Collaboration needed over terrorist exploitation of the internet

Prime Minister Theresa May will use an upcoming speech to urge close collaboration between governments and tech companies to prevent terrorist exploitation of the internet.

In her intervention at the G20 Summit’s session on Innovation, Digital Economy and Artificial Intelligence, the Prime Minister will say that governments need to learn lessons from previous attacks, including the Christchurch shootings, to help prevent terrorists from being able to ‘broadcast their atrocities in real time’ on the internet.

Highlighting a new crisis response mechanism which is being developed by technology companies and supported by the UK and others as part of the Christchurch Call, May will urge close collaboration between government security officials and social media and technology companies to prevent terrorist exploitation of the internet.

The new crisis hotline would be used to share ‘digital fingerprints’ which allow companies to prevent the re-upload of existing terrorist content on to their platforms. These connections will allow companies to more rapidly stop the spread of terrorist or violent extremist content following any attack in coordination with each other.

May is expected to say: “We should do all we can to bring the best minds together across industry to develop technology to tackle the misuse of live-streaming. We’ve seen the damage when terrorists can advertise into people’s homes - now we mustn’t let them broadcast their atrocities in real time.

“There are no easy answers but I am sure that by combining different methodologies to detect illegal and harmful content we will be able to find an approach that severely limits terrorists ability to live-stream. In the UK we are encouraging social media companies to develop these techniques at pace. Others should do the same.”