By Jenny Gross and Lisa Fleisher in London and Sam Schechner in Paris
LONDON--The U.K. government is intensifying efforts to enlist
the help of large technology companies such as Twitter Inc. and
Facebook Inc. in combating extremist content online amid growing
concerns about terrorist threats.
Representatives from the companies, which also include Google
Inc. and Microsoft Corp., are due to meet with policy advisers for
British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday to discuss how
they can reduce ways for terrorists to recruit and spread their
messages online, according to government officials.
While the large technology companies have been generally
cooperative, British officials say, thorny issues remain. Among
them: what to do about material authorities consider extremist and
want removed but that isn't necessarily illegal, such as some
videos of sermons by radical preachers or posts by extremists
encouraging Westerners to join the fight in Syria.
Privacy considerations are another challenge in instances where
U.K. authorities have asked technology companies to hand over
details of the people posting the content, such as names,
usernames, email addresses and Internet protocol addresses, which
can help identify a person's general location.
Thursday's meeting, which is due to take place at Mr. Cameron's
official residence at Downing Street, will be chaired by Jo
Johnson, head of the prime minister's policy unit. A spokeswoman
for Mr. Cameron said the purpose of the meeting is to discuss "what
we can do collectively in this area." She added that the big
technology companies have been collaborative in working with the
government to remove terrorist and extremist material, though they
have raised some concerns in general about data protection.
Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft declined to comment on
the Downing Street meeting. Big technology companies say they are
generally responsive to government requests in removing
terrorist-related content and many have policies against posting
violent or threatening content.
Technology companies have tried to push back against some of the
requests to remove content or turn over user data, though.
Internally, some technology executives say they are worried that
censorship techniques more common in countries such as Russia and
Turkey could become more generalized as governments grant
themselves more power.
Some companies are skeptical about handing information about
their users to governments, particularly if the user hasn't done
anything illegal, said Michael Clarke, director at the Royal United
Services Institute, an independent think tank on defense and
security. "It's a very delicate relationship at the moment," he
said.
Still, the companies say they seek to work with government. In
the U.K., for instance, Google handed over information in response
to 1,100 of the more than 1,500 requests it received from the
government, according to data released by the company. French
police officials say many companies have dedicated pages that allow
law enforcement organizations to send requests directly to the
firms for information such as names, email addresses, credit card
billing information and other information.
Sophisticated and prolific use of social media for propaganda
purposes has been a hallmark of Islamic State, the militant group
that has captured large stretches of territory in northern Iraq and
Syria. Extremists have posted content ranging from images of
killings to promotional-type videos intended to lure young
Westerners to fight.
The concern for many European countries, including the U.K.,
France and Belgium, is that the material will serve to fuel the
already large numbers of citizens going to fight with extremist
groups overseas--and that they will be more likely to take part in
terrorist activity when they return.
U.K. authorities say, on average, five people a week travel from
Britain to Syria and Iraq to fight and there has been a sharp
increase in the terror-related arrests at home. On Wednesday,
police arrested a man and a woman separately on suspicion of
terrorist activity as part of separate Syria-related
investigations.
As a result, the U.K. and other governments are stepping up
efforts to delete content and track down the authors of extremist
content online. London's Metropolitan Police, known as Scotland
Yard, says it has been removing around 1,000 pieces of such content
from the Internet each week, most of which is related to Iraq and
Syria. This includes videos of beheadings and other killings,
torture and suicides.
"Dealing with material which may be described as extremist, but
does not obviously infringe (upon) U.K. terrorist legislation, is
more difficult, " a senior U.K. government security official said.
"We have proposed to companies that they consider seriously whether
this material is consistent with their terms and conditions."
European Union officials met in Luxembourg earlier this month
with representatives ofGoogle, Facebook, Twitter and other
companies to discuss ways to combat online propaganda from
terrorist groups. France has recently beefed up its antiterrorism
laws to allow, among other actions, authorities to cut off Internet
access for people defending terrorism and websites labeled
"terrorist." The measures also permit wider terrorist surveillance
online.
But some specialists in counterterrorism question the
effectiveness of governments increasing reliance on censorship and
filtering to counter online extremism. Ghaffar Hussain, managing
director of London think tank Quilliam Foundation, said such moves
tend to be costly and potentially counterproductive. He said a more
effective method is producing content for online initiatives that
counter extremist ideas, such as parody videos making fun of
recruits militant group Islamic State.
"To simply shut the debate down doesn't allow any progress to be
made on the counter-extremist front," Mr. Hussain said.
Write to Jenny Gross at jenny.gross@wsj.com, Lisa Fleisher at
lisa.fleisher@wsj.com and Sam Schechner at
sam.schechner@wsj.com
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