The Spectator, in association with Sky, brought together the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, David Anderson QC, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Michael Beckerman of the Internet Association, which represents the internet giants, and Andrew Griffith of Sky for a panel event at Conservative party conference. This is a summary of the discussion which took place.
How do you tackle the Isis propaganda machine as it pumps out 2000 items a week? Notionally, the power lies with the West to stop the ceaseless incitement to violence. The internet and social media are, after all, largely under the control of large corporations. Yet the internet is also a powerful tool of freedom with which few democratic governments want to meddle without good reason. So what, practically and morally, should governments do to protect the public from terror and criminality without rendering the internet as we know it useless.
Britain’s initiative has been the Global Forum for Counter Terrorism, which held its first meeting in August. That the American government has embraced the organisation marks a significant breakthrough in international co-operation – US internet companies told Amber Rudd that they had had little contact with the Department for Homeland Security. Attitudes need to change, she says. Internet companies need to take moral responsibility for the way in which their platforms are misused. ‘It isn’t enough for them to say tell us what to take down and we will take it down,’ she says. They should be making much more use of artificial technology to hunt down illicit material and remove it before it can do damage
The other great issue is end-to-end encryption – which prevents anyone, even the social media company itself – from accessing messages sent via its platform. You no longer need to be a sleuth to encrypt your messages; everyday services such as Whatsapp – which is used, for example, by backbench Conservative MPs discussing things they would not want to get to the chief whip – use it.
While encryption might be a vital part of the internet, protecting our online banking and much government business, says Amber Rudd, it is unacceptable that social media platforms refuse to allow governments access to messages sent over their networks when national security and serious criminal activity is at stake. ‘We wouldn’t allow terrorists, criminals and paedophiles to set up rooms where they could discuss whatever they like and the security services not be allowed in there,’ she says.
Sky is Britain’s second largest internet provider and it is not going to fight regulation aimed at maintaining national security, says Andrew Griffith. If technology companies are sophisticated enough to design self-driving cars they must have the ability to design software to spot an Isis flag or bomb-making instructions. ‘As Abraham Lincoln said, you cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today,’ he adds.
But it isn’t that technology companies are evading their responsibilities, says Michael Beckerman. They take security incredibly seriously. But there are conflicts in what they are being asked to do. If you design encryption systems with a back door key it isn’t just going to be security services which can get into them – the bad guys will be able to get in, too. ‘You can’t uninvent encryption,’ he says. ‘Even if you turn it off for some people, others will still be able to use it.’ As for removing terrorist material swiftly from the internet, yes you can design algorithms, say, to detect an Isis flag. The trouble is, you would end up taking down pages on legitimate news sites.
That is a problem with which David Anderson sympathises. For example, the Rohingya in Burma were using Facebook to warn of attacks on their villages, but some of their accounts have been frozen because some people regard them as terrorists. Nevertheless, he says, if anyone believes that internet companies are doing all they can to tackle terror, they should type in the name of Isis’s propaganda magazine into Google. On the first page of searches, he says, they will find material telling them how to kill someone most effectively with a knife, and giving them advice on what truck they should hire if they want to run down a crowd of people. It might make a difference if other countries emulated Germany, which now levies fines of 50,000 Euros on social media sites which fail to take down terrorist material.
He cites Jonathan Evans, the former MI5 chief who went on to work in banking. Social media and banks both base their business models on the confidentiality of customer data, Evans had observed. The difference is that the banks never tried to make it difficult for security services to access data as required.
The government is looking at the German system of fines, says Amber Rudd, and hasn’t ruled out compulsion on internet companies. But it is better for everyone that the existing social media giants co-operate, because there is a danger of driving business to new services which might take a very different view of security.
As for the frequent complaint from technologists that government ministers don’t have sufficient knowledge of the systems they are trying to regulate, Rudd has stern words. ‘It’s so easy to be patronised in this business,’ she says. ‘We will take advice from other people but I do feel that there is a sea of criticism for any of us who try and legislate in new areas, who will automatically be sneered at and laughed at for not getting it right.’ She says she didn’t need to know exactly how encryption works in order to realise the great damage that comes from criminals and terrorists being able to converse globally without any fear of detection.
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