IAN TAYLOR, Britain鈥檚 technology minister, admitted this week that the government is powerless to prevent the spread of information on the Internet which if published on paper would break laws governing obscenity, contempt of court and copyright. Also, the widespread availability of powerful encryption programs on the Internet has forced European governments to discuss the threat that coded messages on the Net could pose to national security.
The unregulated spread of information is a particular worry for politicians, given the speed at which the Internet is growing. As in the US, Europe has seen phenomenal growth in recent years (see Graph). 鈥淚 don鈥檛 have any pat answers,鈥� says Taylor, who is a minister at the Department of Trade and Industry. 鈥淏y definition, because the Internet is anarchic, it鈥檚 virtually impossible for us as a government to say what can and cannot be done on it. We are in no position to prevent something where the access for anybody is instantaneous.鈥�
Earlier this month, details of the committal proceedings in the trial of Rosemary West, who is accused of 10 murders, were plastered all over one of the Internet鈥檚 newsgroups, or electronic forums. Any British newspapers which published such information would be in contempt of court.
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In other cases, articles and even books have been made available on the Internet, allowing widespread copying without the author being paid. And Taylor says that the possibility of children viewing pornographic material through the Internet is one obstacle to the government giving every school access to it. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not going to be easy for us to frame legislation to limit uses of the Internet, and I don鈥檛 think governments have come to terms with that,鈥� he says.
Taylor is representing the government at this weekend鈥檚 ministerial conference of the G7 group of industrialised nations, which is focusing on 鈥渢he information society鈥�. He wants it to deal with issues such as competition, regulation and standardisation in telecommunications, as well as agreeing principles for international laws to protect intellectual property.
Taylor admits that laws are trailing far behind technology. Encryption programs such as Pretty Good Privacy, which are available free on the Internet, are difficult even for the best-equipped government agency to crack. And because an encoded message can be disguised as a digitised picture, it can be hard even to detect which messages are encrypted. 鈥淭hese are big issues which are being discussed at the European level,鈥� says Taylor. 鈥淏ut I would rather not be drawn on our national security interests.鈥�
Eventually, Taylor believes, the Internet may lead to more open government. So far, however, attempts to release official information on the Internet have fallen foul of a different strand of government culture: commercialism. Hansard, the official record of proceedings in Parliament, could easily be published electronically. But the government now charges 拢7.50 per paper copy. When Taylor became a minister he put a paper onto the Internet. 鈥淚t was a long struggle,鈥� he says 鈥� the DTI was not prepared to give away his words for free.