The Future of Internet Securitization
Increasingly, the internet has become a focal point for the anonymous, far-reaching, and rapid dissemination of information. In many ways, the internet has served as a problematic security dilemma for contemporary liberal democracies. On one hand, proponents of free speech hail the medium as a vital hub of democratic debate and information dissemination. On the other hand, certain internet forums and small private chat rooms have become enablers for the spread of extremist views and the recruitment of prospective terrorists.
Beginning with Al Qaeda and more prominently the Islamic State, terrorist groups started to use the internet as a tool for the recruitment and radicalization of individuals in the West. While their effectiveness was at most marginal, other extremist groups, particularly racial hate groups and domestic terrorists have co-opted the same tactics to effectively spread misinformation, polarize politics, and groom susceptible individuals into fanatical members.
As recently as this year, the European Commission initiated its first major collective foray into the suppression of the spread of violent extremist propaganda over the internet. Adopted in 2021, the proposal served to strengthen international cooperation between member states as well as institutionalize the Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) at the European level as an overarching channel connecting social services and enforcement officials across member states. In addition, the regulation imposed a system whereby member state agencies are enabled to submit removal requests to online platforms across Europe, after the receipt of which the platforms have a one-hour window to promptly remove the material. Finally, the regulation expanded the role of Europol in conjunction with member state national agencies in the enforcement of removal requests.
Although the measures taken by the European Commission constitute a major step forward in the prevention of online radicalization, the steps are most likely insufficient to counter the growing threat of online extremism. The first contributing factor to the failure of previous regulations has been the inability of these regulations to interdict access to marginalized audiences, particularly concerning high risk users, in a timely and permanent manner. Concurrent security experts in the United States have observed that even when social media platforms remove and ban accounts responsible for extremist propaganda, many users simply respond by shifting to a new account or by moving on to platforms on the dark web.
While the removal of these accounts is an effective measure in preventing the overt popularization of radical propaganda and limits the exposure of the general public to propaganda, the most vulnerable and easily manipulated individuals are likely to continue to follow other radical outlets after being exposed. Should such a retroactive approach be adopted in combating online extremism, it is necessary that the methods be extremely quick and flexible.
On paper, the ‘one-hour’ rule adopted by the European Union would meet such conditions. However, the effectiveness of the program is limited by both the delegation of responsibility to national actors as the primary acting authorities and the amount of bureaucratic requirements endemic to the process. The fact that the system, in the interests of preserving free speech, requires member state national agencies to first locate extremist accounts before deferring the issue to a relevant competent authority and then finally submitting the removal request along with an explanation of how the material aids or abets terrorist groups reduces its ability to efficiently solve the issue. The sheer length of the process from the time that the terrorist content is discovered by authorities to the time that the content is removed by the online provider means that, depending on the circumstances under which the content is posted, the removal of the content is likely to occur only after it had already reached members of its targeted audience. Moreover, many terrorist organizations, especially the Islamic State, have employed the use of bots and sheer volume to immediately create more accounts in order to continue to spread terrorist content and propaganda.
Another problem with the regulation is the vague nature of the proactive approach required of online platforms and other service providers. In order to balance free speech rights, the EU’s initiative imposes few hard requirements on content providers for actively preventing the use of their platforms for the dissemination of terrorist content. While the regulation requiring platforms to stop the re-uploading of content already subjected to a removal order is an effective method which financially incentivizes service providers to actively block radical organizations from reposting the same content on bot accounts, there remains a strong dependency on the manual issuance of removal orders by member state agencies. This reliance is insufficient to deter the mass creation of accounts with similar messages but differing content by extremists. An effective approach to the disruption of such messaging requires stricter guidelines which place a larger onus on providers to prevent the abuse of their platforms as publicly available sources of radical messaging.
Finally, the approach taken by the European Union on the prevention of virtual radicalization is too focused on only disrupting extremist messaging. In order to more completely reduce radical virtual propaganda to the fringes, the EU should consider increasing funding to alternative informative campaigns about the realities of the promises given by extremist organizations and aiding local leaders within vulnerable communities in their efforts to turn the youth towards more positive forums.
The internet has become an increasingly central part of society in liberal democracies, and the conflict between free speech rights and security concerns has become a necessary issue for Western governments to confront. Moving forward, both the EU and the U.S. must adopt more comprehensive regulations to stop the spread of virtual extremist content supporting terrorist organizations.
