Dealing with Terrorist Material On-line

Having been involved, a long time ago, in discussions of the Bill that became the Terrorism Act 2006, I was surprised to see a headline that “MPs urge internet providers to tackle on-line extremism”. That Act is one of the few where a hosting site can commit a serious criminal offence if they don’t take down or modify extremist material that is the subject of a notice (ss 3&4), so it seemed unlikely that it was being ignored.

In fact, the evidence presented to the Home Affairs Committee by the police confirms that the notice and takedown provisions are “successful”, with material being taken down “almost exclusively voluntarily” when UK hosting providers are notified of it by the Home Office Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (Q233). The only problems quoted in the Committee's report are with “big internet companies who are hosting extremist videos in places like YouTube, Google, Facebook” (para 55), with the police’s national coordinator recognising that “there was a need for greater international cooperation, given that most of the websites are hosted outside the UK's jurisdiction” (para 56). Within the UK, the Police proposed "greater collaboration with academia to learn best practice, and with internet companies because they tend to have the most up-to-date technology" (Q233), as well as greater publicity for the CTIRU referral site.