Tech giants hinder terror fight, says Met chief
TECH giants are making it impossible to identify and stop terrorists carrying out deadly attacks, Dame Cressida Dick warns today on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
The Metropolitan Police commissioner – who was yesterday granted a two-year extension on her contract – said the introduction of end-to-end encryption, which allows users to message one another in secrecy, was giving terrorists an advantage over law enforcement agencies. Companies such as Facebook have argued that introducing encryption will improve privacy for its customers.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Dame Cressida warns that terrorists are exploiting such technological advances to radicalise people and direct attacks around the world.
She describes the Sept 11 attacks as a “watershed moment, confirming that terrorism was a truly global threat that required a global response”.
Dame Cressida said that the terrorist landscape had shifted since the atrocity in New York in 2001, with relatively sophisticated plots giving way to much more rudimentary attacks that required very little planning or preparation.
She writes: “That global shift has only gathered pace in recent years with advances in communications technology. Terrorist groups have exploited this to reach and recruit anyone, anywhere and at any time.”
But she warns: “The current focus on encryption by many big tech companies is only serving to make our job to identify
and stop these people even harder, if not impossible in some cases.”
She also says that, like the terrorists, police and security services had sought to exploit technology to their advantage and were constantly developing their digital capabilities.
Dame Cressida, who was a newly appointed commander in the Met when 9/11 happened, flew to New York to help in the investigation and provide support to the families of British victims.
She describes the experience as extremely harrowing, but adds: “I also saw there the most extraordinary and inspiring courage, selflessness, humanity and resilience.
“New York, our wonderful sister city, did not bow down, did not become divided. Nor has London when it has been attacked. We don’t give in to terrorism.”
Boris Johnson said yesterday that each of the 2,977 victims murdered on 9/11, including 67 Britons, were “a symbol of the eternal friendship between the United Kingdom and the United States”.
In his address, which will be played to a memorial event at the Olympic Park in east London today, the Prime Minister said: “On a crystal clear morning, terrorists attacked the United States with the simple goal of killing or maiming as many human beings as possible, and by inflicting such bloodshed in the world’s greatest democracy, they tried to destroy the faith of free peoples everywhere in the open societies which terrorists despise and which we cherish.”
But he said the terrorists had failed in their bid “to drive our nations apart”.
He added that recent events in Afghanistan had strengthened determination to “hold fast to our belief in liberty and democracy, which will always prevail over every foe”.
Yesterday, Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, confirmed Dame Cressida had been granted a two-year extension to her contract, which had been due to expire in April.
Meanwhile, Ken Mccallum, the director general of MI5, warned that the events in Afghanistan could herald the return of “al-qaeda-style” terror plots.
He said: “So we need to be vigilant both for the increase in inspired terrorism which has become a real trend for us to deal with over the last five to 10 years, alongside the potential regrowth of al-qaeda-style directed plots.”