Internet Censorship in The United Kingdom - Filtering

Filtering

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) compiles and maintains a blacklist, mainly of child pornography URLs, from which 98% of commercial Internet customers in the UK are filtered. A staff of four police-trained analysts are responsible for this work, and the director of the service has claimed that the analysts are capable of adding an average of 65-80 new URLs to the list each week, and act on reports received from the public rather than pursuing investigative research.

British Telecommunications ISP passes Internet traffic through a service called Cleanfeed which uses data provided by the IWF to identify pages believed to contain indecent photographs of children. When such a page is found, the system creates a "URL not found" error page rather than deliver the actual page or a warning page. Other ISPs use different systems such as WebMinder .

Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker set a deadline of the end of 2007 for all ISPs to implement a “cleanfeed”-style network level content blocking platform. Currently, the only websites ISPs are expected to block access to are sites the Internet Watch Foundation has identified as containing images of child pornography. However such a platform is capable of blocking access to any website added to the list (at least, to the extent that the implementation is effective), making it a simple matter to change this policy in future. The Home Office has previously indicated that it has considered requiring ISPs to block access to articles on the web deemed to be “glorifying terrorism”, within the meaning of the new Terrorism Act 2006, saying "However, our legislation as drafted provides the flexibility to accommodate a change in Government policy should the need ever arise." The measures have been criticised for being inadequate as they only block accidental viewing and does not prevent content delivered through encrypted systems, file sharing, email and other systems.

In 2006, Home Office minister Alan Campbell pledged that all ISPs would block access to child abuse websites by the end of 2007. By the middle of 2006 the government reported that 90% of domestic broadband connections were either currently blocking or had plans to by the end of the year. The target for 100% coverage was set for the end of 2007, however in the middle of 2008 it stood at 95%. In February 2009, the Government said that it is looking at ways to cover the final 5%.