Part 1: Counter-terrorism Chapter 1: Terrorist offences Section 3: Obtaining or viewing material over the internet
Section 3 amends section 58 of the 2000 Act to make it an offence to view by means of the internet a document or record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, and to clarify the application of the existing section 58 offence in relation to online activity.
	Under section 58(1) of the 2000 Act it is an offence to: (a) collect or make a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or (b) possess a document or record containing information of that kind. A "record" includes a photographic or electronic record (section 58(2)).
	Making a record for the purposes of section 58(1)(a) would include downloading information from the internet on to a computer. New subsection (1A) of section 58 (as inserted by subsection (3) of this section) makes this explicit.
	While the existing section 58(1)(a) offence would already capture the downloading of material likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, it would not capture the situation where a person viewed such material over the internet, for example by streaming a video, without obtaining permanent access to it by storing a copy of it on his or her computer or other storage media. Subsection (2) of the section makes it an offence to view such material over the internet (new section 58(1)(c)).
	The new section 58(1)(c) offence is subject to a maximum penalty of 15 years’ imprisonment (the same as will apply to the existing section 58(1)(a) and (b) offences following the amendment made by Section 7(3)).
	Section 58(3) provides a reasonable excuse defence. The defence applies to the existing offences under section 58(1)(a) and (b) and to the new offence under section 58(1)(c). In the case of R v G and R v J ([2009] UKHL 13) the House of Lords held that the defence of reasonable excuse must be an objectively verifiable reasonable excuse to be determined by the jury in the light of the particular facts and circumstances of the individual case. By virtue of section 118 of the 2000 Act, once a defendant has raised the defence, the burden of proof (to the criminal standard, that is beyond reasonable doubt) to disprove the defence rests with the prosecution. New subsection (3A) provides for an indicative list of reasonable excuses. New subsection (3A)(a) makes it clear that the cases in which the reasonable excuse defence applies includes those where a person downloads or views by means of the internet material not knowing, or having reason to believe, that the material contains, or is likely to contain, information likely to be useful for terrorist purposes. Unintentional or mistaken downloading or viewing of such material would therefore not be caught by the section 58 offences. New subsection (3A)(b) provides that the cases in which the reasonable excuse defence applies includes circumstances where a person’s act of viewing or accessing terrorist material or possession of such material was for the purposes of carrying out work as a journalist or academic research.