UK puts pressure on tech companies over militant content

Britain’s interior minister would ask Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube on a visit to Silicon Valley on Tuesday to step up efforts to counter or remove content that incites militants, the ministry said.

After four militant attacks in Britain that killed 36 people in 2017, senior ministers have demanded internet companies do more to suppress extremist content and allow access to encrypted communications.

Amid industry resistance, Prime Minister Theresa May proposed regulating cyberspace after a deadly attack on London Bridge in June.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd will meet executives of social media and internet service providers in San Francisco at the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, whose partners are Facebook, Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft and Twitter. The forum was set up to align the companies’ efforts on removing militant content.

“Terrorists and extremists have sought to misuse your platforms…. This forum is a crucial way to start turning the tide,” Rudd would say, an interior ministry statement read. “The responsibility for tackling this threat at every level lies with both governments and with [the] industry,” the statement read. A source familiar with Rudd’s trip said she had scheduled a meeting with representatives of YouTube. She met Facebook, which owns messaging platform WhatsApp, on Monday.

The industry says it wants to help governments remove extremist or criminal material but also has to balance the demands of state security with the freedoms enshrined in democratic societies.

“Our mission is to substantially disrupt terrorists’ ability to use the internet in furthering their causes, while also respecting human rights,” Twitter said.

While internet companies are eager to remove obviously extremist content posted on their platforms, they face a logistical challenge in identifying and swiftly removing such material.

Rudd said three-quarters of Islamic State propaganda was shared within three hours of publication, underscoring the need for speed in taking down extremist posts.

“Often, by the time we react, the terrorists have already reached their audience,” she wrote in a Daily Telegraph article, adding that end-to-end encrypted messages were hindering security services from stopping potential plotters.

End-to-end encryption on services such as WhatsApp ensures only the sender and receiver can read a message as the key is kept on the devices. Without access to the devices, security services cannot read the messages.

Britain’s MI5 security service says it needs access to encrypted communications to foil attacks. In the US, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has pushed for full access to encrypted communications and devices, but Congress has so far refused.