United Kingdom authorities have determined that the visualization or transmission of this kind of content is illegal
Legislation recently adopted in the United
Kingdom states that accessing to online terrorist material will be
considered a crime, involving a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, report
network security and ethical hacking specialists from the International
Institute of Cyber Security.
The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill received
approval from the English crown recently. This project is an updated version of
a previously existing law that gives new powers to the authorities to combat
terrorist activities.
The bill unleashed controversy over the
inclusion of a section that classifies as a crime “access to potentially useful
information for a person or group to commit or plan a terrorist act”, which now
extends to the visualization or transmission of online content.
This new British law has already been
criticized by human rights groups and even some remarkable voices on the issue
of combating terrorism, report specialists in network
security.
In the original proposal it was established
that the crime consisted in accessing this kind of material three or more
times, although this was dismissed from the final project, so now it will
suffice for a person to access this material once to incur the crime.
The bill has also increased the maximum penalty
for punishing the planning of terrorist activities (including collection of
material), securing in 15 years imprisonment.
According
to network security specialists, practically anyone who interacts with this
online material could be pursued by the British authorities, mention security
specialists. Of course, this decision raised concern because of the potential
abuse that authorities can make of these faculties.
Independent reviewers to the British government
believe that the only thing that this law could generate are mass arrests, and
they also believe that the work of researchers, academics and journalists will
be affected by this legislation.
On the other hand, groups of specialists
consider that the new law does not help to establish a boundary between the act
of planning a crime and the fact of carrying it out. “Differentiating the
intention of doing something and the materialization of the Act is fundamental
to the application of the law; this project does not contribute to
differentiate these notions”.
The British government has mentioned that the
law contemplates reasonable doubt in cases where the implicated ignores or has
no reason to believe that the material accessed on the Internet is regarded as
terrorist propaganda.
