Transcripts For CSPAN Social Media Combating Terrorism 20171119

Half. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We are ready to get started. Is david ibsen, the executive director of the counter extremism project. It is my pleasure to welcome you here this afternoon for our discussion, rights and responsibilities of social media platforms in an age of global extremism. For those of you who may not be aware, however group, cep, is an Education Research working to combat extremism worldwide. In addition to researching extremist entities and their ideologies and formulating and developing and implementing counterradicalization programs in communities around the world, we also work to pressure expose with the hopes of degrading extremist financial and Communication Networks and online and Internet Networks in particular. And this part of our work in the online space has been of continuous importance to us as our organization has grown and the reason is that extremists continue to demonstrate their ability to successfully misuse and weaponize the internet to radicalize, recruit and inspire acts of terrorism with tragic results. Weve seen this very recently, unfortunately, in the case of the halloween attacker in manhattan. When he was apprehended he had almost 4,000 images on his phone, 90 videos of isis material on his phone including material that directed how to use a truck or vehicle as a weapon of terror. Similarly, selman abedi, who killed 22 people in manchester, england, following a concert , tragically, was helped in part by instructional videos that he found online on how to build a bomb that he found on youtube. And through our research, disturbingly, we found that some of the same content was available on youtube a full two months after it occurred. Today recently in the New York Times there was a story how youtube finally ceded to demands from Civil Society, counterterrorism specialists, and the government and decided to remove completely material from anwar alawlaki, a cleric , americanborn, notorious person who inspired and has connections to dozens and dozens of attacks. So our guests today will discuss these issues and the myriad challenges posed by extremists operating online and also discuss how government and Civil Society can best respond. Id also add the issues that were going to discuss today, the misuse of Technology Platforms by hostile actors, hostile foreign actors, private sector, accountability and responsibility, and the changing perceptions toward Silicon Valley amongst policy practitioners, the media obviously resonate beyond extremism and terrorism and touch a number of issue context and policy context. The hope we hope it will be formative to you if you are , and that it will illicit content online or Free Expression or free speech online. To proper begin todays program its a pleasure to welcome someone whose legislative career has been devoted to citizens, senator ron johnson from the state of wisconsin. Senator ron johnson was elected to the senate in 2010. Hes chairman of the Senate Homeland security and Governmental Affairs committee. He previously served as Ranking Member of the subcommittees on oversight and government management and federal contracting oversight. Senator johnson also serves on the committees on the budget, commerce, science and transportation and foreign relations. Prior to being elected to the u. S. Senate, Senate Johnson senator johnson worked for 31 years as pacuur, l. L. C. A polyester and plastics Manufacturing Business which he cofounded in 1979. He received an accounting degree from the university of minnesota and proud father of three children and resides in oshkosh. Please welcome senator ron johnson. [applause] senator johnson thank you, david. Thank you, all, for coming here. Good afternoon. Really do want to really do appreciate the counter extremism project. It is extremely important. I think youre raising incredibly important issues. Serious issues. Things we really need to discuss as society. For my part, opening the conference here is rather than talk about the type of people we would call into our committee and pick their brains and get information, id like to provide a slightly broader perspective. Im chairman of the Homeland Security, Government Affairs committee. I come from the business background so first thing i did when i took over the chairmanship we had a mission statement, established goals it goals to enhance the economic , and National Security of america. We established four goals on the Homeland Security side of the committee. Border security, cybersecurity, protecting our critical infrastructure, which has an awful lot of cybersecurity component to that, and then countering violent extremists no matter the origin. We focus a lot of time and attention and really in congress, yes, we write legislation. Its hard to get it passed. I really view my primary role as chairman of that committee is to hold the hearings, bring in people like dr. Farid and Fran Townsend and peter bergen, the experts on the subject matter, to do a problem solving process. Define the problem, provide the information. Try and establish achievable goals. So thats certainly what ive been trying to do. We held a hearing just last week. This was a confirmation hearing for what i hope will be the next secretary of Homeland Security. One of the things i did in that hearing is i just laid out , starting with the sikh temple shooting in wisconsin. 20 different mass murderers. It was a pretty depressing list. It ended, of course, with november 5 massacre at sutherland springs, texas, where 26 individuals, 26 souls, 26 individuals wounded. In that 20 list, the list of 20 incidents, 266 souls were lost, souls were lost, over 1,000 262 people were wounded. Later that night, sunday night, november 5, i was with my family. My daughter just asked the question. I think were all asking ourselves. Whats happening . Why is it happening . What can we do about it . Now, there arent these arent very easy questions to answer whatsoever. President obama had a fair amount of criticism when he compared terrorism to casualties counts to other things. For example, overdoses. By the way, thats a huge problem in this nation. A growing crisis. 64,000 deaths last year. Gun deaths, 38,027, about 2 3 were due to suicide. Auto accidents, 37,000. Ticked off a list of 262 individuals were killed in acts of terrorism. Why do we concentrate so much time and effort on those acts of terrorism when lets face it the body count is so much lower . Well, i would argue the reason we devote that much time and attention, the other deaths are part of life. They dont threaten to shut down our economy. Remember after Charlie Hebdo and other attacks in france, the city of brussels shut down, not because it was a terrorist the attack, but because of the threat of a terrorist attack. And so what is happening in this world, the evolution of primarily islamist terror, but lets face it the list of 20 , attacks, there were primarily they were homegrown terrorists. These were people either inspired or copy cats, not tied to islamist terror. But whats so concerning about islamic terror is that its reaching a new phase. I often take a look at islamic terrorism from the viewpoint of phases. We had the pre9 11. You could almost date it back to the attack on on the olympic from palestinians. But specifically al qaedatype attacks began really in the mid when they tried to bring down 1990s the twin towers with a bomb that killed six people, injured close to 1,000. Then 9 11 happened. Then we had the post9 11 wars in afghanistan and iraq. And then the rise of isis after we foolishly got out of iraq, declared victories, and they arose out of the ashes of war. We are dealing with Something Else now. We finally defeated the physical caliphate. They we are doing a mop up operations, but the caliphate as a physical entity is pretty well over. A year ago in our threat hearing, the fbi director talked about a diaspora, a spreading of terrorists around the world. In our last hearing, the current fbi director and nick rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism center, said that the diaspora is not as severe as we thought it was. They fought and they died which is a good thing. But recently a hearing in the Senate Foreign relations, chairman corker pointed out we have troops in 19 Different Countries where that threat exists. So al qaeda, isis, islamist terror has spread. Its evolved. Its metastasized, and we are entering this new phase certainly demonstrated by isis where theyre using social media in incredibly sophisticated, incredibly effective ways. One of the reasons i was quite critical of the obama administration, if you remember president obama after fallujah found, referred to isis as the j. V. Team. Six months later, mosul fell and we saw those acts of barberry barbarian is some during 2014. The fact that we did not immediately put all of our effort into defeating isis in ending that caliphate, that territory every day, the caliphate existed. Every day it wasnt losing, it was perceived as winning. And it was gaining more and more adherence online and inspiring them through social media. That is i think what our reality did. Thats the phase we are in right now as isis has spread at least to these 19 countries where we have troop presence and probably beyond, and they have this social media platform set up. Theyll continue to inspire it. So the question is, what do we do about it . Well, let me just give you some basic direction. First of all, we had to end that physical caliphate. Weve done that. We must address a recruitment, the incitement, training on social media and thats really what this conference is all about and you are going to hear from experts what we need to do. We have to have a rational Legal Immigration system. We have to realize people we allow in this country and gain permanent residency, we have to assimilate them. One thing america does better then probably for example france and belgium, we , assimilate immigrants in this country better. We have to ask ourselves the very serious question how many can we accept . How many can we assimilate . Any nation must any nation, any sovereign nation has to secure its border, has to control immigration. Assimilation is key. But assimilation is clear. I want to quote a philosopher in 1945 that described the paradox of tolerance. He said, unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are not intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a Tolerant Society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them. America is a very Tolerant Society. We value that. Almost above anything else. Our freedom, our liberty. But our compassion and or our tolerance. But in this new era, in this new phase with this new threat to National Security, we really need to ask ourselves very serious questions. Youll hear this on the panel today. We dont allow child pornography on the internet. Its illegal to download it. Yet, we allow howto guide books, how to create a bomb, how to buy a truck, the right truck to buy with two wheels in the back axle so when you run somebody down you have a greater chance of killing that individual. These are serious questions our society has to ask. How much can we tolerate understanding that paradox of tolerance . If we tolerate too much, our tolerance itself will be ended. Its vital that we improve our intelligence gathering capabilities. Our first line of defense against violent extremists, whether its homegrown our foreignborn is a robust and effective intelligence gathering capability. Together with strong alliances so we can share that intelligence. We cant be all places at all times. Now, i realize when we Start Talking about intelligence gathering, we Start Talking about Civil Liberties. In a free society, you always have that delicate balance between Civil Liberties and security. And unfortunately id have to argue today the point of that delicate balance has got to tip toward security, or again we will lose our society. There will no longer be tolerance. One thing we have to be prepared to do is be relentless in our pursuit and destruction of violent extremists. I mentioned before one of the huge strategic blunders of the last administration was bugging out of iraq. Declaring victory, allowing isis to rise again. Creating that additional threat. We cant afford to do that anymore. One of the things we discussed is authorizations for use of military force under this new threat. I just want to quick read the three that are at stake right now. Currently, we are operating under the authorization for use of military force signed into law on september 18, 2011. Seven days after 9 11. This is an authorization that works. It reads, the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or heres determines the problem. He determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on september 11 or harbored such organizations of persons. Or persons. I think if you read that authorization, i certainly dont come to the conclusion that it applies today. But some lawyer somewhere said it did and by precedence it does. Now, weve had a debate about whether we have a new authorization for use of military force. The problem in debating a new one is apparently we dont have enough votes to pass one that will actually give the commander in chief the ability to be tenacious and relentless and actually achieve victory. Let me read you another effective authorization of use of military force. This should actually be a declaration of war. This is what Congress Passed first on december 8, 1941, against japan. Then december 11, 1941, against japan. Germany. This is a declaration of war. The president is hereby authorized and directed to deploy the entire naval and military force of the United States and resource of the government to carry on war against, in this case japan, and to bring the conflict to successful termination. All the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the congress of the United States. Thats called an allout effort, and i would argue in this phase, this generational struggle, this generation of war that were in, we need that kind of allout authorization declaration. Now, in february, 2015, again, you take a look at the 2001 authorization. It really doesnt apply to the situation. There was a debate in congress. The problem is the authorization the administration requested simply wasnt that type of relentless, tenacious request for an authorization. Let me read it to you. The president s authorized subject to limitations in subsection c. That doesnt sound like an allout declaration, does it . To use armed forces of the United States to be determined or necessary against isil or associated persons or forces as defined in section 5. By the way, thats definition is quite good. See limitations. The authority granted in subsection a does not offer the use during offensive Ground Combat operations. The only reason the physical caliphate is over is because this president used ground troops. Not a whole lot of them. Thousands. Not tens of thousands. But gave the commanders on the field the authority to end the caliphate. It has been ended. So again, its extremely important not to hamstring any administration. Whether its republican or democrat the commander in chief , in actually winning a war. Finally, we must rebuild our military. I want to just quick show you a little chart here. This is the history of United States spending on defense. I want to give you the stats on this. Because its pretty interesting what we continue to do to the finest among us in terms of providing military support. In the 1970s, we averaged 5 of our g. D. P. For defense spending. It was a high of 7. 6 under Richard Nixon and jimmy carter drew the military down to about 4. 4 . In the 1980s, we averaged about 5. 5 of defense spending. That ranged from 4. 7 to 5. 7 . There was a high point of 6 under reagan. We ended the cold war. During the 1990s, there was the peace dividend, the end of history. So we went from about 5 under george h. W. Bush, to 2. 8 under bill clinton. Then 9 11 occurred. So then in the oughts, whatever you call the last decade, we averaged about 3. 9 low of 2. 9 . , high of 4. 6 . Of course, we declared the war over in iraq, and once again we ourted hollowing out military. Last year, we spent 3. 2 . In 2016. In 2017, the best estimate is about 3. 1 . We are not devoting the National Resources we need to defend our nation to keep the homeland safe. Now, this is all within the context of the fact Neither Party is seriously taking seriously addressing what i consider the number one threat and admiral mike mullen said, the until one threat to our National Security is debt and deficit. We are tiny 20 trillion dollars in debt. In the next 30 years, it is projected we will run at least another 129 trillion worth of deficit. How can we spend enough on military when were already in debt over our heads . We have got to start getting serious about addressing the fact we are mortgaging our kid future. And let me end on that note. Because i wanted to broaden this discussion. My daughter asked that question, what can we do about this, why is this occurring . Whats happening . I was in Shawano High School on friday and i had one of the senior girls ask me the exact same question what can we do about it . Now, well talk about some specific solutions in terms of social media and what we can do there. But i would argue the broader problem is a cultural one. And one brought about to a certain extent by Government Spending thats exacerbated the problem. Mortgaging our kids future and not solving the problem. We spent 22 trillion by some estimates on the war on poverty. Did we solve poverty . We engaged in that war on poverty in the 1960s, poverty rate is about 15 . Today they continue to be about 15 . Back in the 1960s, 8 of births were out of wedlock. Today its 41 . We have weakened the foundational premise of our society, the family. And its not good. Ill end on this note. Because i was in a school and its all about what were teaching our children. Back in the 1940s and 1950s in most Public Schools a sign was hung on the wall. It had 10 attributes. 10 attributes that those schools, those Public Institutions were trying to instill into the young people. I want to read you the list and ask you if you think this is what were trying to instill in our young people today, whether we are doing it in an overt fashion. Got to find my list. Starts with honesty. Loyalty. Trustworthiness. Courage. Respect. Compassion. Initiative. Perseverance. Responsibility. I love this next one contemplation. Optimism. Adaptability. I dont care what specific fixes were talking about when it comes to social media, how much money we spend on the military, if we dont rededicate ourselves to instilling those types of values in our young people and if we arent as tenacious and relentless in making sure our young people grow up with those types of values, everything we naught. Imply be all for i think thank for holding this extremely cep Important Forum and i think youll enjoy the next panel. Have a good day. [applause] david thank you. Thank you very much, senator johnson, for your remarks and for raising all these very interesting and complex issues. As senator johnson said we have a now distinguished panel of guests who will explore these issues even further. Its my honor now to introduce our moderator for todays panel. Greta van susteren has been a highprofile Television News anchor, commentator and legal analyst for two decades hosting Popular Television shows like burden of proof and on the record with Greta Van Susteren she served as an adjunct faculty member at law school. Georgetown law school, former criminal defense and civil trial lawyer. She is the author of two books and has been named by forbes as one of the worlds most 100 most powerful women. Board of directors for the National Institute of civil discourse, treated and the aftermath of the 2011 tucson. Hooting a fellow wisconsinite, i believe. Please welcome Greta Van Susteren. [applause] greta thank you very much. Very proud to be here and obviously with such an important event and such an important topic. Enough about me. You heard the introduction which was way too long for me. I want to tell you about the panelists we are going to have here. Start first with Fran Townsend. Fran townsend who is who is assistant to president bush 43 for Homeland Security. Shes currently a contributor to cnn and youre looking at your program and see fran as well as our other two panelists have an incredible background. Very rich history in such important issue as cybersecurity. Our next is dr. Hany farid from dartmouth college. And he is the chair of the computer sciences. His research is essentially or not essentially, but it includes digital forensics. And then finally peter bergen, Vice President of new america, and cnn National Security analyst. And a former colleague of mine back about a million years. So anyway, we are going to get right to it with the panel. Ill ask the first question to sort of set the stage. Let me start with you, peter. How bad is it . How bad is cybersecurity . How much should we be worried and not sleep at night . Peter well, new america did a study of 129 individuals in the United States who had either joint isis or tried to join isis based on public records. We found none of them had been recruited by a real person. It wasnt there was no they didnt go to a mosque and get radicalized. They didnt meet some returning foreign fighter. They met nobody, in fact. They were entirely radicalized online. There is an israeli counterterrorism ackdemib gabrielle who has a unique formula. Its part of a virtual pack. When you go online and you have these ideas or there is a lot of other people around the world who will provide an eek chamber echo chambers saying, essentially youre right. In terms of the 129 americans is they are disbursed all around the United States. They dont fit any particular ethnic profile. They are all sunni muslims. They are hard to profile. I mean, theres no and then of course, this causes problems for Law Enforcement because somebody whos watching isis propaganda, very few of them go out to do violence, but some of them. Then do. The question is, who will be violent . And thats a tricky question to answer, unless we have a machine that can read mens souls or sometimes womens souls because , increasingly women are being recruited online. So the problem is bad. I think that said, i think social Media Companies have a cycle here where denial is the first response, then they accept that they have an obligation of some kind, they have Reputational Risks, lawsuits. There could be some in some jurisdictions. I think twitter has taken down hundreds of thousands of accounts. Facebooks hired thousands of people. The problem is a pretty big one. Of course, cep has made a big role. Has anday, the times important story on alawlaki. New america looked at the question of alwalaki, who you dont know, is an american cleric who really became the leader of al qaeda. We found even after he was killed in the cia drone strike that his speeches and videos showed up in more than 70 cases of people being charged with terrorism in the United States. Even in death, hes been pretty important. It is great that cep was able to put pressure to get rid of some of these discussions, because they certainly have helped radicalize some people. Greta fran, can you make us feel any better . Fran probably not. This has been a years long effort. And the senator who you just heard address you and others like him on the hill have played a key and important role. Cep came about years back because senator Joe Lieberman and ambassador mark wallace and i said that the government is not good at addressing this problem, the notion of countering violent extremism on the internet. We came to the conclusion first, you think, what did i do wrong, when we were in government . Then you think, i dont think government does this very well or can do this very well. There is a role in the private sector to take this on. I will tell you this was harder than i thought it would be. We first started when we were first established and ceps twitter account had no followers. So i would do it from my own twitter account and identify the radical extremists on twitter. It became easy because what they started to do is attach beheading videos. The lawyer in me said, ok. Everyone of common sense will agree beheading video is not First Amendment protected free speech. If i tell you that initially the social Media Companies took the view we are just a platform, we are like the railroad of the agnostic, thats not our responsibility. We were outraged. We said, thats an unacceptable answer. We locked arms with likeminded elected officials and got hearings held. We realized that shining a light on this absurd view would help to bring them along. Greta beginning about when . Fran so this oh, gosh. This got to be three years ago. This is before the burning of the jordanian pilot. It started with the beheading videos on the shores of libya and elsewhere. Then there was the jordanian pilot video that we insisted be taken down. All the while, by the way, were struggling with the alawlaki tapes in places like youtube and google, and it took a long time. I think until it was a real Reputational Risk and business risk, right, so if you are, name your company, and youre buying advertising, what you dont want to have do of if youre Proctor Gamble is have an ad come up alongside an alawlaki video. Its bad business. The business pressure and public pressure all came together to put significant pressure on them. But, look, even in the New York Times article, the reporter makes the point, when he goes back through and begins to google, he still finds 18,000 still online. Of course, he calls and makes an inquiry, and they get taken down. It doesnt have to be this hard, ok. I am going to hand it off to hany, because hany, who did the incredible work in photo dna to make sure we took child pornography off the web, did incredible work to adapt that to this problem and he should explain. This is not no longer a hard problem. It shouldnt take the resources that the social Media Companies are complaining about anymore because of the tool hany has. Greta let me jump ahead, hany. We are talking about how people can access youtube and see this. But theres Something Else called the dark web. Which is probably many of us dont know how to access it. Is that where a lot of recruitment is being done which is a whole other criticism and test consideration and crisis to focus on . And how easy is it to get on the dark web . Dr. Farid there are certain things that you absolutely want to do on the dark web. Things like drugs, trafficking you want to move part of the web , that you will have less scrutiny. Greta which would include a terrorist maybe some terrorism threats or dr. Farid well, it depends. Getting back to what you were saying, when you want to recruit online, you dont want to hide. So when, for example, these terror groups are kicked off of networks, they dont celebrate and go to the dark web and are happy about it. They want to be on the surface web. They want to be on youtube and twitter and facebook because thats where you reach millions of people. Dark web is bad for business for them. Greta suppose youre sitting there, 20yearold young person and think, i might want to join a group, maybe the dark web is if i initiate it, rather than having the terrorist initial initiating me maybe i decide , maybe i want to . Dr. Farid theres no question as we start to tackle the issues of social media on youtube, twitter, facebook, its going to be a moving target. We are going to have to start to think about what comes next. Thats p to p, peertopeer sharing. That doesnt have a middleman. That is the dark web where you can go find information. Right now, we had such a huge problem on the surface web, really easy to access literally , tens of thousands of videos that are fed to you one after the other that are leading to the type of radicalization that we are having. This is the fight we are in today, the fight we are in tomorrow we will move into a new territory. Greta fran, tell me on the web where does the First Amendment come in . Obviously beheading seems like an easy one for me. There might be some manifesto i could write that, you know, where do you draw the line . How do you identify this line . Fran so the good news is that all of the social Media Companies, Internet Service providers have a terms of service. So the easiest way to get at this, theyre terrified getting into a discussion where does the First Amendment protect and where does it not protect. They dont want to get into that constitutional argument, understandably. You talk about hiring people. Hire tens of lawyers, right . But you say, look at your own terms of service. If this video, if this document incites to violence and exhorts to violence, then it violates your terms of service and take it down on that basis, and you dont have to get to the constitutional argument. Again, they were slow to do that. But now that they i think now that they understand look, the other thing peter mentioned the possibility of lawsuits. We explored pretty seriously the federal statute about providing Material Support and the lawyer in me said, my argument is, if you provide Material Support, that is a platform for terrorists to communicate. Greta aiding and abetting . Fran correct. You look at the most recent tragic case in new york, this guy was on telegram in isis chatrooms in iraq and syria so he went looking for them, we believe at least so far. He was able to find them. He was able to communicate on an encrypted ad that evaded Law Enforcement. He didnt come up on the screen until that horrible halloween afternoon. And these are the sorts of things social media platforms like telegram and others have got to understand. They have a legal responsibility to police their networks. Greta peter, what is it going to take . What will it take for them to understand . Peter i think they do understand. We shouldnt beat up on the social Media Companies. Silicon valley is important for our economy. There are a lot of good things about these platforms, otherwise we wouldnt be using them. I think typically theyre usually immature. They are new companies. And they start facebook was sort of slow to kind of recognize the problem both on this issue and also on the russian propaganda. Twitter was slow. They got it now. Getting back to the First Amendment discussion. Beyond one of these platforms is not a right. Its a business. Being on one of these platforms is not a right. Its a business. The business can tell you cant be on the platform because as fran pointed out youre kind of violating the terms of service. So actually this has got nothing to do with the First Amendment. If it did, it would be a real problem, because in this country, you can say anything about anybody and thats not true in a lot of other countries. You cant blaspheme in pakistan. Did the same about the holocaust in germany. You cant incite hatred in the united kingdom. That is a subpoint here. In other countries, some other governments could can be much more, you know, they can Tell Companies to do things they cant tell them to do here. So for instance in china or but, you know, fran mentioned telegram. This is another very interesting kind of point. Telegram is based in berlin. Its not subject to american laws or American Social pressure. What has actually succeeded, not american laws. They are to some degree irrelevant. The government pressure of having hearings, senator johnson and others, the social pressure, discussions like this, organizations like c. E. P. Have really brought this up. I think at the end of the day , the people who run these companies are american citizens. They understand this is a problem. I think that they have tried to deal with it. Maybe not as quickly as they should have, but i think they are trying. And we should sort of applaud the efforts they have made. Dna, you haveoto identified child pornography. Is there an algorithm for identifying jihadist language designed to recruit or incite . Tell me where we are on that. Dr. Farid so whats important to understand the work we did in the child pornography space in the mid 2000s was we had seen with the rise of the internet an explosion of child pornography online. Really massive amounts of child pornography that has largely been enabled because of the online platforms. At that time in the mid to thousands, we were trying to think about how do you stop the flow of content . So determine if there is a person in the image. Determine if the person is underage, and determine if the content is sexually explicit. Finally i dont know how to , define or let alone write an algorithm. And we used to do this in about two milliseconds. And you can make a mistake in one of every billion times. Those are the engineering demands. Back in the mid to thousands, we were nowhere close to being able to do that. In all the advance in machinery and ai, we are nowhere close. Not even close. So we had to think about the problem a little bit differently. The way we thought about the problem was to say, look, computers cannot automatically do this. Whether its child pornography or jihadist content. But heres what we can do. We can have humans identify the content. The National Center for missing and exploited children is home to tens of millions of known child pornography content. They have been verified as child pornography. We reach into every one of those images and we extract from it a signature thats unique to that particular image. And then we sit at the pipe of a facebook. Every single image that comes in, we extract the signature out. We compare it to this database of known bad content, whether its child pornography, jihadist videos, whatever it is, and we filter based on that. Thats how this is done very effectively. If you think about what i described, it is agnostic to what its looking for. I could look for images of kittens if i wanted to remove them from the internet. It would be a bad thing but i could do it if i wanted to. That also speaks to the power of the technology. It knows nothing what its looking for. It has no understanding of content, of meaning, of intent. It is simply saying, a human has told me this content is a beheading video, a human has told me this is content of child pornography, i am going to eliminate it. Which also means we have to control that technology very carefully so it is not misused in a way of eliminating content that we actually believe should have a space online. Greta except the old adage, i would rather say sorry than ask for permission. In a sense, they would rather overblock and then apologize a millisecond later. Thats for pictures. What do you do for words . Dr. Farid right. Greta which is what the jihadists besides the images for recruitment . Dr. Farid what we have been doing with the cep over the past few years is take that basic core technology, photo dna, uniquely designed to go after images and extend them to video. We dont explicitly go after words, but we go after the video content and audio tracks. Determinedtent, we it to be a violation of terms of servants of service because it incites violence, glorifies violence or show gratuitous violence. We go hunting for that upon upload. By the way, this core framework that i just described is called hashing or robust hashing, has been in place for a long time. We use it to find malware. We use it to find viruses. Every bit of code thats bad for the network, that is poisonous for the network, we extract that signature and shove that signature into your Virus Protection Software and thats how we prevent it from future uploads. Greta what do we do peter, is some recruitment done by text only . I can see with the ability of the photographs and video and i assume thats a much more effective way to recruit, but is some only text, and then how do we do that . Fran so part of the answer is what hany said earlier about the dark web. It doesnt scale, right . I cant recruit via text at scale. What you need is a platform that gives you wide reach, for you to be able to go out, because of the 10,000 people you touch you may only attract or get a response from several, and you may only recruit one. And so you need something that scales, and text doesnt scale. Its not to say its not a problem at all. I think its not a very well understood or known problem. We havent its hard to scope. Peter the problem is child pornography is illegal and also relatively easy to discern. I think the problem with terrorist propaganda, jihadist propaganda, some of it is in eye of the beholder. There is little debate about isis beheading, but what about a lecture from a cleric who talks about jihad, which is, by the way, a completely legitimate concept in islam, particularly as it relates to internal struggles. Is that a speech that shouldnt be on the internet or should . Thats where it becomes more problematic. We are not going to solve that. Child pornography turned out to be a relatively simple problem because it was rather precise and also illegal. What the boundaries are about so, for instance, if i was teaching a High School Course about the holocaust, i might actually want my students to know there were holocaust deniers, even though in germany , that is illegal speech. And so when things this is where it becomes a little harder. I think as the times reported today, taking away alawlakis propaganda and speeches down is a good thing, but the problem here is alawlaki also in his early days had speeches about islam that were pretty anodyne and really not an issue. What point during his career you say, thats the point . At the end of the day, thats a human judgment them thing, not a algorithm thing. Algorithms are useful, particularly with materials that has already been deemed reprehensible because its in the database. You can take it down quickly. We had a discussion at new america with the british home secretary. One of the interesting questions is the extent to which social Media Companies should look at things before they go up rather than after they go up. I hadnt really thought of that. I dont know what you greta how fast can they . Dr. Farid this is problem with the scale. You talk about facebook, about a billion uploads a day. Youtube, hundreds of hours of Youtube Video a minute. These companies have scaled so quickly and so dramatically and thats not a bug, thats a feature. That was the design. Imagine a News Organization without an editor. And this is now the primary source of news for america. Thats where we are now. Thats true of everything from the way they sell advertising. There is no human in the loop. Thats why we have things on facebook where you could target jew haters, for example, because theres no human in the loop thats moderating things happening on these platforms. Greta if a News Organization puts a beheading or burning of a jordanian pilot or something is that they are scandalized and do so much selfreflection afterwards. I dont see a lot of that maybe im wrong in these social Media Companies. Selfreflection when things slip through. Or when people exercise that judgment. Peter with the algorithm approach, cause obviously when you have 4000 being uploaded every minute, but with the algorithm saved 2 of this material could be problematic and we need someone human to look at it . Frances there is a middle ground dr. Farid there is a middle ground here. It can work autonomously with no human. Or we could have an initial flag, but then putting a human in the loop. To give you a sense of the engineering requirements, just the other day we heard stateoftheart face software, the best researchers in the world. This is a problem we have been working on for decades. We have been thinking about how to do phase recognition face recognition. It said it had an accuracy of 99. 9 . But that is one mistake in every 1000 uploads. That is high rates for the internet. In contrast for photo dna, there was the error rate of one in 100 billion. That gap is in our midst. Even in or miss. Even filtering that, it may be problematic at the scale of billions of uploads a day. We have to get the Technology Much faster. Mark zuckerberg has promised it is just around the corner, but it is not. We are still years away. Now we have a gap we need to fill. These platforms have created monsters in some ways that they cannot control. I agree with you that i dont i see concern because of the impact on the business, but on the child pornography front, the Tech Companies were approached in 2003 to do something about the problem. It wasnt until 2008 that microsoft and i partnered to start developing the technology. Intough we developed it thousand nine, google did not deploy it until 2016. Greta what was the holdup . Dr. Farid you should bring someone here to ask. Greta what is your guess . , franrid the best thing said this earlier, is to have no rules. To be a platform, the good, the bad, the ugly, the illegal. Its not my problem. As soon as you get into the business of saying yes or no, it is messy. I will point out that when it comes down to copyright infringement, youtube is very good about taking down material. Greta because they can get sued. Dr. Farid but the eightyearold who are victims of child abuse cannot sue google, so nothing happened. I know that is mean and cold, but that is my take. As we think about how these companies are responding, it is important to understand where we have come from and what the response has been. I think the hearings that we saw last week were a good first step. I heard really good things from the representatives of them. Greta but you are telling me it is six years late. Everyone that stands before congress, it sounds a lot different. What is next . You have a solution, fran . Frances the dirty little secret for was on the alawlaki, the hearings and public pressure we put on them, the thing in the end that i think really pushed them was a call from a significant public official, former public official, no longer in government, to the chairman of alphabet to his personal email, copying me saying, what the hell is this . Andpeople are friends these people are friends. Suddenly that is uncomfortable. We hadt thing we knew, broken through. It is tenacity and persistence, and making them uncomfortable. If you cant explain this, if you cant justify it greta but most of us arent thinking about this every night. You are because it is your business, but the rest of us are thinking whats for dinner or Something Else. Those of us were are steeped in this and cant sleep at night, the rest of us are not in it. Frances thats right. I would say that our european colleagues, a little late to this game, but have come into it in a big way. We are just past the anniversary attack. , the bataclan come topean allies have the realization that you cant fight this we as a country have been very proficient at fighting this in the physical space. We know how to do that. We are the best in the world at it. We relate to the game of reviewing the internet as another battle space and approaching it in the same sort of deliberate, strategic way. I wish this was the only cyber problem. It is most clearly not. Administration, from the george w. Bush administration strategy. D a cyber President Trump will be no different. They are working on it now. But this is one piece to a much bigger problem. Greta we all hear this and we are horrified, but you have to keep the pressure up. Look how many years it took for google to do this. It took a personal note. Dr. Farid i think its even worse. Not only are we forgetting about it, but you dont have a lot of power. You are not a paying customer. If you were giving these Companies Money most of us use these resources for free, google, twitter, facebook. Even if you wanted out, how . Greta but there are campaigns to get started. Write airline and complain, then the pr companies are calling. Dr. Farid but i have power as a consumer because i can choose another airline. Here, there is not much power. There is one social media site, facebook. In fairness, there are multiple search endings engines, but there is one that has 80 or 90 of market share. The power is in the advertisers. Those are the companies that have gotten social Media Companies to move by essentially withholding greta you get to the point where the Advertising Companies want to do that, that they are paying attention. Dr. Farid thats my point. Greta peter, your solution . People are going to do bad things when they are influenced by other people, but i wanted in defense of the social Media Companies, i want havey that they counterterrorism guys, very sophisticated. One leading scholar in the jihadism space was hired by youtube. Think social pressure had a huge part of play, actually not the government. Since these are American Companies based in the u. S. , we can exert social pressure with some success. They dont want to be seen to be in some way influencing elections in a bad way are getting people to carry out violent crimes. In a jurisdiction somewhere in the world, not in the u. S. Because of the First Amendment, some people succeed in suing a social Media Company on the grounds of, but for social Media Company, my son would not have been killed. We see this in israel. It will succeed somewhere, im fairly confident. That will also change this discussion. I would add that while we dont have a lot of power, to the extent that each of you is on multiple social media sites, and as you are scrolling through the feed, you see something that you will go past it because you are not interested, it doesnt appeal to you, but it is a violation of the terms of service. Literally it is 15 seconds for you to hit a button and help twitter, this should not be here, this is not appropriate content, and it will make a difference. When you say what can people do, we put together a nonprofit and we hire people to do that. They are doing it every day, but the general public can be a force multiplier. We are not asking that much. To, leverage, your ability by the way, tag your congressman or senator said he sees you are everybodythis, if takes some small amount of time to do it, it does make a difference. Greta what is the role of the government in this . Or what should be the role of government . Peter what the government is doing right now on the state department side, it makes sense. We had a pretty ineffective weicy for a while, but now are overtly or covertly supporting other people around the world in their local languages who are countering the message of the point is, this does not cost very much. It is happening. E have spent 15 years online, and look at isis, youll get other messages. The algorithms can be manipulated. ,ot u. S. Government messages but local groups have the right messages in the local languages. Is so there is a attempt to redirect people to other messages. Is, the role for the is a limited one. Extent, they government has tried it. This is not a reflection on governments on republicans or democrats. We are uniformly bad and not going to get any better because of the kiss of death problem. This is not a regulatory problem. I do think it is a role for the private sector. Peter the role the government played was to bring the players to the table. Effectivewas very because if the government is involved, you do have a First Amendment issue. Anyway to quantify how many people were radicalized even this year . Peter we have lots of different radicalization. E have neonazis there are 1. 5 billion muslims in the world. I am thinking 150,000 members. It is a very small percentage. The people are very dangerous. Ofthere is a massive problem radicalization. It is a problem. Partly dealing with it the failure on the battlefield makes the campaign harder. It will continue. On halloween we saw this in manhattan, someone influenced by these ideas killed eight people. If we continue to put pressure and they are not willing, and they are losing, overall that reduces their romantic alert. 2014e end of the day, in when they controlled a population the size of switzerland, they were a big problem in actual reality. They were recruiting all of these people and they are not now. The other thing to think about is right now we are concerned about twitter and facebook. There will be social Media Application five years from now that we cannot identify. Maybe it will be recruiting people into virtual reality. Able toyou are virtually be there. That would be very powerful. What i am saying is we are going to see other iterations and we do not know what the son of isis will look like. The politics have reduced these groups continuously. There been massive waves of immigration to europe of muslims. But they will use exactly the same isis claybrook. Playbook. Al qaeda playbook. This is not going to go away. But we can manage it in different ways. Whether it is the u. S. Military or the social Media Companies making more of an effort, right now isis is looking at a prognosis that is not great. A site used for child photography and trafficking of say, i might read it and what is this, i do not know the code language. But if you are involved in the art, you can identify it. So to what extent can these how do we begin, isnt a problem in recruitment and how do we begin identify a . What identify it . Backstage has gone from explicit to coded language. There,re people out hundreds of people, amazing men and women who understand this. People in counterterrorism. Powerful very o space is very powerful. We cannot expect people to release everything on the platform. But we can ask them, when you are made aware of these abuse is an problems with the platform, to start to respond to it. That seems perfectly reasonable. Things were talking about art violations of your service. Youe simply pointing out to that these things on your platform violate your terms of service, can you please do something about that. Things that ithe , i do not want facebook deciding what i should and should not see. I find that more terrifying than doing nothing then taking on a role for which they are not qualified. Do social media platforms not want to appear too close to the government. So we could create a thirdparty model where everyone could talk to each other with the benefit of collective wisdom and make a decision about what needs to come down. I think that is what is needed. The social Media Companies, the private sector could fund it, could pull together Law Enforcement and the intelligence world to identify coded language and Bring Technology to bear. This is a place, i thirdparty center, to address these extremists online. I think that is what is necessary to be able to police it. Do any members of the audience have a question . We have microphones. Anyone . Carried out. Go. Ere we high. Hello i had a quick question. Has gone intoht this and coding has gone into this. My background being from the andlligence community thinking about best practices and wondering if you have integrated that in the cyber realm. You talk about doing things the isd the scene and there billions of content that is being uploaded on the internet. It is really hard to get ahead of. But when i inc. About wouldbe terrorists or but when i terrorists,wouldbe they have the ability to google, read, and download and make decisions. That is a place that could be targetable not only from the back and let also be front end. I am wondering what ngos are doing in this space. What peter mentioned jigsaw is doing. It is powerful. On the front and when you are googling extremist videos, they are pulling up counter messaging and trying to redirect you. You we at cep have targeted getting that stuff off as opposed to the counter messaging angle. We have worked and relied on our foreign partners. People in the muslim world with credibility. Programs at the state department. Giving these people with credible voices the money and research to be able to do the counter messaging while we stay and take the bad stuff down. But there is a role for both to do that and you have to do both. The hunt will never be enough by itself. First question, if there is the risk of an Extremist Organization creating their own social networking site for sharing material . Absolutely. The we have already seen that. There is no question that this will be a moving target. On theow we are focused mainstream social media site. They have such a reach that it is unprecedented. There is no question. Tomorrow there will be another friend. The next day, another one another front. We will solve the problem today and have another one tomorrow. What happens when these things go dark . They will be hard technical questions that we have to solve. I want to press you on something spoke about earlier regarding with the governments role could be. Sitting in the hearings last ,eek about russian interference it seems were the legislators were really honing in were that laws were being broken. If you look at the problem from where it laws are being broken and you look at terrorist groups trying to use these platforms to raise money, that would seem to me to be within the support realm. Violates. That there is a potential for laws being broken. So im wondering if there is legislation that could try to where laws are being broken. A lot of the propaganda is used for a reason at some of that reason could go into support. Peter does the First Amendment cover bomb making instructions . Yes. Frances i agree with you. Many of these are being used to break laws that currently exist. The best way forward is to try to use those laws. I think we should look for the best possible facts. Someone is going to get killed in this country by someone self radicalized who has gone on and looked at some of this stuff. That is the case to bring and we will find it and bring it. But to make the argument to congress that we need new laws, if i was senator johnson, i would say will would have you done to use the laws you have . There is legislation now on the ad buying site where laws are being broken. It will be hard to deal with russian propaganda at large. So im just wondering if there is then analogy in the counters tears in space to close the loop all to the the loophole to the online world. It is identifying the strongest possible set of facts. One more question. We have talked about tech response. This. Rgen talked about on what social what responsibility do social Media Companies have on their platform and what is our argument for them to actually do this . Google is doing this. Office, alas in qaeda was a relatively small group that was hard to get into. It was like trying to get into harvard. Isis is like the tc public the dvd Public School system, they will take anything cash dc Public School system. They will take anyone. Now they do not care if you were trained, how you were inspired, it has been effective. That theseot mean social Media Companies have not done certain things, whether it is hiring experts, coming up with being new ideas. I think we have to be careful not to demonize them. What is the difference from jihad magazine in the 1980s which was mailed to your house and radicalized a lot of people versus what we see today . The main difference is speed and reach. This has been going on for a while. Were broadband video in the bid to thousands in the 2000s. This is not completely new. The speed and reach is different. It has created different outcomes. To be fair, i do not know if i would put the burden on the counter messaging area i think what jigsaw is doing, redirecting, is different. You have the resource to do it and it is their responsibility to do it. As opposed to the counter messaging. As you can tell, i am allergic to this counter messaging thing, ibecause i do not think view it as a wasted effort. , buthat it should be done it should be done by someone you can do it effectively. I dont think social media is effective as a counter message. I was interested in the topic that france that france started about the private sector being part of the solution. Where there is a lot of focus on the private sector. There is a lot of big Global Social problems. Private say maybe the sector could come forward and find this, i am curious to know if you are in these conversations. And maybe talk about this in a broader context. There is a lot of pressure on companies, and we are doing that as well. How realistic is that, given the dynamics of capitalism . Two describe them as being reluctant, i want to be cautious because peter is right. We have enjoyed some success and they deserve credit for it, albeit really slow. I do think, now it is a question of, you say to the private sector, you are a private profit making enterprise. You have capital cost, the cost of doing business. You have to sink it back into continue making money. What we are suggesting to you is an additional cost that cuts into your profit. We tell you you ought to be doing it because you have a social responsibility. So you are using a carrot with a stick with them to make the argument that they have to do this. We are in the very early stages, there is a point now where they have been slow to get where they are, they are reluctant to open the door and sit down with us any transparent way. Because then we will really know , we will know exactly what is on their network. While they are doing that, lots of time marches on. If that is the ultimate outcome of this, while they are doing this someone is doing something. Wen dr. Free did the work to offered to license it to them for free. It was not going to cost them a thing. They were not talk to us. They essentially have a monopoly anyway in their social media world. What is the effective way to get them . The answer is eventually youre going to have to sue them or shame them. This is exactly why senator johnson and other allies on capitol hill are so important to us. Alone, we could not get them there. I think this is a half saying. We have been very this is a tough staying thing. Dr. Farid it is easy to lump all of these companies together but there is a distinction between them. With photo dna on the other end of the spectrum i would put also that. Lphabet. Ld put a at the end of the day there has to be an incentive. Going tois what is take the day. When advertisers say this is unacceptable and we will no longer pay for advertising, it changes dramatically. They need to literally stop advertising. Arent they going to stop for a week and then come back . Dr. Farid they would flight advertising. They would be very selective. There is a huge profit margin and it was effective. I think there is no simple answer. Combination of capitol hill, the , this, economic pressure will make a company move in the direction that we want. One more question. Book, imirer of peters am wondering if you could cast out for the next two to five sequel and say where going, you see this war not just in social media, but throughout. Peter thank you. I am now a pessimist. The massive migration of muslims in europe and the alienation of i think of isis as the european and middle east phenomenon. Luckily not an american phenomenon. Even though we are a substantial country. I think political conditions that created isis are still there. In a ron, we have a referendum. Syria, there is no end to the war insight. My prognosis is unfortunately we will see more of the same. Under President Trump, we will be in afghanistan for the foreseeable future. Conditionsal continue to exist. The American Dream has been a firewall against these ideas. Somewhat isolated from the phenomenon but europe is not. We have received five terrorist attacks in london in the last year. It is going to continue. It is a problem that in my professional opinion i do not see ending. Thank you very much for joining us. [applause] we will have a reception starting now in the back. Stick around. Thank you for coming. Announcer tomorrow we will hear from the spanish abbasid are to the u. S. About the spanish ambassador to the u. S. At 2 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Night, we will show you an event with nikki haley, madeleine albright, and condoleezza rice. Here is a preview. When i first got there, we had issues. But the one that was defining was when the president made the decision to hit syria. After the chemical. When he made that decision, the number of calls and emails from countries who said it is so good to see america lead again was amusing was amazing. Out and tos to speak lead on the international stage. When we do they feel more confident. I think you are seeing that with japan on the north korea issue. We see it when dealing with a ron. I think it will always be important for us to see we are dealing with iran. Theuncer you can watch rest of it tomorrow night at 8 00 eastern here on cspan. Cspan, q a with musician and author daryl davis followed by theresa may taking questions from members of the house of commons. Opinionslook at public and key issues facing the Trump Administration as we get closer to the 2018 midterm elections. Announcer this week on q a, musician and lecturer daryl davis. For over 30 years, he has brief rented befriended members of the kkk to try to understand or hatred and try to make them change their ways. Did chuck impact berry have on your life . Daryl the man was a genius. Not many people can