Internet: Security

Baroness Neville-Jones: To ask Her Majesty's Government further to the Written Answer by Lord West of Spithead on 7 May (WA 143), what (a) funding, and (b) advice, the Home Office gives to the Internet Watch Foundation; what steps the Foundation has taken to minimise the amount of illegal content hosted in the United Kingdom that promotes violent extremism and terrorism; and what steps the Home Office or the Foundation are considering to enable the Foundation to minimise the amount of illegal content hosted in the United Kingdom that promotes violent extremism and terrorism. [HL3606]
 
Lord West of Spithead, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Security and Counter-terrorism, Home Office:  The Internet Watch Foundation is a self-regulatory organisation, independent of government. It receives no funding from the Home Office or wider government.
 
The foundation's remit is to minimise the availability of child abuse imagery hosted worldwide, criminally obscene content hosted in the UK and incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK. Material violating terrorism legislation does not fall into the remit, which the foundation does not currently intend to expand and over which the Home Office has no influence. The foundation's website does, however, direct members of the public to the police's anti-terrorist hotline to report terrorist material.
 
Home Office officials have met representatives from the foundation to discuss lessons learnt from the foundation's experiences, particularly its excellent work to decrease significantly the amount of child abuse imagery hosted in the UK. Home Office officials are using this information in their on-going work to consider methods to restrict the amount of unlawful violent extremist and terrorist material hosted in the UK. 
 
 

 
Co-funded by the European Union Safer Internet Thinkuknow INHOPE UK Council for Child Internet Safety