By Sam Schechner
LILLE, France--France and Germany demanded that U.S. tech
companies help them police terrorism on the Internet, escalating
European efforts to wrangle more law-enforcement help from Silicon
Valley.
Top law-enforcement officials from the two countries said on
Tuesday they expect U.S. Internet and social-networking companies
like Twitter Inc., Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. to pre-emptively
remove terror content from their services--or face new laws aimed
at forcing them to do so.
They join the U.K., which has for months been pressing Internet
firms to take a more proactive role in removing extremist content,
including material that isn't necessarily illegal, such as videos
of sermons by radical preachers or posts by extremists encouraging
Westerners to join the fight in Syria.
"Just because the vast majority of this content is found on
American services doesn't reduce their impact on French people,"
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said at a cybersecurity
conference. "We won't succeed in our fight against terrorism unless
Internet actors start taking responsibility."
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière echoed that call at
the same conference. "The less people take responsibility, the more
legislators will be forced to take the initiative," he said.
The European demands for pre-emptive filtering escalate tensions
between U.S. tech firms and governments around the world. At stake
is where these global firms draw the line of acceptable discussion,
and how far they must go to enforce local laws limiting online
speech.
In some ways, the request marks a reversal for European
politicians who previously criticized technology firms for being
too close to police forces and spy agencies--especially in the
U.S.--following leaks from National Security Agency contractor
Edward Snowden. Following the attacks in Paris, those politics
appear to have shifted, U.S. technology executives point out.
It isn't clear how far European governments will go to push the
firms. One person at a U.S. tech firm suggested the U.K., France
and Germany are pushing for faster responses "just to appear tough
on terrorism."
France says the menace of online calls for terrorism--both to
intimidate foes and recruit adherents--has grown significantly. Mr.
Cazeneuve last year pushed for a new law to allow the French
government to block websites that don't remove certain content that
expresses sympathy with terrorism.
French prosecutors on Tuesday recommended preliminary charges
against four men they suspect of assisting Amedy Coulibaly, one of
the gunmen who rampaged through Paris earlier this month.
In the two weeks since the terror attacks killed 17 people in
France, police working in round-the-clock shifts at a center
outside Paris have flagged and requested the deletion of more than
25,000 pieces of content that expressed support for terrorist
groups. "It's a major issue," Mr. Cazeneuve said.
Hacker groups linked with Islamist organizations in Syria and
elsewhere have claimed nearly 1,300 cyberattacks in recent weeks,
aimed at knocking French websites offline or defacing them with
messages supporting terror groups or the attacks in France, French
officials say.
On Tuesday, French newspaper Le Monde said it had been the
subject of an unsuccessful attempt by the militant group Islamic
State to take control of its publishing tools.
"This is something we've never seen before," Vice Adm. Arnaud
Coustillière, head of cyberdefense for the French army, said of the
Le Monde attack, which he described as sophisticated.
U.S. technology executives don't want to discuss the issue of
preemptive filtering publicly because of the regulatory fights it
could prompt in certain countries. Privately, they say their main
objection is that such a system would be unworkable, especially
when trying to control for sarcasm and hyperbole.
But they also note they fear legal ramifications if suddenly the
likes of Twitter and Facebook were to become digital police forces.
"They then become liable for everything on their platform," one
technology executive said.
Tech firms also say they already cooperate closely with
authorities outside the U.S., particularly in emergency situations
related to terrorism, moving quickly to remove illegal content when
they get valid requests. But while some acknowledge that certain
laws could be refined, they generally argue against a broad legal
overhaul.
Following the attacks at the office of French satirical magazine
Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7, Microsoft Corp. turned around a French
police request for email content from two customer accounts in 45
minutes--handing over the emails to the U.S. Federal Bureau of
Investigation at France's request. "There are times, especially in
emergency situations, when existing international legal processes
work well," said Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, in a
speech in Brussels.
David Marcus, vice president for messaging products at Facebook,
said at a conference in Munich this week that the company is
constantly removing content that incites terrorism or recruits
people to join terrorist organizations--including from Facebook's
own messaging app.
"Anything remotely connected to that is generally gone from the
platform the minute we see it," Mr. Marcus said.
But cooperation from U.S. tech companies goes only so far. In
general, companies will turn over only limited personal information
about users to a restricted set of U.S.-allied countries; more
detailed requests are directed to the U.S. government. Companies
are also reluctant to remove content that doesn't violate their own
terms or U.S. laws, law-enforcement and tech officials said.
"If there are requests from law enforcement we make sure they
are real requests; if not, we fight back," Facebook's Mr. Marcus
said. An executive at another U.S. technology firm noted that a
request from France might more likely be met than one from, say,
Saudi Arabia.
Pre-emptive filtering is a particularly difficult question for
U.S. firms, which have over the years resisted efforts to screen
illegal content, such as copyright violations, rather than taking
it down piece by piece. But in certain areas, such as child
pornography or links to viruses and other malware, they already do
sometimes pre-emptively screen out content.
"On hate speech it's been difficult to find a common ground,"
said Eric Freyssinet, head of the Digital Crime Center of France's
Gendarmerie Nationale. "We ask these companies: Is this the kind of
content you want to see on your platform?"
But demanding a policing role for companies poses its own set of
problems.
"One of the obvious concerns is that if we effectively invite or
expect technological firms to do the work of monitoring rather than
doing it ourselves directly, they are working to fundamentally a
different imperative--a commercial imperative--which is not
necessarily always the same as those that we have in the police
community, for example," Rob Wainwright, director of Europol, the
European Union's policing agency, told U.K. lawmakers last
week.
The Franco-German initiative comes amid a broader effort to
pressure U.S. tech firms for more help in obtaining intelligence on
alleged terrorists. A proposed new surveillance law in France would
give the government more leeway to demand data on targets from U.S.
firms. British Prime Minister David Cameron has also lobbied for
stronger laws, and won U.S. President Barack Obama's support in
pressuring tech firms to open up encryption to law enforcement.
The French push for new rules has unnerved civil liberties
advocates and tech firms, particularly after the attack on Charlie
Hebdo became a rallying point to support freedom of expression.
They also worry that complying with the orders could set a bad
precedent in countries like Turkey and Russia, where tech firms
have clashed with authorities over orders to remove material.
"Recent legislative additions -- some not yet in effect -- give
France one of the biggest legal arsenals in the world," said ASIC,
an association of tech firms that operate in France, including
Facebook and Google. "Any new law or measure should respect all
freedoms, both public and personal."
Some French magistrates involved in anti-terrorism
investigations also say rushing to close down websites with
terrorism content could be counterproductive because tracking down
people who connect to those sites can help authorities home in on
suspects.
French authorities respond that free speech shouldn't extend to
inciting violence or denigrating classes of people, which Prime
Minister Manuel Valls said last week were crimes.
Mr Cazeneuve on Tuesday said that his efforts are not intended
to restrict online freedoms, adding that no one should endanger
France's "irrepressible love of liberty."
Danny Yadron, Amir Mizroch and Cassell Bryan-Low contributed to
this article.
Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com
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