The world’s public has shown serious concern about censorship in general and particularly regulatory control of the internet. The US was forced to backtrack on SOPA. There have been riots in European streets over ACTA. The Pirate Party, formed and dedicated to fight censorship, has been elected to government in both Berlin and Saarland. But the UK’s members of parliament talk about press regulation and censorship within Google in its new report published on Tuesday.
The Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions was tasked “to consider and report on privacy and injunctions” following the failure of lawfully obtained injunctions to protect the privacy of high profile individuals – notably Sir Max Mosley and footballer Ryan Giggs. In brief, the committee believes that injunctions should not be granted lightly, but once granted, should be better protected within and enforced by law. The area that will most draw the eye of civil liberties activists is the committee’s attitude towards the internet and search engines.
The committee first noted that legal enforcement on the internet is usually on the basis of ‘notice and take down’ instructions; but that this is not always effective. Political blogger Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes) is noted as a UK citizen who hosts his site in the US in order to gain “some protection for the content on the website owing to the First Amendment”, but warns “that action might be possible, for example, against an individual blogging in the United States, in defiance of court orders, who subsequently visited the United Kingdom.”
Twitter is quoted as being reluctant, despite its international censoring ability, to censor voluntarily without legal requirement. “In oral evidence to the Leveson Inquiry,” says the report, “Twitter appeared to suggest that a ruling from the Press Complaints Commission, as currently established, would not trigger Twitter to remove a tweet.”
The report then looks at search engines, and Google in particular. It uses the Max Mosley case to illustrate, and quotes him: “Every time an obscure, tiny site in the Andes puts it up, you have to put your lawyers into action to take it down. We had a very high-level meeting with Google in which I said, "Here are the pictures. We know which ones they are. Simply programme your search engine so they don't appear." That is demonstrably technically feasible. They refused to do it as a matter of principle.”
Daphne Keller, Associate General Counsel at Google, told the committee that Google does not presently have an algorithm capable of delivering the required result, but that it is technically possible. She added, however, “the European Court of Justice in Scarlet v SABAM had ruled that pro-active monitoring was not required under the Electronic Commerce Directive, and an attempt to require them pro-actively to monitor may not be consistent with the Directive.”
The committee was not impressed. “Google and other search engines should take steps to ensure that their websites are not used as vehicles to breach the law and should actively develop and use such technology. We recommend that if legislation is necessary to require them to do so it should be introduced.”