This is a bit terrifying, but according to Britain’s top spy chief, Facebook and Twitter have now become ‘the command and control networks of choice’ for terrorists and criminals, and top bosses at the technology giants are ‘in denial’ about the scale of the problem.
Robert Hannigan, the new director of GCHQ, said that terrorists in Syria and Iran have ‘embraced the web’ and are using it to intimidate people and recruit ‘would-be jihadists’ to join terrorist organisations from all over the world.
He also questioned the idea that privacy was an ‘absolute right’ and urged companies to work more closely with security services, claiming it’s time to confront some ‘uncomfortable truths’ – which all sounds more than a little bit ominous for the future privacy of the data we keep online.
However, Hannigan also said that if US-based technology firms co-operated, new laws could be made which would be needed to ensure that intelligence agencies all over the world will be able to track terrorists.
In an article for The Financial Times, Mr Hannigan said:
‘I understand why they [US technology companies] have an uneasy relationship with governments. They aspire to be neutral conduits of data and to sit outside or above politics. But increasingly their services not only host the material of violent extremism or child exploitation, but are the routes for the facilitation of crime and terrorism.
‘However much they may dislike it, they have become the command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals, who find their services as transformational as the rest of us.
‘GCHQ is happy to be part of a mature debate on privacy in the digital age. But privacy has never been an absolute right and the debate about this should not become a reason for postponing urgent and difficult decisions.’
It’s an uncomfortable thought that our privacy online might soon be invaded by intelligence agencies, but it might be the lesser of two evils if GCHQ data on terrorism online is to be believed. Mr Hannigan has pointed out that there has been an eruption of extremist jihadi material on Twitter, Facebook and Whatsapp, and said that terrorists are now able to hide their identities using encryption tools that were once only available to states.
Considering that it is often young and vulnerable people who use these platforms, he believes it’s important to infiltrate these spaces to prevent terrorists from distributing material or ‘meet in dark spaces’ on the web. Isil, in particular, is using the internet to target young people in a ‘language their peers understand’.
He also pointed out that during the advance on Mosul in Iraq the jihadists were sending 40,000 tweets a day.
The Conservatives are pushing for a new Bill to give the security services greater access to internet communications. But, with the move being blocked by the Liberal Democrats and US internet companies including Google, Twitter and Microsoft refusing to comment on the matter, it looks like there is still some way to go before any of these rights to track online users will be given.
In the meantime, the debate widens as to weather our right to privacy online is as important as the fight against terrorism.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.