30 May 13 | United Kingdom
Banning hate preachers from the airwaves is the wrong response
Theresa May’s proposals to ban radical preachers from the airwaves and block extremist websites are illiberal, impractical and may breach the UK’s commitment to human rights.
What a difference a month makes. Just weeks after a Queen’s Speech that heralded the end of the draft Communications Data Bill (aka the ‘Snoopers’ Charter’), the government seems to be mounting a dramatic U-turn after the attack in Woolwich. Home Secretary Theresa May has signalled plans are afoot for wider surveillance powers, new bars on the broadcast of radical preachers and the blocking of extremist websites. This is the wrong response. Not only would these measures be wrong in principle, they are likely to make the fight against extremism harder as the government undermines the values it seeks to promote.
It is expected that a new task force will propose granting Ofcom the power to pre-emptively bar radical preachers from the television, in response to Anjem Choudary’s invitation onto Newsnight. Right now, Ofcom can intervene after an unacceptable broadcast has been made. It’s not as if Ofcom wants additional powers – it has publicly stated its powers are already sufficient to tackle extremism on television and the internet. Not unreasonably, Ofcom doesn’t want to get into the censorship game with its staff instructing TV stations which preachers they can and cannot broadcast. It’s not even clear how pre-emptive censorship would work – is the Home Secretary going to create a list of people so undesirable they can’t appear on television (but not so extremist they could be prosecuted for an actual crime)? This heavy-handed political interference in the working of the media would be totally unacceptable in a free country. Former Home Secretary Jack Straw, John Whittingdale MP and former BBC director-general Greg Dyke have all expressed their concerns over this knee-jerk response with Dyke adding: “The point is that the BBC makes its own editorial decisions. If they turn out to be wrong someone can make a complaint to Ofcom afterwards. But you fundamentally change the BBC’s role if they can intervene before. It isn’t workable.”
This isn’t in fact a new proposal. The British government has tried this tactic before by censoring the voices of leading Sinn Fein spokespeople. After a visit to Poland during which Margaret Thatcher told her Communist hosts ‘In modern societies, success depends on openness and free discussions’, her government back home banned the voices of groups associated with terrorism from television. Instead actors had to dub over the words spoken by these group’s spokespeople. Not only was the legislation unworkable, it was embarrassing. When Gerry Adams visited the USA in February 1994, US broadcasters boasted of carrying the voice of ‘the man whose voice is banned in Britain’. There is little doubt Choudary would exploit any ban on his appearance on TV.
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This embarrassment would have profound implications for our role in attempting to promote freedom in the world. How would the Foreign Office be able to decry the trampling of media or internet freedom in Belarus or Iran, if the Home Secretary is busy creating the lists of individuals banned from British TV and which websites to block? How would the British government point to the principle of freedom of expression after controversies such as the Innocence of Muslims when it would be censoring individuals before they have even aired views?
Tough laws are already in place. The Terrorism Act 2000 has proven too broad in scope and detrimental towards freedom of expression. Section 57 of the Terrorism Act makes it illegal to possess an article for a purpose connected with terrorism which has criminalised the study of extremist or terrorist ideology. In 2008, Rizwaan Sabir, a student was arrested on suspicion of possessing extremist material after he worked on his PhD on radical Islamic groups. He was arrested and detained for 6 days and subsequently released without charge. Curtailing researchers’ ability to examine and deconstruct terrorism is just one way in which this law is detrimental to our security.
Anjem Choudary will have his fingers crossed for a TV ban, so he can level the charge of hypocrisy at the British government. Theresa May should not rise to the bait. Inciting violence is already illegal, the law should be enforced. Yet, creating lists by political dictat of who can and can’t appear on TV or the internet is a step too far. If we are to tackle violent extremism it will require the full exposure of flawed opinions to open scrutiny.
Michael Harris, Head of Advocacy, Index on Censorship. Follow him on Twitter @mjrharris
This article originally appeared at politics.co.uk
29 May 13 | Europe and Central Asia
Theresa May’s comments on the Andrew Marr Show have lead to a round of speculation around the actions that the Home Secretary will take in the wake of Woolwich, especially in regard to the shelved Communications Data Bill.
Home Secretary Theresa May appeared on the Andrew Marr Show. See the video. (Photo: BBC)
Kirsty Hughes, Chief Executive of Index on Censorship said:
“May is using Woolwich as an excuse to argue for bringing back a totally disproportionate measure of population-wide data collection that no democracy should countenance. The law already allows for those inciting violence to be prosecuted. The best way to contest hate speech is with more speech not less speech. The government shouldn’t be creating lists of who should and shouldn’t appear on TV.”
May told Marr on Sunday, “we need to see if there are additional steps we should be taking to prevent radicalisation”.
May told the BBC One host that the government would be looking at banning orders, as well as the role of Ofcom.
“There is no doubt that people are able to watch things through the internet that can lead to radicalisation,” she said.
Related: Could “snooper’s charter” stop terror attacks?
24 May 13 | News and features, United Kingdom
Some UK politicians have said the murder of a soldier in Woolwich, London this week demonstrates the need for greater surveillance of communications data. But would a “snooper’s charter” really have made a difference? Index asked Emma Carr of Big Brother Watch and Jamie Bartlett of Demos for their views
Emma Carr, Deputy Director of Big Brother Watch
Emma Carr, Big Brother Watch
John Reid’s and others’ attempt to make a political argument about “essential” legislation just hours after the brutal murder in Woolwich this week was remarkable, given how little was known at the time and the fact the victim’s family had not even been informed of his death.
Yes, it is right to examine how our security services could have been aided to prevent the horrific scenes we saw in Woolwich this week, but to jump to conclusions and use the politics of fear to promote an agenda before the any detail is available is simply wrong.
Indeed, as the facts have begun to emerge, it seems the answer may look very different to the draft Communications Data bill.
If, as is reported to be the case, these two individuals were known to the security services — as was also the case for several of those involved in the 7/7 attack — then plainly it seems strange to suggest a policy that would collect data on every member of the public, massively increasing the volume of data the security services have to sift through. We should be asking what resources the security services need to expand their knowledge of people ‘on the radar’.
The choice isn’t between a communications data bill or nothing. Far from it. Indeed, as details of this horrific attack become clear, it is looking more likely that the “Snooper’s Charter” would not have prevented. If it is a case of two individuals, working together but not as part of a wider organisation, then internet records may not be a critical factor. Of course, their personal devices — laptops, mobiles and other technology — will have a huge amount of information on them, far more than the bill would have created.
Equally, it’s worth noting the draft Communications Data Bill prohibited the storing or viewing of the content of communications. When someone is considered a significant enough threat for security services to prohibit them leaving the country, frankly I would hope the content of their messages is being read. The powers currently exist to order the retention of data on an individual, but that has a 30 day time limit. This seems unduly restrictive on the police, and should be extended.
Even if other powers were used to intercept messages, British courts still block the use of intercept evidence in court, an handicap not seen in the US or countless other countries.
The nature of terrorism has changed significantly over the past decade. Low-tech equipment and so-called “lone wolf” attackers are clearly now a real threat. The Communications Data Bill was a concept formed in the middle of the last decade, and is rapidly looking both disproportionate and out of date.
As announced in the Queen’s speech, the Government is already working on ensuring that the police can identify who is using a certain internet IP address to enable them to trace threats. It should be possible to do this in a way that supports the police, as well as protecting privacy, and it is right the Government is focusing on this important step.
But to use this tragedy as a springboard for recording the details of every British citizen’s emails, web browsing and social media messages is both a failure to learn the lessons of recent incidents and a continuing failure to recognise that surveillance of an entire population is both an unacceptable intrusion on our freedoms and a chilling effect on free expression for anyone communicating in, or with, the UK. It also risks diverting resources away from the security services at a time when they are more in need of targeted surveillance than ever before.
@EmmaFrancesCarr
Jamie Bartlett, Head, Violence and Extremism programme, Demos
Jamie Bartlett, Demos
I wrote back in April, after Nick Clegg announced on LBC he would be sinking the Communications Data Bill, that it would be back soon. This was because both Committees (there were two, one in secret) that reviewed the Draft Bill last year accepted that changes in the way we communicate makes it harder for the security services, HMRC and the police to get hold of the information they need to do their work effectively. Both agreed that new powers were needed soon. They just didn’t think much of the Home Office’s proposals.
I didn’t expect it to be quite so soon. Even though I’ve been mildly in favour of the Bill, I was disappointed to see Lords Carlile and Reid, eight short hours after someone had been brutally murdered, suggest that this might mean reviving the Bill. To give the Home Office some credit, I’m not sure they’ve been quite so bullish, and neither has the Prime Minister.
Distasteful it may be, but there is one point I agree with: whenever we make legislation relating to security or counter-terrorism, we need to remember that threat from Al-Qaeda inspired — and other — violent groups, is significant. Proportionality is a vital consideration any time we give legal powers of surveillance, and that means knowing what the threat is. At times, the debates on the “Snooper’s Charter” — and I took part in quite a lot of them — felt like it was taking place in a vacuum. So few people from the security side (where were all the terrorism experts that are now omnipresent, for example?) were willing to debate the issue that the argument was lop-sided. It was being widely derided as nothing more than a measure to give more powers of surveillance, rather than an attempt to improve public safety and security in a way that was necessary and proportionate.
I’m sceptical that the Communications Data Bill could have prevented this attack. It required very little coordination, technical know how or planning: almost impossible to spot and stop. But it may have been useful in the aftermath. The first thing on the minds of the police and security services would have been whether this was part of a coordinated series of attacks, and they would have wanted to know, very quickly, who these two had been communicating with and when. Imagining the types of forums they likely visited, it might very well have been the sorts of communications service providers wouldn’t have been able or willing to share rapidly. Communications data may also be important in the week ahead for longer-term investigations and in securing convictions of any collaborators, if there were any. But — and it is a big but — I am speculating. I simply do not know.
Either way, this one attack should not dictate our counter-terrorism laws. A new settlement is needed, not because of this incident, but because of changes in communication, attitudes to privacy, the new possibilities of mass surveillance, and the growing complexity of terrorist and criminal activity. As I’ve argued elsewhere, social media intelligence is of increasing value to the police in particular, but its regulation and use under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act remains unclear. This Act as a whole needs a re-refresh, and communications data is an important part of that. But this week is not the time to do that.
@JamieJBartlett
08 May 13 | Digital Freedom, Newswire
Today’s impressively short Queen’s Speech contained two nuggets of interest for Index readers. Firstly, there was the mention of intellectual propety:
A further Bill will make it easier for businesses to protect their intellectual property
The debate over copyright and free speech has been fraught, with widespread criticism of governmental attempts to create laws on copyright on the web. (Read Brian Pellot on World Intellectual Property Day here here and Joe McNamee’s “Getting Copyright Right” here.)
This is something the government will have to treat very carefully, and the consultation should be fascinating.
Further in, the speech addressed crime in cyberspace:
In relation to the problem of matching internet protocol addresses, my government will bring forward proposals to enable the protection of the public and the investigation of crime in cyberspace.
Here’s more detail from the background briefing:
The Government is committed to ensuring that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the powers they need to protect the public and ensure national security. These agencies use communications data – the who, when, where and how of a communication, but not its content – to investigate and prosecute serious crimes. Communications data helps to keep the public safe: it is used by the police to investigate crimes, bring offenders to justice and to save lives. This is not about indiscriminately accessing internet data of innocent members of the public.
As the way in which we communicate changes, the data needed by the police is no longer always available. While they can, where necessary and proportionate to do so as part of a specific criminal investigation, identify who has made a telephone call (or
sent an SMS text message), and when and where, they cannot always do the same for communications sent over the internet, such as email, internet telephony or instant messaging. This is because communications service providers do not retain
all the relevant data.
When communicating over the Internet, people are allocated an Internet Protocol (IP) address. However, these addresses are generally shared between a number of people. In order to know who has actually sent an email or made a Skype call, the
police need to know who used a certain IP address at a given point in time. Without this, if a suspect used the internet to communicate instead of making a phone call, it may not be possible for the police to identify them.
The Government is looking at ways of addressing this issue with CSPs. It may involve legislation.
Eagle-eyed observers will note that this echoes what Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told LBC listeners on 25 April, after announcing that the dreaded Communications Data Bill (aka the “Snooper’s Charter”) was to be dropped. Clegg suggested then that IP addresses could be assigned to each individual device.
As I wrote at the time, “New proposals for monitoring and surveillance will no doubt emerge, and will be subject to the same scrutiny and criticism as the previous attempts to establish a Snooper’s Charter.”
Well, here we are.
Padraig Reidy is senior writer for Index on Censorship. @mePadraigReidy
