Governments who seek to block terrorist propaganda on the Internet will find that purely technological solutions are "crude, expensive and counterproductive," a new report concludes.
The London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence calls on governments to do more than simply "pull the plug" on websites that promote extremist messages, urging them to attack the problem at its root.
"Any strategy that hopes to counter online radicalization must aim to create an environment in which the production and consumption of such materials become not just more difficult in a technical sense, but unacceptable as well," the report states.
Some experts give the new British study mixed reviews.
"I agree that shutting down websites doesn't really prove anything - you have to go after the people who are populating the forums," said Evan Kohlmann, a U.S.-based terrorism consultant who has testified as an expert in a number of criminal cases.
But he disagreed strongly with the notion that the Internet is not playing a major role in radicalization. "It isn't even a question up for debate," he said in an e-mail. "Anyone who argues that self-recruitment isn't happening in a meaningful way on the Internet has their head stuck so deep in the sand, they can see China."
Western countries are targeting the Internet as a key battlefront in the fight against terrorism. Officials argue that Islamist videos, manuals and dogma found online are steering impressionable young men toward extremism and violence.
Britain's battle with "homegrown" terrorism has focused in part on the Internet, with prosecutors targeting individuals whose crimes have occurred entirely online. The new report points out the Internet has played a role in radicalizing many extremists, including some Canadians.
Specifically, the authors note that suspects accused of a 2006 Toronto truck-bomb conspiracy met British-based accomplices in password-protected Web forums.
In a case not mentioned in the new study, an Ottawa man found guilty in Canada of terrorist offences - Mohammed Momin Khawaja - will be sentenced this week for helping a group of British-based terrorists build a bomb in 2004.
The British think tank that authored the report cautions that the Internet is rarely the only agent of radicalization at play in any given case.
It suggests the impact of the Web is often overblown.
For this reason, police are urged to work toward taking down some offensive sites and prosecuting the producers of extremist content. But the report also urges government officials to help establish and fund grassroots groups that counter extremist messages.
The report cautions that terrorism is a fundamentally different problem from other crimes that lead to Internet-centred police investigations. "The analogy with countering child sexual abuse on the Internet is flawed," the report says, because "there are no political constituencies which might be offended if repressive action is taken against it."
