Compares the harm to society to that of child pornography.
A few days ago British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith compared the recruitment of impressionable youngsters by Islamic militants on the Internet to the online stalking of children by pedophiles. She then said that the British govt. wants the Internet industry to help combat militant Islamism on the Web in the same way it cooperates in fighting sex crime against children.
“Let me be clear. The Internet is not a no-go area for government,” she told a security conference.
“If we are ready and willing to take action to stop the grooming of the vulnerable young on social networking sites, then I believe we should also take action against those who groom vulnerable people for the purposes of violent extremism.”
Smith said she planned to consult with the Internet industry in the coming weeks. “Where there is illegal material on the Net, I want it removed,” she said.
She later told reporters it should be possible to develop filters to remove militant material from the Web like those commonly used to stop children accessing adult content.
“The fact that something is difficult doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do it,” she said.
Many are rightly skeptical about the feasibility of the plan, which may be hosted anywhere in the world, or blocking access to them. When sites are shut, the same material often pops up instantly elsewhere on another site.
ISPs are wary of the proposal noting that combating Islamic militants involves issues of free speech and subtle distinctions between material that is illegal and content that is merely objectionable. They say it is not their job to police billions of Web pages and so the onus is on the authorities to bring criminal content to their attention.
But, MI5 spy chief Jonathan Evans apparently said last November that the agency knew of at least 2,000 British-based individuals who posed a direct threat to national security because of their support for terrorism and that children as young as 15 were being groomed to carry out attacks. With the threat to public safety that militant Islamism poses to British society being very real it seems only logical that it should be as important if not more so than child pornography.
Is the plan feasible? Not really in my opinion, but considering the deaths and the chaos that militant Islamism has already caused in that country failure shouldn’t be caused by a lack of trying.
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it’s about time someone recognized the need to start taking this sort of crap off the internet. the UK gov. has the wherewithal to stamp this out so those fanatics better watch out…or maybe they shouldn’t i’d love to see a fanatic geek face when the SAS come knocking on their door.
Yeah keep begging for censorship…see how quickly it spreads like the plague. If these people are commiting a crime then they should be arrested. Filters will only be used in devious ways. They will end up “accidentally” blocking harmless sites. Maybe protest sites. People should never be kept from information. Don’t forget to keep trusting your masters.
@Windoz9x
I tend to agree BUT considering that the result of allowing it to flourish – inaction – has been subway bombings bus bombings and the general death and murder of hundreds of people it shouldnt be allowed to exist under the same banner of free speech as everything else just as child pornography isn’t given safe haven.
Yeah free speech for everyone apart from the people I REALLY REALLY disagree with. A guy named Goebbels had a similar attitude to free expression.
So did Hitler…
But the obvious stereotyping aside if you don’t want your kids to actually go on sites like this it’s called parental supervision on the internet y’know watch your kids that you decided you wanted when you were a foolish teenager and now they’re no longer cute feed bags but full fledged mindless WoW players who have violent spats for no apparent reason.
Not to say that you watch them all the time but check out the sites they go to every so often the history is great for things like that kids before they’re 15 have no idea how to operate the history functions in IE except for the ones that you don’t have to really worry about.
Honestly though how many ‘Radical Islam’ sites do you know of that are actually in English I for one have seen a grand total of 0 mind you I don’t look for rubbish like that it’s still rediculous to think that kids are gonna start looking for suicide bomber sites to be blunt I think it’s probably more likely it’s the middle managers of the world (see fight club
) who are fed up with their jobs and want to go out with a bang!
It’s state of fear stuff all over again. Get people to accept filtering for stuff that really scares them create a few new laws that will allow mass censorship and then drive free speech totally underground which incidentally is all that will happen to the “Radical” content they’re talking about. The only people who will be put off will be those that want to openly protest about it – the ordinary decent living folk of the world.
Good old multiculturalism hey.. Works like a charm.
Still Any form of censorship is bad in my books. that said the government shouldn’t have let them in the country. Don’t go changing the laws of the the land remove the people that don’t respect them.
I’m not for Censorship either but if the sight is used to make Death Threats on innocent People (Infedels) Then the Perpretators should be Locked Up and Charged with Terroristic Threatening just like Anyone else would or could be Charged with in a Civilized World .
fuck Jacqui Smith she’s a fascist new world order skank