French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve is making the rounds at search companies like Google and Yahoo to ask them to immediately remove terrorist propaganda from their websites and alert authorities to it when it surfaces.
Cazeneuve is visiting the U.S. to attend the White House summit on violent extremism and convince search engines to remove terrorist content in the same way they ban child pornography.
"We emphasized that when an investigation is underway we don't want to go through the usual government to government channels, which can take so long," said Cazeneuve after a meeting with representatives from search companies in Silicon Valley. "It's important to have full cooperation and quick reaction."
The discussions are taking place after terrorist attacks on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo left 12 dead and 11 more injured on January 7. The next day a third gunman killed a policewoman and then killed four more people the next day after taking hostages at a supermarket in Paris.
According to Cazeneuve, tech giants, and in particular search engines, should do more to prevent terrorist organizations from being able to post videos targeted at a younger audience in an attempt to recruit them. He said they should also stop videos being uploaded that depict violent acts such as beheadings.
"What is the value of showing the Kouchi brothers killing a policeman, or Khoulibali declaring allegiance to the Islamic State?" said Cazeneuve, referring to the Paris terrorist attacks.
Members of Congress have expressed similar concerns as Cazeneuve, urging social media websites such as Twitter to block content from terrorists.
"American newspapers would have never allowed our enemies in World War II to place ads in, say, The New York Times for recruitment of people to go and fight against America," said Texas Republican Ted Poe. "So why do social media companies allow terrorist content on their platforms?"
Social media is being used as a recruitment tool for the Islamic State. At least 3,400 fighters have come from Western countries, with 20,000 coming from countries around the world, according to U.S. intelligence.
It will be tough for social media companies and other websites to monitor all the content that is published. Google has said it cannot preview the roughly 300 hours of video that is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Instead, the company relies on users flagging material as inappropriate.
Cazeneuve went on to say the meetings were the first step in building a relationship between tech companies and the French government. Spokespeople from the companies have been invited to Paris in April to continue the discussions.
