U.K. police targets Internet cafés in anti-terror effort

Published 26 March 2010

The U.K. police are testing a new tool in the fight against terrorism: surveillance of Internet cafés; owners and patrons are asked to watch for — and report to the authorities — suspicious behavior; owners are asked to scan the hard drives in their shop on a regular basis to look for suspicious browsing and communication patterns; monitoring of Internet cafés’ computer use has been tried in several
countries, including India and the United States; civil libertarians worry that without a clear definition of suspicious behavior or suspicious Web
browsing, individuals with outside-the-mainstream political or religious views may be targeted

The U.K. police has unveiled a new tactic in the fight against terrorism — they are targeting Internet cafés . Evidence suggests that several people convicted with terrorism acts have used Internet cafés to communicate while plotting their crimes, the London Metropolitan Police is testing a new initiative in which Internet café owners agree to monitor what customers are looking at, and report any suspect activity to police.


The idea of tracking the use by would-be terrorists of computers in Internet cafés has been tried in other countries such as India (see, for example, “Cyber Cafés to Be Monitored in India,” 17 July 2008 HSNW; and “Mumbai Police Install Tracking Software in City’s Cyber Cafés,” 11 September 2007 HSNW) — but also the United States, where it was shrouded in secrecy because the George W. Bush administration was worried about the reaction of civil libertarians.


The BBC’s Catrin Nye reports that recently two policeman and a community support officer visited an Internet café in Camden in London as part of a new program in the U.K. government’s £140 million Prevent strategy to help counterterrorism. The new initiative involves getting Internet café owners to monitor the websites their customers view and to pass on any worries over suspicious activity to the police.


Café owners are given posters to put up warning the public of material which is deemed unacceptable to view. Owners are also given the choice of which colored background they would like for a Metropolitan Police screensaver to upload on to their machines to spell out the same message.


The scheme is on trial in Camden. If it is successful, the Met Police hopes other police forces, as well as universities, will adopt it to help target a tool of research and communication which used previously by terrorists.


Nye reports that in August 2006, police made a number of arrests as part of Operation Overt and, three years later, three men were found guilty of planning to use liquid bombs to blow up a possible seven planes.


Abdulla Ahmed Ali was jailed for 40 years, while Assad Sarwar was sentenced to 36 years and Tanvir Hussain to 32 years for masterminding the plot. The key suspects in the case had been found to have used Internet cafés for research and to send e-mails to other conspirators.


In Operation Rhyme, a plot to explode car bombs at financial targets in New York and London was foiled and seven men were jailed in June 2007. Two of the conspirators, Junade Feroze and Abdul Aziz Jalil, were followed by officers as they drove four hours from London to an Internet café in Swansea where they sent one e-mail before returning.


The Prevent strategy, also known as Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE), aims to stop people becoming or supporting terrorists. Police say that the Internet café program is not about arresting people, but more to determine if their users need what they term as “support.”


The police want Internet café owners to check the hard drives of their computers to help spot any suspicious activity.  Pc. Jason Beynsberger is a Prevent engagement officer for Camden. “Obviously every situation is different,” said Beynsberger. “We need to establish if there is something we need to investigate further, for example, if there’s a pattern forming. If the owner sees people looking at violent extremism they need to know who they can turn to.”


Nye notes that using Internet cafés may help those guilty of suspicious behavior avoid being detected by police, but there are concerns that PVE amounts to police playing Big Brother. Arun Kundnani is the author of Spooked: How Not to Prevent Violent Extremism, says that “To ask internet cafés to spy on their customers and students is another step in the direction of creating a society of total surveillance.” He adds that “What is dangerous about this initiative is that it does not just focus on preventing access to illegal material but also material that is defined as ‘extremist’ without offering an objective definition of what that is. “It thus potentially criminalizes people for accessing material that is legal but which expresses religious and political opinions that police officers find unacceptable.”