European undercover project to Attack Online Jihad
Posted on April 13, 2009
According to a recent article in The Register, the British, German, Netherlands and Czech Republic governments are co-operating on a cvonfidential research project in order to avoid the distribution of Islamic material branded ‘extremist’ on the internet.
According to the article, the majority of jihadi websites are on non-EU servers and so cannot be easily censored. It’s thought, however, that the EU governments involved are investigating filtering technolgies, as well as seeking international police cooperation on in order to crack down on internet service providers found to be hosting extremist sites.
A European Commission funded endeavour called “Exploring the Islamist Extremist Web of Europe – Analysis and Preventive Approaches”, is being led by the German interior ministry. However, the EC refuses to say how much funding it has granted to this project.
The British Home Office points out that UK-based ISPs have been cooperatig in voluntarily taking down extremist material. In contrast, however, British officials complain that the powers granted by Section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2006 are useless overseas.
In February 2009 The Register ran a piece on how K ISPs had not had significant contact from the Home Office on extremist material since Jacqui Smith said she wanted “to cut off the supply of those who want to look to violent extremism [online]“. In March, a British study of internet radicalisation concluded that efforts at censorship daimed at filtering extremist material would be “crude, costly and counter-productive”.
Comments
Leave a Comment
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
You must be logged in to post a comment.