Britain’s top law-and-order official wants extremist subject matter off the Web, saying Thursday she intends to deny Islamist ideologues the use of a key recruitment tool.

But Web service providers and experts say they could be accused of corporate censorship and face a spate of lawsuits whether they carry out any government order to aggressively police the World Wide Web.

British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, giving the keynote speech at a conference on radicalization and political violence, said “the Net is not a no-go area for government.” She compared her government’s plan to counter extremism on the Web to its long-standing campaign against pedophiles and child pornography online.

“If we are ready and willing to take action to stop the grooming of vulnerable young folks on social-networking sites, thereupon I believe we should plus take action against those who groom vulnerable folks for the aspirations of violent extremism.

“Where there is illegal material on the Net, I want it removed,” she said.

But how? And who would do the removing? Smith did not go into details, saying only that she was working closely with the communications industry.

Service providers, for their part, were not enthusiastic.

Britain’s Net Service Provider organization, which represents major service providers such as BT Group PLC and the U.K. arms of date Warner Inc.’s AOL and Yahoo Inc., said the most troublesome Web sites were hosted abroad, beyond the government’s legal reach in any case.

And even whether sites suspected of inciting terror were hosted in Britain, the ISPA said its members had neither the competence nor the desire to rule on whether a specific site was illegal.

Attempts to do so, the group said, would amount to corporate censorship and would subject service providers to lawsuits and accusations of breaking free-speech laws.

Unlike the case with child pornography, which is often easily recognizable by sight, policing terror-related Web…

Orginal post by Top Tech News