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Freedom of speech, when you agree with the speech in question, is an easy, black-and-white issue. Redwatch, however, is more of a grey area. Variously described as a far-right site (the BBC) or Nazi hate site, (Angela Eagle MP), it is a deeply unpleasant place, which sets its aggressive tone instantly with a crosshairs cursor and a banner ad for its sub-site, "Noncewatch". The ad consists of a single word, in blood red, complete with dangling nooses.

Redwatch is unquestionably the work of far-right, even fascistic individuals who seem to have very little regard for either the arguments of their political opponents or those individuals themselves.

Even though the site has been around for a few years, it is only in recent months that it has come under attack from politicians. Questions have been asked in the house about the UK site, and the home secretary, John Reid, is said to be investigating means of silencing it. Why? Because, according to pretty much all who have commented on the case, the website, mirrored on various servers and domains worldwide, incites violence.

The problem with this accusation is that the website very definitely, and very carefully, does not.

Redwatch's extensive disclaimer states several times that the information provided on the site is for informational purposes; that it is for lawful uses. Well, they would say that, wouldn't they? But the information itself is certainly lawful: the website is essentially an archive of publicly available information, tied in to some photographs and biographical detail of political activists. Names, addresses, photos from demonstrations and newspaper reports: nothing, on the face of it, that could not be gathered from perfectly legal activities such as watching demonstrations and trawling the electoral roll.

There is, of course, plenty of abusive comment and argument that expresses contempt for the political views and activities of individuals. But there's no law against that.

So, sure, the site is offensive to anyone who is not a fan of the BNP or their ilk, but that's not a crime, and there is nothing that you could term criminal on the pages: no threats and no encouragement to violence. In fact, where an affiliated Polish site in the Redwatch network has directly threatened left-leaning journalists, action was taken. That site, hosted on Arizona servers, was shut down by the FBI last week.

It is true to say that activists named by the UK site have been attacked - hence the fuss in the Commons. But there is no smoking gun pointing at Redwatch. Without threats, without direct incitement, it looks as if Redwatch is acting within the law. Almost certainly, however, the same cannot be said of some of its readers, who in my opinion probably do break the law; who do assault and intimidate and knife.

So does that mean that the site should be banned and its authors prosecuted? Well, how can it be? Will the electoral roll be in the dock next to them? Will any local paper that reports the details of a far-left protest face similar prosecution? If simply publishing names and addresses were viewed as criminal in itself, where would we be?

Banning websites that hold legal material, collected legally and legally presented, but which may be used for criminal purposes, would set a lousy precedent. But it would also be counterproductive.

For example, here is another that collects personal but publicly available information about political activists; that urges readers to collect more information and contribute it; that publishes photos of opposition activists and describes them in hateful language; that encourages readers to confront and oppose these guys in every way possible, to "smash" their organisation. This is stopthebnp.com, the sister site of Searchlight. In its declared function - keeping track of the BNP and identifying its activists and leaders - it is an almost exact mirror of Redwatch. And it is very hard to see how one could, or should, be banned, but not the other.

This story does not end with the mutual hatred of far right and far left. The affair brings to mind the fuss a few years back over a US anti-abortion website, the Nuremberg Files. Again, no threats were on the site; it was simply a list of names and addresses of doctors who carried out abortions, intended, said the site authors, for lawful purposes such as letter-writing campaigns, and also to form the core of a future legal case for genocide (hence the "Nuremburg" tag). But when some of the doctors were murdered, and their names slashed out on the site, the suggested connection was too much for some. Despite the lack of illegal threats, the site was taken down and the authors prosecuted under a racketeering act. Appeals are still dragging on, and I suspect that eventually the judgment will be declared unconstitutional and the site will go back up.

Here in the UK, animal rights protestors have also been targeted by police in recent months for collecting and suggesting that they would distribute publicly available information about the directors and shareholders of companies that experiment on animals or export livestock. Again, those who publish the information are not being targeted because of what they have done but because of what others might do with that data.

This isn't just a slippery slope: it is practically a greased helter-skelter. Would pages from a phone book constitute an offence under this logic? What about going to Companies House with a notebook?

Some years ago, I spent a few days laboriously HTML-ing small stories from the newsletter Green Anarchist that had themselves been gathered from local papers around the country. These detailed arson attacks on, mostly, businesses associated with animal exports or foxhunting. The editors of Green Anarchist had been jailed for inciting arson by republishing that material. Now, in solidarity with the jailed citizen/journalists, and to publicise their case, I was keen to republish it. They were eventually released on appeal (although via a legal technicality rather than on grounds of freedom of the press), but the case still left the law in an unsatisfactory state that is worsening week by week as the blogger blurs the line between journalist and activist.

Can a journalist, blogger or activist really be held responsible for the individual actions of a reader when all the reader gets is the bare bones of a story - the who, what, where, when and why - and decides on his own course of action? When the writers in question are former Combat 18 members or animal rights obsessives, perhaps the mass media feels they are fair game; that their perceived motive outweighs their rights.

Sadly, the more partisan you are, the less of a "proper" journalist you are considered to be. But what about Melanie Phillips, or John Lloyd, or even George Monbiot? And when you are writing about controversial issues, readers' passions can be aroused no matter how mainstream you may be. Not every reader will content himself with a strongly worded letter. But is that a journalist's responsibility? When the words you are facing prosecution for are not threats or smears, but plain, unarguable, facts, is there ever a case to answer?

Censorship is easy; free speech, like everything underpinning democracy, is hard. Standing alongside neo-Nazis would be anathema to most people; even defending animal libbers' rights is a step too far for many. But start accepting the principle of "privileged" information - legal for some to possess and use, illegal for others - and the sphere of acceptable activism shrinks dramatically. The Nazis would have loved that.


 http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/frank_fisher/2006/07/whats_black_and_white_and_red.html