Net censorship

A report from a committee of British policymakers calls for legislation that would force Internet companies to proactively filter search results and require court-ordered material to be suppressed.

The commitee, after reviewing the Internet's role in comprising privacy laws in the country, urged the British government on Tuesday to require Google and other Internet companies, such as Twitter and Facebook, to censor specified search results.

The committee was established by Prime Minster David Cameron last May to examine privacy and free speech following a string of problems with privacy injunctions, including one taken by Ryan Giggs. The injunction of the well-known British soccer player had been tweeted more than 75,000 times before it finally collapsed.

System 'with teeth'

Committee members questioned whether existing rules applying to the traditional media could be expanded to the new media.

Chairman John Whittingdale concluded that a "stronger system" was needed and called for a successor to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) "with teeth."

The report was particularly critical of the role that Internet companies play in circulating information and the challenges they pose to UK privacy legislation.

"We recommend that the courts should be proactive in directing the claimant to serve notice on social networking platforms and major web publishers when granting injunctions," wrote the House Of Lords, House of Commons Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions, in the report.

"We also recommend that major corporations, such as Google, take practical steps to limit the potential for breaches of court orders through use of their products and, if they fail to do so, legislation should be introduced to force them to."

However, Internet experts have their doubts such legislation, not least its practical implications.

Nearly impossible to restrict

"It's not as if Google or Twitter can just put key words in their blocking lists and not let people share information," said Ian Brown, senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. "There are all sorts of coded ways to share information. I can't see an automated way to stop that happening."

Brown, who was invited to address the committee as an expert, said it is nearly impossible to keep information of any significance available online from coming back into a country. "You may be able to inhibit it but you can hardly restrict it," he told DW, pointing to an example in Spain.

Last year, Spain's data protection authority (AEPD) ordered the US search engine giant to remove links to more than 100 Spanish online articles it considered potentially defamatory.

"This is more about courts' asking Google to remove specific web pages geographically from its index – which is possible – but doesn't stop the same information from popping up elsewhere, especially if it censored" Brown said. "The very fact that something is being censored increases people's interest in it."

Mike Conradi, a British lawyer with DLA Piper in London, agrees.

"I think Internet companies like Google and Twitter can and should take steps to filter as best as possible information that a court has found to breach someone's privacy," he told DW. "But I don't think these companies can be held liable for being able to block it everywhere."

Author: John Blau
Editor: Cyrus Farivar