A cyberterrorism charge in Pakistan connected to riots in the UK illustrates how authorities are reaching across borders to tackle disinformation, but bringing overseas suspects to justice won't always be possible.
Last week, police in Pakistan charged a man with cyberterrorism in connection with a misleading news article blamed for inciting riots in the UK. The article falsely claimed that the killing of three girls in Southport, UK, was carried out by an asylum seeker and the misinformation spread rapidly on social media, fuelling anger over immigration.
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| Riots took place in Sunderland and elsewhere in the UK after online disinformation inflamed tensions over immigration Drik/Getty Images |
The threat of online disinformation stirring up real-world trouble is a major worry for governments around the world, and it can be especially hard to tackle if it originates in other countries. This example hints that it may be possible to crack down on the problem through international cooperation – but this won’t always be the case.
For UK authorities, catching those who spread disinformation is relatively easy when the suspect is inside its borders. Police in the UK have already made several arrests over disinformation connected to the riots. Neil Brown at law firm Decoded.legal says current laws are adequate to bring cases such as these.
When suspects are elsewhere, the process becomes trickier. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service declined an interview, but said there is no extradition treaty between the UK and Pakistan. “Cases are handled on an ad hoc basis,” said a spokesperson, who declined to answer New Scientist‘s questions about whether the UK government requested the Pakistan charge. The UK Home Office also declined to answer questions on the prevalence of online disinformation or on any possible links to foreign states aiming to cause unrest.
Brown says charging someone abroad with a English crime is the same process as if they were in the country: you just need good grounds for thinking that they have committed the offence. Then you need to get the other country to extradite them.
For some cooperative states, this is relatively straightforward, but some nations are more amenable than others. Brown says there is little point charging people if we know they are in certain countries, like Russia or North Korea, for instance, whose governments simply won’t help the UK.
Human rights advocate Radha Stirling says it would be a “terrible precedent” for the UK to begin charging people abroad for alleged crimes that also occurred abroad. “The danger there for British citizens is that other countries would demand reciprocity. The impact, predictably, would be British citizens open to charges from countries like Pakistan, Saudi [Arabia], China etc. for their online posts.”
Stirling says the UK government would probably find any attempt to charge someone outside its territory to be a “humiliating experience”. In such cases, it is likely that requesting the relevant state handle the case itself would be the most fruitful course of action, she says.
When it isn’t possible to tackle the problem at source, there are legal and political steps that the UK government can take to block access to the content. The UK’s High Court has compelled internet service providers to block websites in the past, usually because of copyright and trademark cases. Similar action could theoretically stop websites spreading disinformation, says Brown, and the Online Safety Act, passed in 2023, could bolster these sorts of powers.
“Looking beyond strict legal remedies, most major platforms have public policy teams, talking with government departments. While the UK government is likely to want to stop short of identifying particular posts and asking sites to take action, I wouldn’t say never,” says Brown. “But it is more common for the government to put pressure on platforms to do more, while ultimately leaving it to the platforms to decide which posts stay and which posts go.”
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