Erin Clark/January 17th/Terrorism/Article Number One
The United Kingdoms government is attempting to enforce a “counter-terrorism” policy for its citizens. The plan consists of four parts- the ‘four P’s” which are as follows; protect, prepare, pursue and prevent.
Many feel that this plan will in no way work, as the government is targeting the internet. According to the article, a website can be terminated one day but re-open the next day under a different name, often with the exact same material that was the cause for its termination. It is nearly impossible to continually filter and check websites if this is happening. Another problem with this attempt is the right to free speech in America, where the internet is huge. The United Kingdom has no right to take away a constitutional right from citizens, no matter how horrific the material or how good the reasoning. The United Kingdom has instant access to all things American via an internet capable computer. I understand the concern here-but I cannot think of any possible way the U.K. will get around this issue.
The governments reasoning for this policy going into effect is to minimize the amount of terrorists born through web-based material. They do not want to give any help or guidance to those who may ruin lives.
While I hope that there are no more terrorist attacks, I believe the United Kingdom needs to take a step back and tackle some of the smaller issues dealing with terrorism-such as preparing and protecting before taking on the internet.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/editorial/display.var.1975166.0.Terrorism_on_the_web.php
1 comment:
I completely agree with you. I am not sure how the U.K. is going to tackle such a big issue. What's more is that after terminating a website one day, it can come back the very next day. This process seems endless. With all the websites out there, is there really any way they could go through all of them and monitor them in ONE day, and then completely start over the next. While I do believe this is a very important issue, I do not think that this is the most efficient solution. Perhaps they should start with education for their citizens about such terrorist websites. They could even go as far as to keep a running list of all websites that they feel are "red flags" and then have this information readily available to the internet-almost like a database. But then - this may be a never-ending task also.
While there are clear cut boundaries on land, where are the boundaries on the internet. How is it fair that the U.K. decides what is "legal" to have on the internet, virtually for the entire world. This definitely infringes on our rights as Americans.
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