It's time for social networking sites to establish relationships with government agencies and stop operating as if it's possible to be neutral in a world full of bad actors who thrive on the Internet, states an opinion piece penned by Robert Hannigan, director of Britain's Government Communications Headquarters.
The UK agency (GCHQ) and sister agencies like MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service needs more support from top U.S. technology companies to neutralize threats from groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, writes Hannigan in the piece published in the Financial Times.
The UK government is happy to be part of a debate on privacy in the digital age, says Hannigan. "But privacy has never been an absolute right and the debate about this should not become a reason for postponing urgent and difficult decisions."
With terrorist groups now using the Internet to broadcast "violent extremism" and social networks as recruitment tools, the likes of Facebook and Twitter can no longer be truly neutral, claims Hannigan.
The GCHQ director calls the top social networking sites a "command-and-control network" for terrorists and extremists. Along with social networking sites, the high-level encryption implemented by developers of apps and mobile operating systems has been making it tougher for government agencies to pursuit terrorists, says Hannigan.
"Techniques for encrypting messages or making them anonymous which were once the preserve of the most sophisticated criminals or nation states now come as standard," states Hannigan. "These are supplemented by freely available programs and apps adding extra layers of security, many of them proudly advertising that they are 'Snowden approved.' There is no doubt that young foreign fighters have learnt and benefited from the leaks of the past two years."
Less encryption and more compliance with government requests would help law enforcement agencies seek out extremists, but organizations like GCHQ needs to remember how things got to this point, says Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International. King says he's disappointed to see the GCHQ head denigrate the Internet, one of mankind's greatest innovations, as a "command-and-control network" for extremists.
"GCHQ's dirty games -- forcing companies to hand over their customers' data under secret orders, then secretly tapping the private fiber optic cables between the same companies' data centers anyway -- have lost GCHQ the trust of the public, and of the companies who services we use," states King. "Robert Hannigan is right, GCHQ does need to enter the public debate about privacy -- but attacking the Internet isn't the right way to do it."
