CEP
ROUNDUP
News and Updates from the Counter Extremism
Project
Tech and Terrorism
Tech
Companies Fail to Curb Online
Abuses
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, including so-called ‘deepfakes,’ and
the need for technology companies to combat them. In an October 16
Congressional hearing into Internet
abuses, 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
In October, the U.S.
House Homeland Security Committee unanimously
advanced the National Commission on Online Platforms and Homeland
Security Act (H.R.
4782). 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 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
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
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
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), France
24, Daily
Mail, Times
of Israel, MSN
(France), La
Dernière Heure (Belgium), RTL
Info (Belgium), TV5
(France), 20
Minutes (France), and Le
Nouvel Observateur (France).
Cloudflare
Admits to Potential Sanctions Violations
Website
security company Cloudflare Inc., admitted in
a September filing
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 that are blacklisted by the United States.
“Cloudflare has a multi-year-long history of providing services to
terrorists and extremists, including ISIS and white
supremacy groups. 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 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”
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, but once the
outrage subsides, very
little changes: “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”
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
In the year
since Anjem
Choudary’s 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. 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, 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, Valeurs
Actuelles, and Daily
Express.
Arrested
ISIS Supporter in Chicago Radicalized by Abdullah
Faisal
On November 15, the U.S.
Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the arrest of Jason
Brown, a.k.a. Abdul Ja’Me, for attempting to provide material
support and resources to ISIS. According to the DOJ affidavit,
Brown was radicalized in prison by viewing lectures of U.S.-designated
Islamist propagandist Abdullah
Faisal. 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 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, and share headquarters in the same building in
Scottsdale, Arizona.
ISIS
Declares Leadership Replacements Following the Deaths of Baghdadi,
Muhajir
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, 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 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
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, La
Presse, Swiss
Info, and Dernières
Nouvelles d'Alsace.
Guns
and Glory: Criminality, Imprisonment, and Jihadist Extremism in
Europe
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, 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; Le
Soir (Belgium).
Central
Eastern Europeans and Their Lack Of Pathways To Global
Jihad
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. 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, 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, 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
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.
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.
CEP in the News
Fox
News: Refugee Children Praise ISIS, Vow to 'Crush' Apostates, Videos
from Syrian Camps Show
“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
“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
“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?
“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
“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
“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
"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."
|
