G20 vows to work with tech groups to fight terrorism

Focus on countering radicalization conducive to terrorism and the use of Internet for terrorist purposes.

At the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany the leaders of the 20 most industrialized nations have vowed to work with Silicon Valley and technology companies to fight terrorist’s propaganda online and to amplify positive voices on the Internet.

“Our counterterrorism actions must continue to be part of a comprehensive approach, including combatting radicalization and recruitment, hampering terrorist movements and countering terrorist propaganda,” a G20 statement reads.

“We will exchange best practices on preventing and countering terrorism and violent extremism conducive to terrorism, national strategies and deradicalisation and disengagement programmes, and the promotion of strategic communications as well as robust and positive narratives to counter terrorist propaganda.”

The G20 leaders stressed the importance of comprehensively addressing the underlying conditions that terrorists exploit and promoting political and religious tolerance, economic development, and social cohesion and inclusiveness, to resolve armed conflicts, and to facilitate reintegration.

Sharing information and best practices is key: “We will share knowledge on concrete measures to address threats from returning foreign terrorist fighters and home-grown radicalised individuals. We will also share best practices on deradicalisation and reintegration programmes including with respect to prisoners.”

The role of the private sector is also key to fight exploitation of the internet and social media for terrorist purposes such as propaganda, funding and planning of terrorist acts, inciting terrorism, radicalizing and recruiting to commit acts of terrorism, while fully respecting human rights.

“Appropriate filtering, detecting and removing of content that incites terrorist acts is crucial in this respect,” the statement reads.

The G20 leaders encourage the tech industry “to continue investing in technology and human capital to aid in the detection as well as swift and permanent removal of terrorist content.”

They added: “In line with the expectations of our peoples we also encourage collaboration with industry to provide lawful and non-arbitrary access to available information where access is necessary for the protection of national security against terrorist threats.”

We affirm that the rule of law applies online as well as it does offline.

In May, the leaders of the G7 also called upon the tech industry to intensify their fight against terrorism online.

“While being one of the most important technological achievements in the last decades, the Internet has also proven to be a powerful tool for terrorist purposes,” read a G7 joint statement on the fight against terrorism and violent extremism that came out of the first day of the G7 Summit in Taormina, Sicily.

G7 calls for tech groups to fight terrorism online_The G7 leaders gathered in Taormina, Italy on May 26–27 for the 2017 G7 Summit._hackernoon.com

We encourage industry to act urgently in developing and sharing new technology and tools to improve the automatic detection of content promoting incitement to violence, and we commit to supporting industry efforts in this vein including the proposed industry-led forum for combatting online extremism.

G7 statement on the fight against terrorism and violent extremism_At the G7 Summit in Italy, the G7 leaders condemned “in the strongest possible terms terrorism in all its forms and…_medium.com

The G7 leaders highlighted the need “to support the promotion of alternative and positive narratives rooted in our common values and with due respect to the principle of freedom of expression.”