‘Jail social media chiefs who promote terror’
Government watchdog wants authorities to use anti-terrorist law against ‘immoral’ tech firms
‘It’s no good appealing to Mark Zuckerberg as if he is the human face acting morally. He is in charge of a company making profit’
‘Technology does not have a human face or a human heart. It is a moneymaking endeavour; it’s a business’
SOCIAL media executives should be jailed if they repeatedly allow the promotion of terrorism online, the Government’s independent terror watchdog has said.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph, Jonathan Hall QC criticised British authorities for failing to bring a single prosecution against internet companies for breaches of terrorism laws. Mr Hall accused tech giants of having neither a “human face nor heart” and said it was pointless appealing to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, to “act morally” because he was only motivated by profit.
In scathing criticism of Facebook, he said it was “absurd” that the company had put in place a policy ranking terrorist groups in order of danger so that terrorist organisations that predominantly kill police officers or soldiers is subject to less stringent regulation than a group that also targets civilians.
Mr Hall, the Government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism, called for the wider deployment of tough control orders to monitor terrorist suspects and said GCHQ and MI5 should be allowed to put their “intrusive” powers to the most “creative” use to tackle “lone wolf ’ extremists intent on “real world violence”.
Mr Hall said laws were in place to prosecute the tech firms and that every penalty, ranging from fines to jaill, should be used to crackdown on the growth of terrorist material online.
He said: “Nothing should be off the books. Most regulations have a criminal penalty attached to them and often imprisonment lies at the end of the tunnel. You would hope you wouldn’t get there because the fines can be very high and the reputational consequences can be enormous but I wouldn’t take anything off the table.”
Mr Hall said that section three of the 2006 Terrorism Act “requires internet companies to take material down” that encourages terrorism, but added: “It has never been used and the reason for that is the Government and police are always taking the view that co-operation and voluntary behaviour is the best way of achieving this.”
He suggested the failure to use the law against the tech companies was in part because authorities feared “the tech companies will turn around and say we are bigger than you”.
Intelligence agencies are increasingly concerned over “lone wolf ” terrorists radicalised after spending hours a day on social media during lockdown.
According to Mr Hall, “the internet has been the main frontier [for terrorism inspiration] for the last five years”.
The companies insist they take material down but Mr Hall says that doesn’t happen quickly enough, adding: “Technology does not have a human face or a human heart.
“It is a money-making endeavour; it’s a business and I think tech companies have made a rod for their own back by pretending they have values like ‘do no evil’ when in fact they only have values as long as it makes them money.”
He went on: “It’s no good trying to appeal to Mark Zuckerberg as though he is the human face acting morally, because he is in charge of a company making profit.”
A spokesman for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said: “While we make a distinction between these two types of organisation, groups in both tiers are banned from our platforms. Praising any violence they commit and providing support to them is also not allowed”.