UK Government Report Urges ISPs To Take Down Terrorist Content

A Government report on the roots of religious radicalization and terrorism has sent out a message to ISPs to curate and regulate potentially illegal content that incites terrorism, concluding that the internet "features in most, if not all, of the routes of radicalization."

The system currently in place in UK is a Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit: users report sites with content that could incite terrorism or religious fundamentalism for further investigation by law enforcement.  But this system has been thrown into question and doubt by the report, based upon concerns that this attempt to remedy the issue is too small for the magnitude of content, the report claims, is out there, which all comes as quite a contradiction to the research published in November last year.

Charles Farr, head of the office of Security and Counter-Terrorism is quoted as saying,

"Every internet service provider (ISP) has acceptable behaviour codes for use on their systems. So having that conversation, even where the website is operating in a broadly legal space, is not unusual for them. Governments all around the world have those conversations with ISPs every day, and the public will very often make their own representations to ISPs about particularly unacceptable content that may still be legal on websites around the world."

The report also calls out for greater international cooperation, as it heavily addresses the challenging global nature of this content creation.  An urge for universally enforceable policies is pushed for, to encourage not just the national removal of sites and content by ISPs; but also on a global scale.

A simple question needs to be asked here, just who should draw the line in what constitutes violent extremism?  We feel it shouldn't be ISPs; but who should this 'watchdog' be?

Source: Parliament