CEP ROUNDUP 

News and Updates from the Counter Extremism Project

Tech and Terrorism

Tech Companies Fail to Curb Online Abuses <[link removed]>
CEP Senior Advisor Dr. Hany Farid, an expert in digital forensics, criticized tech companies for their reluctance to “dig too deeply” into ongoing abuses on their platforms. In a recent New York Times article, Farid stated, “The companies knew the house was full of roaches, and they were scared to turn the lights on … And then when they did turn the lights on, it was worse than they thought.” Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has consistently called out the tech industry for its weak response to the spread of extremist content, child exploitation images and videos, and misinformation. In Congressional testimony in September, Farid warned of the dangers of extremist content and disinformation <[link removed]>, including so-called ‘deepfakes,’ and the need for technology companies to combat them. In an October 16 Congressional hearing into Internet abuses <[link removed]>, Farid observed: “How, in 20 short years, did we go from the promise of the internet to democratize access to knowledge and make the world more understanding and enlightened, to this litany of daily horrors? Due to a combination of naivete, ideology, willful ignorance, and a mentality of growth at all costs, the titans of tech have simply failed to install proper safeguards on their services.”

U.S. House Homeland Security Committee Introduces Legislation To Help Curb Online Extremism <[link removed]>
In October, the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee unanimously advanced <[link removed]> the National Commission on Online Platforms and Homeland Security Act (H.R. 4782 <[link removed][%22hr4782%22]%7D&r=1&s=3>). The legislation would establish a 12-member, bipartisan national commission on online platforms that examines how tech companies are being exploited by extremists to propagate acts of violence and terror. The commission would be granted subpoena power and be tasked with publishing a report on recommendations to curb online extremism. “The proposed Commission is a crucial bi-partisan effort to hold tech companies accountable for their actions (or inaction),” said CEP Executive Director David Ibsen. “Its work will help assure that tech companies have clear policies and procedures to moderate content and enforce them consistently and transparently. The Commission’s ability to conduct hearings, subpoena an owner or operator of an online platform, receive evidence, and issue reports are key measures that improve transparency within the tech industry, whose opaque practices have left lawmakers frustrated and American citizens insecure.” CEP filed a letter in support <[link removed]> of the legislation, expressing a deep concern about “terrorists’ misuse of online platforms as well as tech companies’ inability to consistently and transparently remove terrorist material from their websites.”

Clip from Halle Shooter’s Video Included in Neo-Nazi Propaganda Video on YouTube <[link removed]>
CEP discovered a segment of Stephan Balliet’s October 9 German synagogue attack video included in a neo-Nazi propaganda video uploaded to YouTube on October 13, 2019. The segment consisted of 16 seconds of footage taken from the shooter’s video that was uploaded to Twitch. The YouTube video was allowed to remain online for about 15 hours and had 44 views. The YouTube video, about 90 seconds long, included footage taken from two different propaganda videos made by the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division (AWD). YouTube has previously removed AWD videos from their platform, but it is doubtful these videos were added to YouTube’s hash database to prevent their reupload. The video’s title referenced James Mason’s book Siege, a neo-Nazi text that encourages violence and terrorism and is revered by AWD and other extreme right groups. Following the Halle shooting, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT)—of which YouTube is a founding member—declared <[link removed]> they were activating a “Content Incident Protocol,” allowing them to hash the video made by the perpetrator to prevent its “spread across our services.” It is unclear how this clip taken from Balliet’s video could have been uploaded to YouTube, four days after the attack, if his entire video had been hashed, and if that hash was checked against uploaded videos. YouTube must clarify how this video was allowed to be uploaded in the first place.

Germany Shooting Livestreamed Despite Efforts by Tech Firms <[link removed]>
The tragic October 9 attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany that killed two people again focused attention on the failure of tech companies to effectively prevent abuse of their platforms. The livestreamed attack carried out by a far-right extremist came just weeks after tech platforms announced yet another initiative to curb the spread of violent content. The attacker was clearly inspired by the March livestreamed attack on two mosques in New Zealand. The video of the deadly shooting was posted online, where it was initially seen by at least 2,200 people. “Online platforms need to step up and stop their services being used and in turn, parent companies need to hold them accountable,” said CEP Senior Director Hans-Jakob Schindler. “Amazon is just as much to blame as Twitch for allowing this stream online. This tragic incident demonstrates one more time that a self-regulatory approach is not effective enough and sadly highlights the need for stronger regulation of the tech sector.” Media coverage: Agence France Press (AFP) <[link removed]>, France 24 <[link removed]>, Daily Mail <[link removed]>, Times of Israel <[link removed]>, MSN <[link removed]> (France), La Dernière Heure <[link removed]> (Belgium), RTL Info <[link removed]> (Belgium), TV5 <[link removed]> (France), 20 Minutes <[link removed]> (France), and Le Nouvel Observateur <[link removed]> (France). 

Cloudflare Admits to Potential Sanctions Violations <[link removed]>
​Website security company Cloudflare Inc., admitted <[link removed]> in a September filing <[link removed]> with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it had potentially violated economic and trade laws by providing services to sanctioned individuals or entities <[link removed]> that are blacklisted by the United States. “Cloudflare has a multi-year-long history of providing services to terrorists and extremists, including ISIS <[link removed]> and white supremacy groups <[link removed]>. The fact that Cloudflare is only now explicitly acknowledging the misuse of its services raises additional concerning questions,” said CEP Executive Director David Ibsen. “When Cloudflare was providing services <[link removed]> to sites linked to ISIS, Hamas, and the Taliban in 2017, did the company know that they were potentially violating OFAC sanctions, or were they unaware? Or even worse, did Cloudflare know about this misuse and simply not care? Clearly, the company needs to be open and fully transparent about how terrorists and extremists have relied on Cloudflare services and about how it will actively work to remedy this problem.”

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman: “Congress must confront online extremism” <[link removed]>
CEP Advisory Board Member Senator Joseph I. Lieberman notes that with each new terror attack or mass murder linked to extremist content online, tech companies make promises to better police their platforms <[link removed]>, but once the outrage subsides, very little changes <[link removed]>: “It is clear now that tech firms will not effectively and consistently enforce their terms of service, since doing so negatively impacts their bottom line. Patience for their bait and switch tactics is wearing thin, and it is time for Congress to hold this unregulated industry accountable by modifying the blanket legal protection afforded through Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act."

David Ibsen: “Internet infrastructure companies must help keep extremists offline” <[link removed]>
CEP Executive Director David Ibsen points out that the Internet is an ecosystem where reliance on others can be leveraged to mitigate the most extreme and dangerous websites: “Before launching his shooting rampage at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius posted an anti-immigrant screed on the online messaging board 8chan. 8chan has become a popular vehicle for extremists to share hateful content and glorify mass shootings. After the massacre in El Paso U.S. policymakers and tech companies are finally taking notice. Last Friday, the White House hosted a meeting with tech companies to discuss violent online extremism. President Trump also called upon the Justice Department to work with local, state, and federal agencies as well as tech companies to develop tools that can help detect potential mass shooters.”


Islamist Extremism

Anjem Choudary’s Extremist Network Rebuilds in Year After Radical Cleric’s Early Release from Prison <[link removed]>
In the year since Anjem Choudary’s <[link removed]> early release from prison in October 2018, the radical Islamic cleric and convicted ISIS supporter has inspired a revival of al-Muhajiroun, the U.K.-banned extremist group he co-founded in 1996. Choudary was arrested in 2014 and sentenced in 2016 after he publicly pledged allegiance to ISIS. However, in 2018, he was released on parole after serving only half of his sentence. Choudary and al-Muhajiroun have been linked to more than 600 extremists <[link removed]>. For example, known Choudary associate Usman Khan murdered two people and wounded three others in a November 29 knife attack on the London Bridge. In its report, Anjem Choudary’s Ties to Extremists <[link removed]>, CEP profiled 143 entities, 110 violent individuals and 33 organizations, that Choudary influenced or communicated with during his career. Of the 110 individuals, 19 successfully carried out terrorist attacks, while 50 attempted attacks: 19 are—or attempted to become—foreign fighters, and 36 are Islamist propagandists or recruiters. Media coverage: Daily Mail <[link removed]>, Valeurs Actuelles <[link removed]>, and Daily Express <[link removed]>.

Arrested ISIS Supporter in Chicago Radicalized by Abdullah Faisal <[link removed]>
On November 15, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the arrest of Jason Brown <[link removed]>, a.k.a. Abdul Ja’Me, for attempting to provide material support and resources to ISIS. According to the DOJ affidavit <[link removed]>, Brown was radicalized in prison by viewing lectures of U.S.-designated Islamist propagandist Abdullah Faisal <[link removed]>. The FBI further noted that Brown had viewed over a dozen articles from Faisal’s website, Authentic Tauheed. Brown also actively recruited and radicalized others in support of ISIS. CEP research has linked Faisal and his extremist teachings to 50 extremists  <[link removed]>around the world, including 25 linked to terrorist attacks. Faisal’s lectures can primarily be found on two YouTube channels. One has more than 880 subscribers, has 35 Faisal lectures uploaded, and has accumulated more than 102,500 total views. Another has more than 410 subscribers, has uploaded 70 Faisal lectures, and has more than 16,000 views with the most recent video posted in September of this year. Authentic Tauheed’s registrar is Go Montenegro Domains, which is directly affiliated with GoDaddy. The two companies are operated by the same individuals <[link removed]>, and share headquarters in the same building in Scottsdale, Arizona.

ISIS Declares Leadership Replacements Following the Deaths of Baghdadi, Muhajir <[link removed]>
On October 26, 2019, U.S. forces carried out an operation in Syria’s Idlib province that resulted in the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi <[link removed]>, who had served as ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliph since June 2014. Baghdadi’s likely successor, ISIS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, was reportedly killed in a U.S. strike in Syria the day after Baghdadi’s death. On October 31, ISIS’s Al Furqan Media Foundation admitted that al-Baghdadi and spokesman al-Muhajir were dead and named replacements for both positions. The audio announcement declared Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi as the group’s new caliph, and Abu Hamza al-Qurayshi as the new spokesman. Despite the loss of Baghdadi, ISIS <[link removed]> remains active in the Middle East and beyond. U.S. intelligence reports claimed ISIS still had up to 18,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria at the time of Baghdadi’s death. The group has declared wilayat (provinces, governorates) in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and the North Caucasus. Within the first seven months of 2019, ISIS announced new provinces in India, Pakistan, Turkey, and Central Africa. ISIS sympathizers have also carried out lone-wolf attacks in a variety of Western countries such as France and Belgium.

Terrorism: Threats and Challenges After the Fall of the Caliphate <[link removed]>
On November 7 in Paris, France, CEP and the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism hosted the international conference, Terrorism: Threats and Challenges after the fall of the Caliphate. The conference brought together elite policymakers and issue experts to discuss the serious challenges that remain, such as ISIS's continuing online presence and ability to radicalize and inspire attacks, despite the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the defeat of the physical Caliphate. “The secret of ISIS’s global expansion lies in its social media presence and online propaganda winning over thousands of Internet users. Therefore, the effective regulation of tech companies to remove terrorist content online would massively undermine the proliferation of extremist ideology,” said CEP Founder and Chief Executive Officer Ambassador Mark D. Wallace. Featured speakers at the conference included: Sir Julian King, European Commissioner for the Security Union; Gilles de Kerchove, EU Counter-terrorism Coordinator; Catherine de Bolle, Executive Director of Europol; Shiraz Maher, Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR, King’s College); and Dr. Hany Farid, Professor at UC Berkeley School of Information and Senior Advisor to CEP. Media coverage: Le Figaro <[link removed]>, La Presse <[link removed]>, Swiss Info <[link removed]>, and Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace <[link removed]>.

Guns and Glory: Criminality, Imprisonment, and Jihadist Extremism in Europe <[link removed]>
Terrorist groups are recruiting and radicalizing criminals in an effort to carry out attacks on European soil. A joint study released in September by CEP and the European Policy Centre (EPC), Guns and Glory: Criminality, Imprisonment, and Jihadist Extremism in Europe <[link removed]>, reveals the dangerous and evolving nexus between criminal and terror groups and what European governments must do to break the link, through its detailed case studies of 10 European countries (Albania, Belgium, France, Germany, Republic of Ireland, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom). Report co-author and CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson said: “Prisons are incubators—there is a steady stream of vulnerable, often violent people coming in, many with personality disorders and mental illnesses who feel aggrieved and alienated. To tackle this problem, we need to be as agile as those who seek to do harm.” Media coverage: Irish Examiner <[link removed]>; Le Soir <[link removed]> (Belgium).

Central Eastern Europeans and Their Lack Of Pathways To Global Jihad <[link removed]>
On September 20, CEP and Bratislava-based think tank GLOBSEC released its newest collaborative report, (Few) Jihadis Without Jihad? Central Eastern Europeans and Their Lack Of Pathways To Global Jihad <[link removed]>. Researchers examined the pathways of aspiring jihadis in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary and found that because of a lack of a local jihadi infrastructure, few succeeded in their quest to travel to Syria and Iraq. Previous CEP-GLOBSEC reports include The Input: Pathways To Jihad <[link removed]>, which probes the nexus of crime and terror, focusing on 310 cases of individuals in 11 European countries arrested for terrorism offenses, expelled for terrorist connections, or who died while staging terrorist attacks in 2015, the peak year of European jihadism. That study was followed by The Input: Pathways To Jihad, vol. 2 <[link removed]>, which takes a closer look at the paths taken to global extremist jihad by 56 individuals from within the dataset of the first report who were convicted of the most serious terrorist offences.


Far-Right Extremism

CEP-GLOBSEC Preview Upcoming Research Into Far-Right Foreign Fighters <[link removed]>
On September 20, CEP Senior Director Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler and GLOBSEC National Security Programme Director Dr. Kacper Rekawek previewed upcoming CEP research, tentatively titled, Ukraine Conflict: Motor for Right-Wing Extremism Around the Globe <[link removed]>. The research builds upon CEP’s work on far-right extremism in Europe and examines the ramifications of thousands of radical and extremist far-right supporters who have gained combat experience fighting in Ukraine and what that means for the future of the far-right movement in Europe. Dr. Rekawek also probed the phenomenon of Western European far-right extremists fighting in Ukraine and links between accused New Zealand mass murderer Brenton Tarrant and far-right extremists in Europe and Ukraine in a recent blog <[link removed]>.

CEP in the News


Fox News: Refugee Children Praise ISIS, Vow to 'Crush' Apostates, Videos from Syrian Camps Show <[link removed]>
“Children born to wives and fighters of the crumpled ISIS caliphate who are now left to fend for themselves in wretched refugee camps throughout Syria are being radicalized at increasingly younger ages, an ominous trend that’s emerged as the newest front in the ongoing battle to stop terror from taking root in new generations. ‘Though relief agencies are trying to get children into educational environments and get them other necessary care, they remain surrounded by ISIS members – both widows and fighters who have embedded themselves among the refugees,’ said David Ibsen, Director of the Counter Extremism Project. ‘They still believe the ideology and are dedicated to promulgating it, which means they are going to do whatever they can to reinforce the ideology in the children.’”

Bloomberg: Facebook, Twitter Pressed to Help Prevent Domestic Terrorism <[link removed]>
“While companies can move quickly to share information about posts glorifying or depicting an attack so that they can be taken down, it’s difficult to do without catching legitimate news organizations in the mix as they report on the events. That shouldn’t be an excuse, said Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a senior adviser at the Counter Extremism Project. ‘This is the technology industry -- they solve enormous problems,’ Farid said. ‘I don’t buy the argument that it’s too complicated.’”

HuffPost: Homicidal Neo-Nazi Terrorist Group Reappears On YouTube Amid FBI Probe <[link removed]>“It took YouTube more than a week to take action against a propaganda video on its site produced by the Atomwaffen Division (AWD) — the neo-Nazi terrorist organization under FBI investigation and linked to five murders in the U.S. — and the poster’s channel remains active. The Google-owned tech giant previously banned an AWD-run channel in response to public uproar, but has since been unwilling or unable to keep the group’s content off its platform. ‘It’s troubling that YouTube didn’t delete the channel that clearly uploaded an AWD video,’ said Joshua Fisher-Birch, a research analyst at the Counter Extremism Project who found and reported the now-removed video. In the past, YouTube was slow to remove channels that uploaded ISIS videos, even after the videos were deleted. Though violence-minded extremists often congregate on the dark web and on fringe networks, YouTube has continued to be a mainstream place where they ‘can communicate with each other and connect and share materials,’ Fisher-Birch added. ‘This is preventable.’”

Vice News: Facebook Went to War Against White Supremacist Terror After Christchurch. Will It Work? <[link removed]>
“Mixed messages have led to recurring friction between Facebook and outside researchers who still find considerable violent or hateful content on the site. Hany Farid, who studies digital forensics at UC-Berkeley and works with the nonprofit Counter Extremism Project, fears that the company avoids more-aggressive policing to coddle right-wing users and protect its business model. ‘You can’t have a network the size of Facebook because you’ve managed to figure out how to harness big data and do lots of complicated things, and say that this is a hard problem,’ Farid said.”

Motherboard: ISIS Is Using Internet Propaganda to Maintain a ‘Virtual Caliphate,’ UN Report Says <[link removed]>
“Though the territorial holdings of the Islamic State and its so-called ‘Caliphate’ are no more, a recent United Nations report on the status of al-Qaeda and ISIS warns the latter terror group is using the internet to reestablish its global network. Joshua Fisher-Birch of the Counter Extremism Project, a US based terrorism watchdog, said in an interview that the infamous terror group has continued to thrive online, even in the face of its territorial demise. ‘ISIS and their online supporters continue to operate a sophisticated online network that spreads propaganda, encourages lone actor attacks, and disseminates information on internet security, explosives, and the use of a variety of weaponry,’ he said, adding that the group uses several encrypted applications to link their global network of propaganda.”

Voice of America: Governments Increase Efforts Against Online Extremism, Raising Hopes <[link removed]>
“Lara Pham, an expert with New York-based Counter Extremism Project, argued that countries in Europe have particularly made significant achievements through enacting transnational laws that target online extremist content. ‘These efforts show that the EU as a whole in parliament will not stand for the continued proliferation and the spread of extremist and terrorist material online. We will probably see more action from member states and from individual states, but there is a clear public understanding of the potential public safety and security concerns that come with proliferating terrorist material online,’ Pham told VOA.”

New York Times: Child Abusers Run Rampant as Tech Companies Look the Other Way <[link removed]>
"The main method for detecting the illegal imagery was created in 2009 by Microsoft and Hany Farid, now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The software, known as PhotoDNA, can use computers to recognize photos, even altered ones, and compare them against databases of known illegal images. Almost none of the photos and videos detected last year would have been caught without systems like PhotoDNA."



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