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Comment from Smoothwall - UK plans to track all internet connections could cost £1bn, campaigners warn
March 2016 by Phil Smith, Head of Product at Smoothwall
Following the
news that the Government plans to track every website visited by every British citizen,
which could cost more than £1bn, Phil Smith, Head of Product at Smoothwall, comments on how monitoring of sites and
searches needs to be done smartly.
The news that the Government is planning to track internet connections and keep a
record of every site visited may be controversial but the goal to protect people
online is the right one. However, it will be completely pointless if that monitoring
is not done smartly. You cannot simply monitor people’s search terms and activity -
you need to add context, identifying harmful pages based on their content rather
than generic search terms. Not everything online is damaging. The majority of
content is hugely beneficial. As such, searches should become intent-based rather
than event-based, assessing the behaviours of searches together and deciphering
whether it has negative connotations and needs to be monitored.
In schools for instance, measures are taken to protect children as they use the
web, monitoring searches for harmful content. However, outside of that environment
they are vulnerable, so why wouldn’t we expect a service such as this to be utilised
nationally? Schools are expected to monitor activity on children in this area, yet
potentially dangerous and threatening adults in the general public aren’t being
monitored in the same way. There is a responsibility to the entire population to
enforce web monitoring for certain topics, particularly when it comes to
counter-terrorism measures. In the current climate, no household should be able to
opt-out of monitoring of websites promoting radicalisation and extremism.
It is important to ensure that it is used in a way that benefits everyone; enabling
the police and law enforcement agencies to identify potential threats and keep the
public safe, whilst not imposing themselves on innocent parties. If they are able to
implement this and ensure that searches and records are done so in a smart and
contextualised manner, it should not interfere with people’s daily lives.
