Jack Straw

From a former Home Secretary who tried to crack down on online extremism . . .

WHEN I was young, we used to worry about the power wielded globally by the ‘Seven Sisters’, the giant multi-national oil companies that controlled 85 per cent of the world’s petroleum reserves.

But their influence back then in the Seventies is dwarfed by that possessed by the technological behemoths of today, companies such as Facebook, Google’s parent company Alphabet, and Apple.

The Seven Sisters dealt in petrol, an inanimate commodity. The tech companies deal in the most human activity of all, communication.

I am writing this column on a train and all around me I can see people on their tablets, laptops and phones.

Atrocities

Of course, the digital revolution has brought great benefits, which is why we all make use of its products.

But the internet, and its applications — YouTube, Twitter, and secure messaging systems WhatsApp and Telegram — are the systems of choice for Islamist terrorist organisations to spread their vile propaganda and, as we have seen in three horrifying incidents in the past ten weeks, for home-grown jihadists to communicate with each other and encourage others to commit atrocities.

In the past, terrorists might have been radicalised in the mosque by so-called ‘preachers of hate’, but today it’s much more likely that they are being radicalised online.

Islamic State may be worse than medieval in its contempt for human life, but it is amongst the most modern in the world when it comes to exploiting all that the internet has to offer to brain-wash some people into committing barbaric acts of terrorism.

I am sure that the chief executives of the tech companies have the same view as the rest of us about Islamist terrorism. They are human too, and would suffer the same distress if it were their son or daughter injured or killed by a van driver shouting: ‘This is for Allah!’ But it is an inescapable, unpalatable truth that these same chief executives are absolutely complicit in how the terrorists operate.

They could do so much more to prevent — and to remove — the gruesome YouTube videos that glorify jihad, and the online manuals that tell would-be terrorists exactly how to make an explosive device or urge them to ‘ weaponise’ vehicles and wreak destruction.

And they should be offering every assistant to the security agencies to gain access to encrypted messages from suspects in terrorism cases. They have been too pusillanimous to do the first, and have pointblank refused to do the second.

Despite this, the tech bosses continue to insist they are doing their best. In the past 48 hours, Google, Facebook, and Twitter have issued warm words about sharing ‘ the government’s commitment to ensuring terrorists do not have a voice online’, to quote a Google spokesman.

Propaganda

Yet ISIS has been pushing out videos in the last seven days inciting terrorists to take knives to innocent members of the public or ‘crusaders’ as ISIS calls them (as if anyone today could bear any responsibility for the crusades which finished six centuries ago). Sermons by two preachers linked to one of the London Bridge terrorists, Khuram Butt, could still be viewed online yesterday.

An ISIS-linked media agency, which uses the app Telegram, called on would-be extremists to carry out even more attacks on members of the public in ‘low-tech’ knife, gun and vehicle assaults during Ramadan.

The online giants claim they are investing millions in trying to prevent terrorist propaganda on their platforms. Maybe, but it’s a tiny amount compared with their turnover and value. Alphabet and Apple are worth $1,400 billion between them — more than the GDP of two of the most prosperous countries in the world, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland.

Two weeks ago, the Mail highlighted research that showed Facebook (worth $345$ 350 billion) had just one ‘moderator’ to check content for every 431,000 online users.

The former independent reviewer of terrorist legislation, Lord Carlile QC yesterday damned the tech companies for claiming that they were ‘simply libraries’ — neutral holders of information generated by others.

Sir Martin Sorrell, head of the world’s biggest advertising agency, WPP, has criticised the same companies for saying they are just ‘technology’ firms. They are right to attack them because the companies’ claims are mere exercises in handwashing, no more impressive today than when Pontius Pilate sought to evade his moral responsibility.

Newspapers and broadcasters are responsible for the content they carry, including online. So must the tech companies be made to accept a similar responsibility. The only way that can be achieved is by legislation — with the sanction of financial penalties. They would soon change their whole approach if they knew that any failure to do so was going to hit their bottom line.

The second serious reform that must take place is to allow intelligence agencies access to message services such as WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) when necessary. After Khalid Masood mowed down pedestrians and stabbed a policeman to death at Westminster in March, it emerged he’d been active on WhatsApp just before his murderous assault began.

Yet the tech company could not, or would not, help the authorities read the message.

Back in 1999 when, as Home Secretary, I was putting together recommendations to bring intercept legislation into the start of the internet age, I proposed system of ‘ third- party escrow’ by which operators of encrypted systems would have to lodge the keys with a trusted third party, and that these could be accessed by the agencies, with a warrant, if and when national security made this vital.

But this was at a time when there was a lull in terrorist activity. My idea ran into such a barrage of opposition that I had to drop it. In the intervening 18 years the internet has become far more extensive and sophisticated than anyone imagined, and my proposal now needs to be revived.

WhatsApp says that only the users of its messages can see what’s written — not even WhatsApp can do so. But that’s not something which has happened through divine intervention. It’s how they constructed the site. They can rewrite the software so the agencies can have access.

Does anyone who uses WhatsApp seriously argue that our ‘ privacy’ should trump detection and prevention of the kind of outrages we’ve seen in the past three months?

Cowardice

These measures — and more — would help us all stay safe, but they would be of the greatest help to British Muslims. I spent 36 years as MP for Blackburn, with one of Britain’s largest Muslim Asian heritage communities. My home is opposite a mosque.

Returning yesterday, I found real anger from Muslim friends about this jihadism. They detest it — and some worry about what their sons in particular may be doing and seeing online in their bedrooms.

The German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller wrote an oftquoted poem about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis’ rise to power. Its closing lines are: ‘Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.’

Of course, there is no comparison whatever, nor do I suggest one, between what happened in Germany and the situation facing us. But Niemöller’s message is a timeless one. It’s about equivocation, evasion in the face of evil. It’s time those at the top of tech giants understood that — and acted.