The Prime Minister will co-host a meeting on preventing
terrorist use of the internet today (Wed 19 September) at
the UN General Assembly in New York, with French
President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister
Paolo Gentiloni.
She will welcome the progress made by the biggest
internet companies towards stopping the spread of
terrorist content.
But the Prime Minister will say that the internet firms
can still do more to stop the spread of evil material by
groups such as Daesh which promotes terrorism or provides
information on how to make bombs or attack pedestrians
with vehicles.
In particular, she wants them to ‘develop new
technological solutions to prevent such content being
uploaded in the first place.’
Britain, France and Italy will also say that, where
terrorist content does appear, they want a target of one
to two hours for taking it down. This is the period
during which most of the material is disseminated.
The PM-hosted event will be attended by a string of the
world’s biggest tech companies.
They include Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter, who in June
agreed to the establishment of a new Global Internet
Forum to Counter Terrorism. Google will also play a key
role.
The Prime Minister will tell the event that Daesh
material is still available on the internet for ‘too
long’ after being posted.
She will also warn firms that, as they remove content
more quickly, terrorist groups will adapt - and the tech
firms must do the same.
She will say:
Terrorist groups are aware that links to their
propaganda are being removed more quickly, and are
placing a greater emphasis on disseminating content at
speed in order to stay ahead.
Industry needs to go further and faster in automating
the detection and removal of terrorist content online,
and developing technological solutions which prevent it
being uploaded in the first place.
Internet companies are already making progress towards
the automatic identification of terrorist content.
Google and YouTube have announced they are increasing
their use of technology to help automatically identify
videos.
Twitter suspended 299,649 accounts between Jan 1 and June
30 this year. Some 75 per cent of accounts were suspended
before their first Tweet.
Facebook have also stated publicly that they are looking
at developing artificial intelligence to automate the
identification of terrorist material.
The Prime Minister will also urge other world leaders to
join the battle against online extremism.
Speaking ahead of the event, she said:
We need a fundamental shift in the scale and nature of
our response – both from industry and governments – if
we are to match the evolving nature of terrorists’ use
of the internet.
I call on others to join the UK, France, and Italy in
pledging their support for this approach.
This is a global problem that transcends national
interests. Governments must work with and support the
efforts of industry and civil society if we are to
achieve real and continuing progress and prevent the
spread of extremism and terrorist use of cyberspace.
In order to succeed, we must be united in our
determination to fight terrorist exploitation of the
internet.’
Today’s meeting follows pressure from the Prime Minister
for action at the G7 summit in Italy earlier this year.
In the wake of the cowardly attacks on London, Manchester
and other global cities, the internet firms agreed to the
establishment of the Global Internet Forum to Counter
Terrorism in June.
