great majority of the websites and chat rooms which concern us in the context of radicalisation are hosted overseas," says the strategy report.

Moreover, according to the strategy report, TACT (the Terrorism Act) allows the Government to charge website owners with encouraging terrorism and publishing terrorist information if they do not remove unlawful content.

"TACT provides that those served with notices who fail to remove, without reasonable excuse, the material that is unlawful and terrorism-related within a specified period are treated as endorsing it."

As many freedom advocates have several times emphasised, blocking access to Internet sites is no real solution in preventing harms, while affecting, at the same time, the users' rights to freedom of expression and access to information.

Censorship of the Internet is also suggested by Reg Bailey, Chief Executive of the UK Mothers Union, who has recently published a series of worrying recommendations for privacy and confidentiality of communications.

In his "Letting Children be Children - Report of an Independent Review of the Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood", Bailey suggests making it easier for parents to block adult and age-restricted material from the Internet by providing "a consistent level of protection across all media" and that, "as a matter of urgency, the internet industry should ensure that customers must make an active choice over what sort of content they want to allow their children to access".

The implication of Bailey's report, which seems to entirely disregard the censorship issues and the technical implications of the measures proposed, is that the entire UK telecom industry should impose communications surveillance, with Internet users forced to "opt out" of the censorship.

"Specifically, we would like to see industry agreeing ... that when a new device or service is purchased or contract entered into, customers would be asked to make an active choice about whether filters should be switched off or on: they would be given the opportunity to choose to activate the solution immediately, whether it be network-level filtering by an ISP or pre-installed software on a new laptop."

Again, the most unrealistic measures are being considered because they are, apparently, the simplest, in an attempt to eliminate the symptoms and not the causes. Real measures such as the education and supervision of children by their parents don't really seem to be encouraged.

Home Office - Prevent Strategy
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/counter-terrorism/review-of-prevent-strat...

Home Office Prevent strategy claims: 'Internet filtering is essential' (10.06.2011)
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2011/prevent-strategy-claims:-inte...

UK 'blacklist' of terrorist-supporting websites should be developed, Government says (8.06.2011)
http://www.out-law.com/page-11988

Media industry relaxed over Bailey report on sexualisation of children (7.06.2011)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jun/07/media-industry-bailey-repo...

Mothers Crawl Into Bed with Big Brother (7.06.2011)
https://nodpi.org/2011/06/07/mothers-crawl-into-bed-with-big-brother/

UN - Human Rights Council - Report of the Special Rapporteur on thepromotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue (16.05.2011)
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/17session/A.HRC.17...