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.

“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,” reads the 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.

(Taormina, May 26, 2017 — credits: Office of the Prime Minister of Italy)

The G7 leaders — CanadianPM Justin Trudeau; Emmanuel Macron of France; Angela Merkel of Germany; Paolo Gentiloni of Italy; Shinzo Abe of Japan; Theresa May of the United Kingdom; Donald Trump of the United States; and Jean-Claude Juncker of the European Commission and Donal Tusk of the Council of the European Union — called upon the technology groups and social media platforms “to substantially increase their efforts to address terrorist content.”

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.”

Countering propaganda is key, they said, to fight terrorism and violent extremism, online recruitment by extremists, and radicalization and incitement to violence.

The leaders agreed to increase their engagement with civil society, youth and religious leaders, detention facilities, and educational institutions. They also decided to task Interior Ministers of the G7 countries “to meet, as soon as possible, to focus on implementation of the following commitments and to work collectively with the private sector and civil society to defeat terrorism.”

In March, representatives from 68 countries gathered in Washington DC for the Meeting of Ministers of the Global Coalition on the Defeat of ISIS hosted by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the U.S. Department of State. Countering extremism and terrorism online was high on the agenda.

In his introductory remarks at the Coalition meeting, Secretary Tillerson highlighted the role of social media in countering terrorist messages and in the fight against ISIS. He stressed how the cooperation with Silicon Valley has contributed to a 75% reduction of ISIS content online in one year.

“We all should deepen our cooperation with the tech industry to prevent encrypted technologies for serving as tools that enable extremist collaboration,” Tillerson said.

He added: “We need the global tech industry to develop new advancements in the fight and we thank those companies which are already responding to this challenge. We must capitalize on the strong advancements in data analytics and algorithmic technologies to build tools that discover ISIS’ propaganda and identify imminent attacks.”