Blaming the Internet For Terrorism Misses The Point – WIRED

Slide: 1 / of 1. Caption: Caption: Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement in Downing Street after chairing a meeting of the Government's emergency Cobra committee following the June 4th 2017 terrorist incident in London.Andrew Matthews/AP

British Prime Minister Theresa May has found somethingto blame for Saturday nights terror attack in London: the internet.

May, responding to the attack by three young men who killed seven people and injured scores more, called for an end to the safe spaces that the internet provides, and for measures to regulate cyberspace.

We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed. Yet that is precisely what the internetand the big companies that provide internet-based servicesprovide, Maysaid Sunday night outside 10 Downing Street. The statement, which appears on her official Facebook page, is among four solutions she offered for fighting terrorism. We need to work with allied, democratic governments to reach international agreements that regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremism and terrorist planning.

What May suggests will not work.As WIREDand others have explained timeand timeagain, undermining encryptionwhich is what May is calling for hereso the good guys can see what the bad guys are up to jeopardizes everyones safety. Simply put, weakened encryption makes everything fromworld banking to travel and healthcare riskier.

When May and other politicians call for encryption-busting protocols, what they really hope to do is turn back the clock to a time when the internet didntconnecting everyone and everything and underpin howthe world works. They need to realize that time is past. Regulation, fines, pleadingnothing will return the world to the pre-internet era.

ABritish proverb applies well here: If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. May might wish for some way of securelydisruptingonline cryptography so it can be used only for good, but wishing cant make it so. Instead, May and her ilk must learn to focus on solutionsthat can make a difference. The British prime minister made four suggestionsfor combating terrorism. Here, we offer four that experts agree make more sense.

Though the internet helpsterrorists communicate (and celebratetheir actions), experts agree it does not causeterrorism, or even do much to radicalize. The internet is often oversold in terms of radicalization, says Colin Clarke, a counterterrorism expert at RAND. Despite what youve heard, he says, most conversations among extremists occurface to face.

Though the internet does play a role in helping terrorists communicate, it is not the cause of terrorism. Not by a long shot.

Traditionally the way [UK extremist group] Al-Muhajiroun have worked is that most of their radicalization has occurred offline, saysMichael Kenney of the University of Pittsburgh who has extensively studied the Al-Muhajiroun extremist group that one of the London attackers has been reportedly linked to. It occurs in small group settings. Its a group of guys. They gather, they talk, they indoctrinate each other, he says.Expanding online surveillance, eliminating full encryption, and even preventing the spread of violent videos cant eradicatethat.

Terrorism researchers note that violence inEurope and the UK followsa familiar pattern, one thatcan teach governments how to counter the problem if they expendmoney and resources where they can do the most good. MostEuropean jihadis are young Muslims, usuallymen, living in poor neighborhoods withhigh unemployment. They often are second- or third-generation immigrants from countries they have never lived in, they are not well-integrated into society, and they are unemployed or poorly educated. Their lives lack meaning and purpose.

Scapegoating the internet as the root of the problemrisks ignoring the underlying problems: avast swath of youth that have left behind, bullied, or ignored. Thesedisaffectedteenagers and young adults also often are angeredby what they consider bad foreign policies. They kind of exist in this netherworld that makes them vulnerable to radicalization, says Clarke.

Instead, Clarke, Kenney, and experts like Thomas Hegghammer of the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment say the focus must be on offline solutions. Namely, education. Clarke advocates for a really broad expansive overhaul of education in immigrant areas, and an emphasis on youth work. Hegghammer has called this a Marshall Plan for improved education in immigrant-heavy areas.

In her approach to improving counterterrorism, May never mentionededucation, though it may offer the best way to, as she says, turn peoples minds away from this violenceand make them understand that our values pluralistic, British valuesare superior to anything offered by the preachers and supporters of hate.

Mays suggestions include longer prison sentences forterrorist-linked activity, something experts agree with. Current sentencing, they say, tends to give extremists and terrorists just enough time to develop new contacts, and perhaps plan attacks. Jail can be a networking event for these guys, says Clarke. Longer sentences could deter that.

Kenney adds another suggestion: empower families and friends to intervene when they see someonebeing radicalized. Teach them how to counter the rhetoric of jihadism. Many young men and women when they radicalize its something that takes place over many months, in some cases even years. And if youre a member of a group like Al-Muhajiroun, youre not quiet, youre trying to recruit others.

This posesits own problems, though. In both the London and Manchester attacks, friends of the attackers reportedly reached out to the authorities, but British law enforcement is overwhelmed by the thousands of people already on government watch lists.

Tech companies and governments can work togetherto combat terrorism. But as US Representative Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley, said Sunday on Fox News, We have to have a factual approach. Rather than attempt to turn theinternet into a world of walled gardens, the government should make smarterinvestments in certain technologies, like usingbiometrics at the border to better track people on watch lists. Orencourage tech companies to adopt technologies like eGlyph, a systemdeveloped by computer scientist Hany Farid, of the Counter Extremism Project, that can help the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Google identify violent videos and ban them.

Farids team hopes to address the problem of groups gathering online to plan attacksby developing an early warning system that useslinguistic analysis on sites like Facebook or Twitter.Not to say you are bad or you are good but to simply give these companies some ability to monitor content and to say look, theres some bad stuff happening here,' Farid says.

The idea that we are going to somehow eradicate the problem by more closely monitoring the internet and Facebook is unrealistic and not likely to reach those intended outcomes, says Kenney. It also reflects a lack of understanding of how radicalization actually occurs. The sooner May and politicians like her accept that reality, the safer the world will be.

Read more from the original source:
Blaming the Internet For Terrorism Misses The Point - WIRED