Crackdown on WhatsApp is not the main message in terror fight
such success?
Security agencies have yet to demonstrate that this stockpiling of metadata has ever led to the thwarting of terrorist operations. The FBI admitted that the tripling of bulk data collection under the Patriot act from 2005 to 2009 did not led to any anti-terrorism success.
Is it a choice between the surveillance state or terrorism? Compromises have already been made in this balance. What is lacking is more independent legal scrutiny and oversight. In the US and UK, the bodies tasked with doing this have an atrocious record in challenging the security services. The US foreign intelligence surveillance court approved every single one of the 1,457 requests for foreign surveillance in 2015. The British Parliament has a select committee on intelligence and security but it lacks the resources, expertise, clout and willingness to carry out the sort of oversight the restoration of public trust requires.
Are there other avenues to tackle extremism on the Internet? The British government is pressing Google to take extremist videos off YouTube. Google is already paying a significant price, estimated at up to $ 750 million in lost advertising, for failing to police its YouTube content. That is because around 250 major companies withdrew advertising, fearing their brands would be contaminated by appearing side- by- side with extremist content, including both neo- Nazi and violent Islamist videos. What constitutes terrorist propaganda is, as ever, a subjective call. Some is blatant but some occupies a grey zone. Nevertheless, the inadequacy of computer algorithms to automatically place adverts is clear.
A persuasive argument can also be made that rather than collect gazillions of exabytes of metadata on jungles of servers, the intelligence services would be better served by targeting their activities more judiciously, which would be effective as well as more likely to be within the bounds of the law.
Above all, ever since Al- Qaeda and Daesh bombed their way to global headlines, the US and its allies still favor the military and technological approach over tackling the ideology and underlying causes. Just as you kill 10 fighters and more pop up, the same goes with Twitter accounts and YouTube channels. It is an endless futile game of whack- a- mole.
Short of killing the Internet as an open communications tool, we have to accept that extremists and criminals will abuse it. For sure these tech giants can do more, but what truly needs to be addressed is the strategic failure of major governments to tackle extremism. Chris Doyle is the director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU). He has worked with the council since 1993 after graduating with a first class honors degree in Arabic and Islamic studies at Exeter University. He has organized and accompanied numerous British parliamentary delegations to Arab countries. He tweets @Doylech.