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Tech giants are once again being urged to do more to tackle the spread of online extremism on their platforms.\u00a0Leaders of the UK, France and Italy are taking time out at a UN summit today to meet with Google, Facebook and Microsoft.<\/p>\n
This follows an agreement in May<\/a> for G7 nations to take joint action on online extremism.<\/p>\n The Guardian<\/a> reports the UK government would like to see the time it takes for extremist content to be taken down to be greatly speeded up \u2014 from an average of 36 hours down to just two.<\/p>\n The European leaders apparently want to see evidence of progress from the tech giants in a month\u2019s time, when their interior ministers will meet at the G7.<\/p>\n According to UK Home Office analysis, ISIS shared 27,000 links to extremist content in the first five months of the 2017 and, once shared, the material remained available online for an average of 36 hours.<\/p>\n Ultimately the government wants companies to develop technology to spot extremist material early and prevent it being shared in the first place \u2014 something UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd called for earlier this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n While, in June<\/a>, the tech industry bandied together to offer a joint front on this issue, under the banner of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) \u2014 which they said would collaborate on engineering solutions, sharing content classification techniques and effective reporting methods for users.<\/p>\n The initiative also includes sharing counterspeech practices as another string for them to publicly pluck to respond to pressure to do more to eject terrorist propaganda from their platforms.<\/p>\n Today, in response to the latest calls from European leaders to enhance online extremism identification and takedown systems, a GIFCT spokesperson provided the following responsibility-distributing statement:<\/p>\n Combatting terrorism requires responses from government, civil society and the private sector, often working collaboratively. The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism was founded to help do just this and we\u2019ve made strides in the past year through initiatives like the Shared Industry Hash Database.\u00a0 We\u2019ll continue our efforts in the years to come, focusing on new technologies, in-depth research, and best practices. Together, we are committed to doing everything in our power to ensure that our platforms are not used to distribute terrorist content.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Monika Bickert, Facebook\u2019s director of global policy management, is also speaking at today\u2019s meeting with European leaders \u2014 and she\u2019s slated to talk up the company\u2019s investments in AI technology, while also emphasizing that the problem cannot be fixed by tech alone.<\/p>\n \u201cAlready, AI has begun to help us identify terrorist imagery at the time of upload so we can stop the upload,\u00a0understand text-based signals\u00a0for terrorist support,\u00a0remove terrorist clusters and related content, and\u00a0detect new accounts created by repeat offenders,\u201d Bickert was expected to say.<\/p>\n \u201cAI has tremendous potential in all these areas \u2014 but there still remain those instances where human oversight is necessary. AI can spot a terrorist\u2019s insignia or flag, but has a hard time interpreting a poster\u2019s intent. That\u2019s why we have thousands of reviewers, who are native speakers in dozens of languages, reviewing content \u2014 including content that might be related to terrorism \u2014 to make sure we get it right.\u201d<\/p>\n In May<\/a>, following various media reports about moderation failures on a range of issues (not just online extremism), Facebook announced it would be expanding the number of human reviewers it employs \u2014 adding 3,000 to the existing 4,500 people it has working in this capacity. Although it\u2019s not clear over what time period those additional hires were to be brought in.<\/p>\n But the vast size of Facebook\u2019s platform \u2014 which passed more than two billion users in June<\/a> \u2014 means even a team of 7,500 people, aided by the best AI tools that money can build, surely has forlorn hope of being able to keep on top of the sheer volume of user generated content being distributed daily on the platform.<\/p>\n And even if Facebook is prioritizing takedowns of extremist content, it\u2019s still facing a staggeringly massive haystack of content to sift through, with only a tiny team of overworked (yet, says Bickert, essential) human reviewers attached to this task, at a time when political thumbscrews are being turned on tech giants to get much better at nixing online extremism \u2014 and fast.<\/p>\n If Facebook isn\u2019t able to deliver the hoped for speed improvements in a month\u2019s time it could raise awkward political questions about why, and perhaps greater scrutiny of the small size of its human moderation team vs the vast size of the task they have to do.<\/p>\n Yesterday, ahead of the meeting,\u00a0Twitter released its latest Transparency Report<\/a>\u00a0covering government requests for content takedowns, in which it claimed some big wins in using its own in-house technology to automatically identify pro-terrorism accounts \u2014 including specifying that it had also been able to suspend the majority of these accounts (~75%) before they were able to tweet.<\/p>\n The company, which has only around 328M active monthly users (and inevitable a far smaller volume of content to review vs Facebook) revealed it had closed nearly 300,000 pro-terror accounts in the past six months, and said government reports of terrorism accounts had dropped 80 per cent since its prior report.<\/p>\n Twitter argues that terrorists have shifted much of their propaganda efforts elsewhere \u2014 pointing to messaging platform Telegram as the new tool of choice for ISIS extremists. This is a view backed up by Charlie Winter, senior research fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence (ICSR<\/a>).<\/p>\n 2. It’s nuts crazy to have this conversation without placing @Telegram<\/a> front centre of the conversation\u2026<\/p>\n \u2014 Charlie Winter (@charliewinter) September 20, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Winter tells TechCrunch: \u201cNow, there\u2019s no two ways about it \u2014 Telegram is first and foremost the centre of gravity online for the Islamic State, and other Salafi jihadist groups. Places like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are all way more inhospitable than they\u2019ve ever been to online extremism.<\/p>\n \u201cYes there are still pockets of extremists using these platforms but they are, in the grand scheme of things, and certainly compared to 2014\/2015 vanishingly small.\u201d<\/p>\n Discussing how Telegram is responding to extremism propaganda, he says: \u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019re doing nothing. But I think they could do more\u2026 There\u2019s a whole set of channels which are very easily identifiable as the keynotes of Islamic State propaganda determination, that are really quite resilient on Telegram. And I think that it wouldn\u2019t be hard to identify them \u2014 and it wouldn\u2019t be hard to remove them.<\/p>\n \u201cBut were Telegram to do that the Islamic State would simply find another platform to use instead. So it\u2019s only ever going to be a temporary measure. It\u2019s only ever going to be reactive. And I think maybe we need to think a little bit more outside the box than just taking the channels down.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a complete waste of time [for the government to still be pressurizing tech giants over extremism],\u201d Winter adds. \u201cI think that it\u2019s really important to have these big ISPs playing a really proactive role. But I do feel like policy or at least rhetoric is stuck in 2014\/2015 when platforms like Twitter were playing a much more important role for groups like the Islamic State.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, Twitter\u2019s latest Transparency Report shows that the vast majority of recent government reports pertaining to its content involve complaints about \u201cabusive behavior\u201d. \u00a0Which suggests that, as Twitter shrinks its terrorism problem, another long-standing issue \u2014 effectively dealing with abuse on its platform \u2014 is rapidly zooming into view as the next political hot potato for it to grapple with.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Telegram is an altogether smaller player than the social giants most frequently called out by politicians over online extremism \u2014 though not a tiddler by any means, announcing it had passed 100M monthly users in February 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n But not having a large and fixed corporate presence in any country makes the nomadic team behind the platform \u2014 led by Russian exile Pavel Durov, its co-founder \u2014 an altogether harder target for politicians to wring concessions from. Telegram is simply not going to turn up a meeting with political leaders.<\/p>\n That said, the company has shown itself responsive to public criticism about extremist use of its platform. In the wake of the 2015 Paris terror attacks it announced<\/a> it had closed a swathe of public channels that had been used to broadcast ISIS-related content on its platform.<\/p>\n It has apparently continued to purge thousands of ISIS channels since then \u2014 claiming it nixed more than 8,800 this August alone, for example. Although, and nonetheless, this level of effort does not appear enough to persuade ISIS of the need to switch to another app platform with lower \u2018suspension friction\u2019 to continue spreading its propaganda. So it looks like Telegram needs to step up if it wants to ditch the dubious honor of being the go-to platform for ISIS et extremist al.<\/p>\n Lots of long-running ISIS Telegram channels gone. Telegram claims to have killed 8852 channels in August and is up to 2287 this month. pic.twitter.com\/egL7r2mlMg<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Amarnath Amarasingam (@AmarAmarasingam) September 10, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n \u201cTelegram is important to the Islamic State for a great many different reasons \u2014 and other\u00a0Salafi jihadist group too like Al-Qaeda or Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya in Syria,\u201d says Winter. \u201cIt uses it first and foremost\u2026 for disseminating propaganda \u2014 so whether that\u2019s videos, photo reports, newspaper, magazine and all that. It also uses it on a more communal basis, for encouraging interaction between supporters.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd there\u2019s a whole other layer of it that I don\u2019t think anyone sees really which I\u2019m talking about in a hypothetical sense because I think it would be very difficult to penetrate where the groups will be using it for more operational things. But again, without being in an intelligence service, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s possible to penetrate that part of Telegram.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd there\u2019s also evidence to suggest that the Islamic State actually migrates onto even more heavily encrypted platforms for the really secure stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n Responding to the expert view that Telegram has become the \u201cplatform of choice for the Islamic State\u201d, Durov tells TechCrunch: \u201cWe are taking down thousands of terrorism-related channels monthly and are constantly raising the efficiency of this process. We are also open to ideas on how to improve it further, if\u2026 the ICSR has specific suggestions.\u201d<\/p>\n As Winter hints, there\u2019s also terrorist chatter concerning governments that takes place out of the public view \u2014 on encrypted communication channels. And this is another area where the UK government especially has ramped up political pressure on tech giants (for now European lawmakers appear generally more hesitant<\/a> to push for a decrypt law; while U.S. has seen attempts to legislate<\/a>\u00a0but nothing that has yet come to pass).<\/p>\n A Sky News<\/a>\u00a0report yesterday, citing UK government sources, claimed that Facebook-owned WhatsApp had been asked by British officials this summer to come up with technical solutions to allow them to\u00a0access the content of messages on its end-to-end encrypted platform to further government agencies\u2019 counterterrorism investigations \u2014 so, effectively, to ask the firm to build a backdoor into its crypto.<\/p>\n This is something the UK Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, explicitly said is the government\u2019s intention this summer. Speaking in June<\/a> she said it wanted big Internet firms to work with it to limit their use of e2e encryption.<\/p>\n And one of those big Internet firms was presumably WhatsApp. But WhatsApp apparently rejected the demand put to it by the government this summer, according to Sky\u2019s report.<\/p>\n We reached out to the messaging giant to confirm or deny Sky\u2019s report but a WhatsApp spokesman did not provide a direct response to the question. Instead he pointed us to existing information on its website \u2014 including an FAQ<\/a> in which it states: \u201cWhatsApp has no ability to see the content of messages or listen to calls on WhatsApp. That\u2019s because the encryption and decryption of messages sent on WhatsApp occurs entirely on your device.\u201d<\/p>\n He also flagged up a note<\/a> on its website for law enforcement which details the information it can provide and the circumstances in which it would do so: \u201cA valid subpoena issued in connection with an official criminal investigation is required to compel the disclosure of basic subscriber records (defined in 18 U.S.C. Section 2703(c)(2)), which may include (if available): name, service start date, last seen date, IP address, and email address.\u201d<\/p>\n Facebook CSO Alex Stamos also previously told us the company would refuse to comply if the UK government handed it a so-called Technical Capability Notice (TCN) asking for decrypted data \u2014 on the grounds that its use of e2e encryption means it does not hold encryption keys and thus cannot provide decrypted data \u2014 though the wider question is really how the UK government might then respond to such a corporate refusal to comply with UK law.<\/p>\n Properly implemented e2e encryption ensures that the operators of a messaging platform cannot access the contents of the missives moving around the system. Although e2e encryption can still leak metadata \u2014 so it\u2019s possible for intelligence on who is talking to whom and when to be passed by companies like WhatsApp to government agencies.<\/p>\n And\u00a0Facebook has confirmed\u00a0it provides WhatsApp metadata to government agencies (as well as sharing metadata between WhatsApp and its other business units for commercial and ad-targeting purposes). Talking up the counter-terror potential of sharing metadata appears to be its current strategy for trying to steer the UK government away from demands to backdoor its encryption \u2014 with Facebook\u2019s Sheryl Sandberg arguing in July<\/a> that metadata can help inform governments about terrorist activity.<\/p>\n In the UK successive governments have been ramping up political pressure on the use of e2e encryption for years \u2014 with politicians proudly declaring themselves uncomfortable with rising use of the tech<\/a>. While domestic surveillance legislation passed at the end of last year has been widely interpreted as giving security agencies powers to place requirements on companies not to use e2e encryption<\/a> and\/or to require comms services providers to build in backdoors so they can provide access to decrypted data when handed a state warrant. So, on the surface, there\u2019s a legal threat to the continued viability of e2e encryption in the UK.<\/p>\n However the question of how the government could seek to enforce decryption<\/a> on powerful tech giants, which are mostly headquartered overseas, have millions of engaged local users and sell e2e encryption as a core part of their proposition, is unclear. Even with the legal power to demand it, they\u2019d still be asking for legible data from owners of systems designed not to enable third parties to read that data.<\/p>\n One crypto expert we contacted for comment on the conundrum, who cannot be identified because they are not authorized by their employer to speak to the press, neatly sums up the problem for politicians squaring up to tech giants using e2e encryption: \u201cThey could close you down but do they want to? If you aren\u2019t keeping records, you can\u2019t<\/em> turn them over.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s really not clear how long the political compass will keep swinging back at tech firms to accuse them of building systems that are impeding counter-terrorism efforts \u2014 whether that\u2019s related to extremist propaganda, or to a narrower consideration like access to encrypted messages.<\/p>\n As noted above, the UK government legislated last year to enshrine expansive and intrusive investigatory powers in a new framework, called the Investigatory Powers Act \u2014 which includes the ability to collect digital information in bulk and for spy agencies to maintain vast databases of personal information on citizens who are not (yet) suspected of any wrongdoing in order that they can sift these records when they choose. (Powers that are incidentally being challenged under European human rights law<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n
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End-to-end encryption still under pressure<\/h2>\n
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