14 DAY TRIAL // The chief of the British intelligence agency GCHQ, NSA’s trusty partner, believes that some tech companies in the United States are in denial about how the Internet is being misused by terrorists.
Robert Hannigan, the director of the GCHQ, believes that online services have become the “command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals.” This means that the intelligence agencies of the world need the support of large tech firms to fight against terrorism, he wrote in the Financial Times.
“The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) is the first terrorist group whose members have grown up on the internet. They are exploiting the power of the web to create a jihadi threat with near-global reach,” Hannigan writes.
He adds that terrorists have been using the Internet for a very long time, but Isis approaches it differently. While al-Qaeda saw the Internet as a place to disseminate material anonymously or meet in “dark spaces,” Isis has embraced the web as the noisy channel which it can use for promotion, intimidation and recruiting.
They use messaging and social media services such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp for their purposes and the videos they post of themselves attacking towns, firing weapons or detonating explosives has a self-conscious online gaming quality.
The GCHQ goes on to play the helplessness card saying that they can’t fight against terrorism without the help of the US tech giants.
Fearmongering, the action of choice of intelligence agencies
What they’re asking is for cooperation, most likely for access to data, data that they can use against terrorists. Of course, that’s already easily obtainable and only requires a warrant and the companies will hand over the data.
As for the other data that they’ve already been busy collecting about people, including social media information, they haven’t exactly been looking for permission until now.
The comments made by the GCHQ are misleading. Hannigan makes it seem as if there are terrorists at every corner of Facebook, Twitter and so on. Truth be told, there aren’t that many of these individuals out there, not when compared with the greater population using the Internet, some 2.8 billion. Even when compared to Facebook's 1.3 billion monthly users, the numbers don't hold.
And yes, they will use the Internet, just like everyone else. So do billions of other people, some of which are probably criminals, thieves, abusers and so on. They don’t form a majority, just like the world isn’t full of criminals in general.
Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets are already working to fight against violence on their platforms. As soon as someone reports a page, or an account, they get investigated, and the content removed. While others may pop out, there’s no real way to block these people out, regardless of what they do.
“I hope they do not confuse the use of public propaganda through social media by extremists with the use of the covert communications. It is illogical to say that because ISIS use Twitter, all our metadata should be collected without warrant,” said Labour Party MP Tom Watson. This is, of course, what Hannigan actually wants, just like any other intelligence agency out there.