Aware, our group cep is an Education Research and Advocacy Organization working to combat extremism worldwide. In addition to researching extremist entities and their ideologies and formulating, developing and implementing counter radicalization programs, communities around the world, cep also works to pressure, expose with hopes of degrading extremist financial and communication networks. An online and Internet Networks in particular. This part of of the work in the online space has been a continuous importance to us as our organization haso grown. The reason is extremist continued to demonstrate their ability to successfully misuse and weaponizing internet to radicalize, recruit and inspired acts of terrorism with tragic results and we seen this very recently, unfortunately, in the case of the hollowing attacker in manhattan when he was apprehended yet almost 4000 images on his phone. 90 videos of isis material on his phone including material that directed how to use a a tk or vehicle as a weapon of terror. Ic similarly who killed 22la people in manchester, england, following the concert tragically was helped in part by instructional videos they found online and how to build a body found on youtube. Through our research we found some of the same content is Still Available on youtube a full two months after the attack occurred. Were seeing progress being made just recently did it in the times was a long story about how youtube has finally acetic advance from Civil Society, counterterrorism professionals, pressure from the government and decided to move completely material from Anwar Alawlaki, americanborn notorious aqap alqaeda Arabian Peninsula claire to inspired and has connections to dozens and dozens of attacks. Our guests today willac discuss these issues in the merida challenges posed by extremists operating online and also discuss how private sector, government and society can respond. Ca ill also add the issues we will discuss today, the misuse of Technology Platforms by hostile actors, hostilell foreign actor, private sector accountability and responsibility and the changing perception of Silicon Valley towards Silicon Valley amongst policy practitioners, the media, the public generally resonate beyond extremism and terrorism and to touch upon a number of different kind of issue context and policy context. So we hope it will be informative to you if youre interested in illicit conduct online, elicit conversation online, accountability in the private sector or just issues related to Free Expression and free speech of the digital age. Before we get started and before we welcome our distinguished line of expert into probably begin todays program its a pleasure to welcome some of his legislative career has been devoted to protecting u. S. Citizen. Senatorte ron johnson was electd to the senate in 2010. Hes the chairman of Settlement Security and Governmental Affairs committee. He served as Ranking Member of the Committee Subcommittee on government oversight and federal contracting oversight. Senator johnson serves on the committees on the budget, commerce, science and transportation and foreign relations. B prior to being elected, he worked at a polyester and plastics Manufacturing Business which you could run in 1979. Senators johnson received an accounting degree from university of minnesota and is a proud father of three o children who reside in Oshkosh Wisconsin with his wife jane. Please welcome senator ron johnson. It [applause] thank you, david, i thank you all for coming here. Good afternoon. Really do want, do appreciate this counter extremism project pickett is extremely important. I think youre raising incredibly important issues, serious issues, things were really need to discuss as a society. For myss part opening the conference here is rather than steal the thunder of excellent gas, the type of people we would call in indoor committee and pick the brains and get information id like to provide a slightly broader perspective. Im chairman of the helmet security Government Affairs committee. I come from the business background. So first the engine when it took over that chairmanship is we develop a a mission statement, established goals. The statements presented to enhance the economic and National Security of america. We established four goals on Homeland Security side of the committee, border security, cybersecurity, are critical of such which is an awful lot of cybersecurity, and encountering violet extremist about what the origin. We focus an awful 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 the committee as to hold the hearings, bringingol people like doctor freed and Frances Townsend and peter bergen, the experts on the subject matter to do a problemsolving process, define the problem,vi provide information, try and establish achievable goals and so thats what ive been trying to do and we held a hearing just last week. This was a confirmation hearing for help will be the next secretary of Homeland Security. One of the things it did in the hearing is i just laid out starting with the sikh temple shooting in oak creek wisconsin. 20 different mass murders. It was a pretty depressing list. It ended of course with novembes were 26 individuals, 26 holes were lost, 20 individuals wounded. In that 20 list for the list of 20 incidents, 262 souls were lost over 1000 people wounded. Later that night november 5 i was with my i family, my daughtr just asked the question think were asking ourselves, whats happening . Why is it happening . What can we do about it . Now, these are not very easy questions to answer whatsoever. President obama, lets face it, had a fair amount of criticism when he compared terrorism to casualty 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, 38,000, about twothirds due to suicide. Auto accident 37,000. I just kicked off a list of 20 dating back a number of years. 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 . 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 lets say our economy. Remember after Charlie Hebdo and other terrorist attacks in france, the city of brussels shut down not because theres a fierce attack, just because the threat of a terrorist attack. And so what is happening in this world, the evolution of primarily islamist terror but lets face it, in those, the list of 20 attacks, they were homegrown terroristic user people either inspired copycats. Not always tied to islamic terror, but what is so concerned about islamic terror is that its reaching a new phase. I often takes 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 the olympic from palestinians. But specifically alqaeda type attacks began really in the mid\90{l1}s{l0}\90{l1}s{l0} when they tried to bring down the twin towers and killed about six people, i think injured close to 1000. With the 9 11 happened and we had the post9 11 wars in afghanistan and iraq. And then of course the rise of isis after we foolishly bugged out of iraq, declared victory and let isis to rise from the ashes of what was included defeated alqaeda in iraq. We finally defeated the physical caliphate. They are a doom operation but the caliphate is a physical entity is pretty well over. A year ago in our threat hearing fbi director, fbi director talked about a diaspora, spreading of terrorists around the world. In our last threat hearing the current fbi director and Nick Rasmussen the head of the direct of the National Counterterrorism center said the diaspora is not as severe as we thought it was. There were a lot of they fought and died which is a good thing. But recently at a hearing at the Senate Foreign relations as chairman corker pointed out, we have troops in 19re Different Countries where that threat exists. So alqaeda, isis, islamic terror has spread. It is evolved, metastasized. And were entering this new phase certainly demonstrated by isis whether using social media and incredibly sophisticated, effective ways. One of the reasons i was critical of the obama administration, the number president obama after fallujah fell, referred to isis as the jv team, then about six months later mosul fell and was all those axonal barbarism during 2014. The fact that we did not immediately put all of our effort into defeating isis and ending that caliphate, that territory everyday, the caliphate existed, ever date it wasnt losing, it was perceived as winning and it was gaining more and more adherent online and inspiring them through social media. That is i think what our realities did. That is the phase were in right now. As isis has spread to these 19 countries were with true presence and probably beyond, and heather social mediaia platforms set up. They will continue to inspire. The question is what do we do about it . Let me just give some basic direction. First of all we had to end that caliphate. Weve done that. We must address the recruitment, the incitement, the training of social media and thats really what this conference is all about and you will hear some experts on what we need to do. We have to have a rational Legal Immigration system, realize the people we allowing this country and gain permanent residency, we have to submit them. One thing america does that it probably then france and belgium we do assimilate. Immigrants in this country better but we have to ask ourselves the pharisees question, how many can we accept . How many can we assimilate . In the nation must, in addition, any sovereign nation has to secure its border, has to control immigration. But assimilation is key. I do want to quote a philosopher karl proper in 1945 described the paradox of tolerance picky said unlimited tolerance mostly to the dispute of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those were not intolerant, it were not prepared to defend aot Tolerant Society againstt the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them. America is a very Tolerant Society but we value that. Almost above anything else our freedom, our liberty, our compassion and are tolerance but in this new era, in this new phase with this new threat of National Security and weac realy need to ask yourself the research questions. You will hear this on a panel , we dont allow child pornography on the end of your it is legal to download it. Yet we allow how to guide books, to create a bomb, how to buy a truck, the right truck to buy with two wheels in the back axles when you run someone down you have a greater chance of killing that individual. These are question our society has to ask, how much can we really tolerate, m understand tt paradox of tolerance if we tolerate too much . Are tolerance itself will be ended. Its vital that we improve our intelligence gathering capabilities. Our first line of defense against violent extremism whether its homegrown or foreignborn is a robust, effective intelligence gathering capability. Together with strong alliances we can show that intelligence. We cant be all places at all time. I realized what we would 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, i would have toto argue today the focal point of that delicate balance has got to tip towards security or again we will lose our society. There were 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 met you one of the huge strategic blunders of the last demonstration was bugging out of iraq, the claim victory, like isis to rise again creating that additional threat. We cant afford to do that anymore. One of the things we discussed is authorization for use of military force under this new threat. I want to quick read the three that are at stake right now. Currently where operating under the authorization for use of military force signed into law september 18, 2011 pick seven days after 9 11. This is an authorization that works. It reached the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate u force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines, heres the problem, he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on september 11 or harbored such organizations or persons. I think he can that authorization, i certainly dont come to the conclusion that applies today. But some lawyer sommer said it did, and by president s it does. Now, precedents. Without debate whether we had a new aumf. The problem integrating a new one is apparently we dont have enough votes to pass one that will actually get the commanderinchief the ability to be tenacious and relentless and actually achieve victory. Let me read you another effective authorization for use of military force. This would be a declaration of war. This is what Congress Passed first on december 8, 1941 against japan and the december 11, 841 against germany. This is declaration of war. The president is hereby authorized and directed to avoid the entire naval and military force of the United States and the 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 all out effort and i would argue in this phase, this generational struggle, this generation war that were in we need that kind of all out authorization declaration. Now, in february 2015, again take a look at the 2001 authorization and say it 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 is offer subject to the limitations in subsection c that doesnt sound like an allout declaration, does it . To use armed forces of the United States necessary and appropriate against isil or associate persons or process defined in section five. By the way, that definition is quite good. See limitations. The authority granted in subsection a dozen authorized use of United States armed forces entering offensive Ground Combat, Ground Combat operations. The only reason fiscal 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, and its been ended. So again its extremely important not to hamstring any Administration Whether its republican or democrat, the commanderinchief in action the winning a war. Finally, we must rebuild our military. I want to quick show you a little chart. This is the history of United States spending on defense. Kind of looks all downhill race, doesnt it . On what to give the actual stats on this because its interesting what we continue to do to the finest among us in terms of providing military support. In the 70s we averaged about 5 of our gdp for defense spending. It was a high of about 7. 6 under Richard Nixon after jimmy carter to administer down to about 4. 4 . In the. In the 80s we averaged about 5. 5 pick that range from 4. 7 under carter a put carter of the output of 6 under reagan. We ended the cold war, so during the 90s that was the peace dividend, the into future we went from about 5 under george h. W. Bush to 2. 8 under bill clinton. The 9 11 occurred, so then in this decade, elastic and we averaged about 3. 9 , a high, low of 2. 9 to a high of 4. 6 . And, of course, we declared the war over in iraq, and once again we started hollowing our military to leicester we spent 3. 2 . In 2016, 2017 2017 the best ese is about 3. 1 . We are not devoting the Natural Resources we need to defend our nation, to keep the homeland safe. This is all within the context of the fact that Neither Party is seriously taking, seriously addressing whatt i consider the number oneum threat, admiral mot of the same thing, the number one threat to our National Security is our debt and deficit. We are 22 ago and that took over the next 30 years it is projected will run another late 100, 129 million with deficit. How can we spend enough on military when we are already in debt over our heads . We have got to start getting serious about addressing the fact that we are mortgaging our kids future. Let me in on that note. Because i i wanted to broaden s discussion. My daughter asked that question, what can we do about this . Why is this occurring . Whats happening . I was in High School Just on friday and i had one of the senior girls as almost the exact same question. What can we do about it . We will 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 that is 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 . When we engaged that were on poverty in the mid\60{l1}s{l0}\60{l1}s{l0} poverty rates were about 60 . Today they continue to be at 50 . Back in the 60s, 8 of births were out of wedlock. Today is 48 8 . We weakened the foundation premise of our society, the family and its its that good l in on this note. I was in the school and its all about what we teaching our children. Back in 40sng and 50s, and most public schools, a sign that hung on the wall. It at ten after get that those Public Institution were trying to instill indian peopleat they were teaching. I want to read you the list. And ask you if you think this of what were trying to instill in our young people today whether were doing an overt fashion. Got to find my list. Start with honesty. Loyalty, trustworthiness, courage, respect, and passion, initiativess compassion perseverance, responsibility. I i love this next one, contemplation. Optimism, adaptability. I dont care what specific fixes were talked about when it comes to social media, how much money we spent on the military. If we dont rededicate ourselves to instilling those types of values in our young people, and if we are not as tenacious and relentless, in making sure our young people grew up with those types of values, anything else we do may simply be all for not. So again i think cep for holding this extremely important for them, and i think youll enjoy the next panel. Have am good day. [applause] thank you. Thank you very much, senator johnson for your remarks and for raising always veryse interestig and complex issue. As senator johnson said we have a very distinguished panel of guests who will explore these issues even further. Its my honor to introduce our moderator for todays panel. Greta van susteren has been highprofile Television News anchor, commentator and legal analyst for more than two decades. Showsg partner Something Like burglar proof, on the record with Greta Van Susteren and for the record with greta. Shield law degree from georgetown and prior to the start of her tv career she served as an adjunct faculty member at georgetown a law scho, former criminal defense and civil trial lawyer. Shes authored two books and has been named by wars magazine as one of the world most 100 powerful women. She serves on the board of director for civil discourse which was greater at arizona in the aftermath of the 2011 tucson shooting were six people were killed and 13 wounded including gabrielle giffords. A fellow wisconsinite. Please welcome Greta Van Susteren. [applause] 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 went way too long with me but i wanted to about the panel will have here. Start first with Fran Townsend, Fran Townsend who was assistant to president bush 43 for Homeland Security which is currently attributedh to cnn and look in your program and use fran as was her other two panelists have an incredible background, very rich history in such an important issue as cybersecurity for our next is doctor hany farid from Dartmouth College and he is the chair of the computer sciences, research essentially, not essential but includes Digital Forensics and then finally peter bergen, Vice President new america and cnn National Security analyst and a former colleague of mine back about a million years. Anyway, so well get right to it with the panel. I will ask the first question to set the stage, and maybe start with you, peter. How bad is it . How bad is cybersecurity question how much should we be worried and not sleeping at night . New america did a study of 129 individuals in the United States. You have either joint isis or tried to joint isis based on public records and without none of them had been recruited by a real person. There was no, they didnt go to a mosque and get radicalized. They didnt meet some returning foreign fighter. They were entirely radicalize online, and as an israeli counterterrorism by think has a useful formulation here which is the lone wolf is part of the pack. When you go online and you have these ideas or a lot of people around the world who are going to provide an echo chamber saying essentially you are right. Right. One of the other interesting takeaways but these 129 americans is they are all around the United States. They dont fit any particular ethnic profile. Theyhe are all sunni muslims, bt they are hard to profile. I mean, and, of course, this causes problems for Law Enforcement because somebody who is watching isis propaganda, very few of them didnt want to do violence but some of them then to pick the question is who is going to be violent . Thats a really tricky question to edge unless we have the machine that can read mens souls are sometimes women souls because increasing increasingle also being recruited online. The problem is bad. I dont want to, i think that said, i think the social Media Companies tend to have sort of a cycler with the issue to announce the First Response and then they accept that there is, that they have an obligation of some kind, they Reputational Risk and potential legal risk although there hasnt been lawsuits in this area but it could be in some jurisdictions. And i think twitter has taken up hundreds of thousands of accounts, facebook has fired thousands of people that the problem is a pretty big one and, of course, cep is played a big role in just today the times, i dont think its entirely a coincidence has informed story about allowing a dispenser you to get you america look to the question of an american cleric who really became a leader of alqaeda. We found even after the skilled in the cia drone strike that his speeches and figures showed up in more than 70 cases of people being charged with terrorism in general states so even death hes been pretty important. So its great cep was able to put pressure to get rid of some of these discussions because they certainly have helped radicalize people. Fran, can you make us feel any better . Well, probably not. Let me say this. This has been a years long effort, and senator you just heard address you and others like him on the hill ablated key and important role. Look, cep came about years back because we said government is not very good at addressing this problem, the notion of countering violent extremism on the internet. And we came to the conclusion first you think what did i do wrong when we were in government and in you said i dont think government does this very well or can do it very well. So theres a role for 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, cep twitter account have no followers, and so i would do it from iphone twitter account and identify the radical extremists on twitter. It became easy because what they so to do is attach beheading videos, the lawyer and he said okay, everyone of common sense will agree that a beheading video is not First Amendment protected free speech. If i n tell you that initially e social Media Companies took the view, we are just the platform. We are like the railroad of the 1800s. We are agnostic as to whats in the course. Thats not our responsibility, and we were outraged. We said that the unacceptable answer. We locked arms with likeminded elected officials and at hearings held. We realize that shining a light on this absurdity you would help to bring them along. Beginning about when . Oh, gosh. This is got to be three years ago. This is before the burning of the regaining pilot because it started with a beheading videos, libya and elsewhere. Then there was there to regaining pilot. That winces be taken down. All the while by the way we struggle with the other unlucky tapes a place like youtube and google and it took a long time. I frankly think until it was a real Reputational Risk and the business risk, so if your name your company, and youre buying advertising, what you dont want to argue if youre Procter Gamble et cetera add come up alongside and and more unlucky vehicle. They have business and the business pressure from the public pressure all came together to put significant pressure on the. Below, even in york times article the report makes the point when he goes back through and begins to google he finds still with the thousands, tens of thousands of they took outcome 18,000 still online and, of course, he calls and he makes an inquiry and they get taken down. It doesnt have to be this hard. Im going to hand it off to hany because hany who did the incredible work in photo dna to make sure with the child pornography off the web did incredible work to adapt that to this problem and he should explain, this is no longer a problem. It shouldnt take the resources that the social Media Companies are complaining aboutut anymore because of let me jump it because were talking about, what fran thought about how people can access youtube and see this, but there Something Else called the dark web, which is probably many of us dont know how to access it. Is that were a lot of recruitment is being done, which is a whole nother consideration and a hold of the crisis we should be focusing on . And how easy is it to get on the dark web . Theirs are certain things you want to move to the dark web. Drugs, child pornography, sex trade, things were youre trying to evade public scrutiny, you want to move into a part of the web where youva have less scruty than a facebook and youtube or twitter. Which would include Something Like a terrorist, maybe some terrorism threats . It depends. So getting back to what youre saying, is 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 whatever happy about it. I want to be in what we call Service Welcome to want to be and youtube, twitter facebookan because thats where you reached millions of people. Oo i got that but suppose you are sitting there, 20yearold young person who think im i want to join a group, maybe the dark web, if, rather than having the terrorist initiator to get me, maybe if i decide maybe i want to. There are still questioned that as we start to tackle the issues with the social media on youtube, twitter ande facebook, its going to be a moving target. We are going to to start to think about what comes next. Thats ptp, pure to be sure he doesnt have a middleman. Thats the dark web where you can go find information peer to peer. If such a huge problem on the surface web on really easy to access, literally tens of thousands of videos that are 51 after the other data relating to that the radicalization where having. This is a fight we are in today. The fight were in tomorrow will move back to a new territory. Fran, tell me on the web if, where does the First Amendment, and . Beheading seems like pretty easy one for me, but there might be some manifesto that i could writees that, where do you draw how to identify this line . The good news is that all of the social Media Companies, interneto Service Providers have a terms of service. The easiest way to get at this, theyre terrified by getting into a discussion about where does the First Amendment protects and what is enough protect . They dont want to get into that constitutional argument. You talk about hiring people, higher tens of lawyers, right . But you say look at your own terms of service. If this video, if this document insights to violence and exhorts to violence, then it violates your terms of service. And take it on a basis internet to get get to the constitutional argument. Again they were slow to do that, but now that they understand, look, the other thing, peter mentioned the possibility of lawsuits. We explored precisely the federal statute about providing materials support and the one or any said, my argument is, if you provide me to support, that is a platform for the terrorists to to mitigate aiding and abetting . Correct. You look at the most recent tragic case in york this guy was on telegram, and isis chat rooms and iraq in syria. So he went looking for them we believe only so far. Use able to find them. He was able to communicate on an encrypted app that evade a Law Enforcement. So we didnt cup up onscreen 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 network. Peter, whats it going to take to make them understand . I think they do understand. I dont want, we should beat up on the social Media Companies. Silicon valley is an important part of our economy. Theres a lot of good things about these platforms otherwise we wouldnt all be using them. I just think typically they are usually immature because typically very new companies and the start, facebook was sort of slow to kind of recognize problem vote on this issue and also on the russian propaganda. Twitter was slow, but theyve got it now. Dating back to the First Amendment discussion. The only one these platforms its not a right. Its a business and the basis can tell you you can be on this platform because as fran pointed out your kind of violating the terms of service. Actually this is got nothing to do with the First Amendment ultimately. If they did it would be a real problem because in this country can say anything about anybody and thats not true and a lot of of the country. You cant last me the proper in pakistan. You cant deny the holocaust in chile. You cant insight racial hatred in the United Kingdom but these are not crimes in this country. That is also by the way some point which is in other countries some of the comments could come can be much more, they can Tell Companies to do things that they cant tell them to do here so for instance, in china or fran mention telegram, telegram is not subject to american laws or American Social pressure because of thent what s succeeded, not america lost because of some degree of olympic what has succeeded as a government pressure of having hearings, senator johnson others from the social pressure, discussions like this, organizations like cep have brought this up. At the end of the day the people who run discoveries are american citizens. They understand this is a problem and i think that they have tried to deal with it may be not as quickly as they should have but i i think they are tryg to we should applaud the efforts being made. With photo dean a you identified child pornography. Is there an algorithm for identifying photo dna jihadist language designed to recruit ory insight . And tell me where we are on that. Whats important to understand about the would put it in the child pornography space in the mid2000s was we had seen with the rise of an explosion of child pornography online. Really massive amounts of childn pornography that has largely been able because of the online platforms. At the time in the mid2000s were trying to think about how do you stop the flow of content. And help you think about how were trying the problem was being thought about her determine if theres a person in the image can determine if the person is under age and determine if the content is sexually explicit which by the i dont know how to define that alone let alone a mathematical algorithm. Do this in about two milliseconds. And please you can only make a a mistake about one in every about 100 billion a times. So those are the engineering demands, and back in the mid2000s we were nowhere close to being able to do that. Even today with all of the advances of Machine Learning and ai we are nowhere close. Not even close. We had to think about the problem although the tivoli. The way we thought about the problem was to say look, computers cannot automatically do this when is child pornography or jihadist content as usual we can do. We can have she would identify the country. The National Center for missing and exploited children is home to millions of children of the county. They have been verified. We reach into every one of those images and we extract from a signature that is unique to that particular image. Then we sit at the type of the facebook every single image that comes in we extract the suggest outcome compared to this database of note that continent where the child pornography, jihadist videos and we filter based on the thats what it is loudest do this very effectively. If you think about what i just described, it is agnostic as to what its looking for. I can look for images of kitten sizzler to remove them from the internet, i could do that at the one owe two. That also speaks to the power of the technology is that it knows nothing about what its looking for. It has to understand of content, of meaning, of intent. It is focusing a human has told me this content is a beheading video, a a humanist only this s content of child pornography. I am going to eliminated which means we have to control that technology carefully so that it is not misused in way of eliminating content that we actually should have a space online. Accept the old adage, id rather say im sorry than ask for permission. In the sense they would rather overclocking that apologize a millisecond later. So thats for pictures but with do you do for words . That technology which is what the jihadist, besides the images for recruitment. What weve been doing with cep is taking that basic core technology, photo dna which was uniquely designed to analyze images and extending it to video. We dont explicitly go afterwards but we go after the video content and the audio tracks. We find content, this is what cep is very good at. They find content, determined it to be interim violation of terms of service because it incites violence, glorifies violence or shows by lyft or uber extract the audio track come from video tracking we go for that upon. By the way this core framework i just described called hashing has been in place for a long time. We use it to find malware that we should find viruses. Every bit of code that is bad for the network that is poison for the network we extract the signature and then we show that signature into your Virus Protection Software and thats how we prevented from future uploads. What we do, peter or fran, is some equipment done by text only . I can see the builder with the photographs and video edison thats a much more effective way to recruit but only text and then how do we do that . So part of the answer is in one hany said earlier about the dark web. Its not, it doesnt scale. I cant recruit via text at scale. What you need is a platform that gives you wide reach 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. So you need something that scales, text doesnt skip it is not as it is problem at all. I think its not a very well understood or known problem. We have it, its to scope. The problem is child pornography is illegal and also relatively easy to discern. The problem with terrorist propaganda, jihadist propaganda some of it is in the eye of the folder. And isis beheading, little debate about that but what about a lecture from a clerk who talks about jihad jihadist which is t i completely legitimate concept in islam, is that speech that shouldnt be on the internet or it should . Thats what it becomes more problematic. We are never going to solve that your child pornography turned out to be a relatively simple problem because it was rather precise t and also illegal. What the boundaries are about. So for instance, if i was teaching a High School Course about the holocaust, i might want my students to know there are holocaust deniers even though in germany thats illegal speech. And so when things, this is where it becomes a little harder. As the times reported today, taking a lot of Anwar Alawlaki propaganda and speeches down is a good thing, but the problem here is that awlaki in his early days had speeches about islam that were pretty anodyne and really not an issue. So at what point in his career do you say well, thats the point . At the end of the day thats a human judgment thing, not an algorithm thing. Algorithms are very useful, particularly with material thats already been deemed reprehensible because then its in the database. You can take it down quickly. We had a discussion at numeric with the home secretary, bridge home secretary, and one of the interestingry question is the extent to which was a Media Companies should look at things before they go up rather than after the go. I hadnt thought about that. How fast can they . This is a problem to scope talking facebook, about a billion uploads a bigger youtube, hundreds of hours of you to a video a minute. These companies have scales so quickly so dramatically, and thats not a bug. Thats a future that was the design. Now they have become effectively News Organizations at the same time. Which they denied. They dont want to be speeded bad for business. But imagine now i News Organization without an editor. This is essentially what we have. It is a primary source of news for most americans and this is where we are now and thats true of everything from the way they sell advertising. Theres no human in the loop. Thats what we had things on facebook where you could target because of some human in the loop that is moderate the things that are happening on these platforms. If a a News Organization pua horrible video of a beheading or a burning of a jordanian pilot or something, isnt that there scandalize, so much so for flexion afterwards. I dont see a lot of that. Maybe im wrong in the social media n companies, the self reflection with things slip through our people exerciseto bd judgment question for hany. With the algorithm approach, when you got 400 hours of material being uploaded on youtube every minute which is what is happening, thats impossible, with the algorithm, say, 2 of this material or 0. 5 in the chill thats been uploaded, it could be problematic and we need someone humid to look at it. Theres a middle ground where you can have really highly accurate algorithms like photo dna that were not no human in the loop. We can have imperfect algorithms that are doing an initial flag but in putting a human in the loop. Just to get give you a sense oe engineering requirements. Just the other day we heard state of the art Face Recognition Software from the best researchers in the world. This is a problem by the way we been working on for decades it within think about how did you face recognition. Runs and accuracy of 99. 9 which sounds really good, but thats one mistake in every 1000 uploads. That is impossibly high error rate for the scale of the internet. Contrast with photo dna can when an error rate of one in 100 billion. The difference between one in a thousand, and one in 100 billion issue of dramatic. Engineering point of view, that gap is enormous. So even the filtering, the prefiltering may be problematic at the skill of aliens of upload today. We have to get that technology much, much faster. Although Mark Zuckerberg is promised its just around the corner, it is not. We are still years away and now we have gap we need to fill. These platforms that have created monsters in some way that they cannot control, and i agree with you that i dont see a lot of, i hear a lot of concern because of the impact on the business but i will tell you in the child pornography front the Tech Companies were approached in 2003 toat do something about the child pornography problem. It wasnt until 2008 microsoft and i partnered to start developing of this technology. Although we developed and deployed in 2009, google didnt deployed until 2016. What what was the holder . You should bring somebody from google here to enter answ. Tell me your gas. My guess is went to you geto the business of moderating it gets competent and messy. The best possible thing is to have no rules, is to be a platform, the good, the bad, the ugly, illegal and its not my problem. As soon as you get into the business of saying yes, no, it gets messy. I will point out that when it comes to Copyright Infringement youtube has gotten very good at taking down material. Because they would get sued it hits their pockets. But the eight year olds who are victims of child abuse were not suing google and they had no incentive to do anything about it. That is mean and call but that is my lay of the length of i mention this because as a think about how these companies are responding both in the past and future is important to understand where we have come from and what the response has been. The hearings we saw on capitol hill were a good first step. I heard really good things from the representatives. You are telling me six years late for google to do something. Anyone who stands before congress or takes the oath sounds a lot different. So whats next . Fran, do you have a solution . Whats the solution . The dirty little secret here was on the Anwar Alawlaki, for the hearings and the public pressure that we put on them, the thing in the end that a think really push 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 that said what the hell is this an hike can you possibly these are social friends, right . And suddenly that uncomfortable were going to get right on it. The next thing we knew we had broken through. But it was tenacity and persistence and making them uncomfortable that you cant explain this. You cant justify it. And so speed is most of us are not thinking about this every night. You are because its your business but the rest of us are thinking whats for dinner or Something Else. Those who are steeped in this and cant sleep at night because of the recruiting, the rest of us, where does the pressure . Thats, i would think. Thats right. I will say our european colleagues, little late to this game by the way, but have, like the home secretary into it in a big way. We are just past, today, the anniversary of paris. And our european allies, whether its paris or germany for that matter, have come to the realization that you cant fight this look, we are as a country have been very, very precision in fighting this in the physical space. We are the best in the world at it. We were late to the game of viewing the internet as another battle space. Approaching it in this same sort of very strategic deliberate way. There are a number, i wish this was the only cyber problem. It is most clearly not. And each administration from the george w. Bush administration on has had a cyber strategy. President trump will be no different. They are working on it now. This is one piece to a much bigger problem. I hear this and the poor fight an Event Next Week we will sort of forgot the conference in a sense, you said will hear this and are horrified that i get to keep the pressure up on this stuff. It took a personal note. I think its worse than that. Not only are we forgetting about it. The rest of us are. You dont have a lot of power because you are not a paying customer. If you are giving these companies money, most of us use these resources for free, google, twitter, facebook. Even if you wanted out, how do you get out . There are campaigns you could start like if you write something about some hashtag and light and complained about and soon the pr people are calling but but i can choose one ande over another. I have power as a consumer. Here i have very little power as a consumer. There is one social media site, facebook. In fairness there are multiple Search Engines but theres one Search Engine that has an 80, 90 of the marketshare. I have very little power as a consumer. Wheres the power is, the advertisers, those are the companies that have gotten the social Media Companies to move by essentially withholding speediest but you forgot to get to work with Advertising Companies what to do that, that they are paying attention to that. Thats my point. Peter, your solution. Solve this force. People will do bad things and they will be influenced by other people. But i want to just sort of in defense of the social Media Company say that facebook, i counters expert, First Assistant head of Global Policy monday, hired by youtube, i think theres an understanding that we need to get on this and i think with, i busy social pressure had huge part to play. Its not the government it turns out, but since these are American Companies based in the United States we can exert collectively everybody in this room and exert social pressure with some success because they dont want to be seen some are influencing elections in a bad way or getting people to carry out violent crimes. I will say one other thing. In a jurisdiction so what in the world, not in the United States because of the First Amendment, some people succeed in suing social Media Company on the grounds of but for social media, myny son wouldnt have been kild by this terrorist. We have seen this. But they will succeed summer i am confident. But i would add they dont have all whole lot of power grid to the extent of the social media sites. It doesnt appeal to you, but it is a violation of those terms of service, literally its 15 seconds for you to hit a button and tell twitter, this should not be here. This is this is not appropriate content and it will make a difference. So when you say, what can people do . Weve put together a nonprofit and hire people to do that and theyre at it every day, but the general public can be a force multiplier and were not asking that much. Your leverage, your ability to, by the way, tag your congressmen and senators so he sees youre reporting this to twitter and it hasnt come down, all of this, you know, a thousand points of light, right . If everybody takes some small of time to do it, it does make a difference. Whats the role of the government in this . Whats the role of the government . And what should be the role of government is this whats the role of the government and what are they doing . What the government is doing right now, the state department, it didnt we actually have a pretty ineffective policy for a while, but now, were covertly or overtly supporting other people around the world in other languages, who are countering isis message. And if somebody doesnt join isis, that isnt a measurable we spent 15 years got to something that kind of makes sense. And google, if you go online and look at isis, youre also going to get other messages because the algorithms can be manipulated in a way that send the messages in local languages, not the u. S. Government messages and they have the kiss of death problem, lack of knowledge problem. But local groups, if they have the right messages in the local languages, at both the government and google, there is an attempt to redirect to other areas. And you can measure how long they spent looking at other messages and how long. The role for the government particularly in a First Amendment society, the First Amendment not the 23rd amendment. Its a limited role. I would add to the extent the government has tried it. By the way, this is not a reflection on republicans or democrats, all across the u. S. Government we are uniformly bad at it and by the way, were not going to get any better partly because of the kiss of death problem as a government message and this is why i think this isnt a regulatory problem, this isnt, you know, the government cant solve this. I do think its a role for the private sector and nonprofits. When you look at the work on child pornography and dna, the role was the government played was to bring the players to the table. We should find a solution to let those parties find the solutions and it was effective because if the government is involved you have a First Amendment issue. And if its not, then you have a terms of service issue. And thats much easier to deal with. Any idea to quantify how many people are radicalized . Peter, any thoughts . Were talking about, yeah, lots of different kind of radicalization, neonazis and for the purpose of this discussion, jihadi radicals. There are 1 1 2 billion muslims in the world of these about 150,000 members, im not a mathematician, but you are, thats a small percentage. The problem is that these people are multipliers and dangerous. So there is a massive attempt to join and a number may have gone up to 300, but, still, its a pretty small number. So, you know, its a problem, its not an existential problem, really, but its a problem that were partly dealing with because we basically defeated the caliphate. The number of americans trying to join isis six a month its gone down to zero a month. The number of foreign fighters from 2,000 a month to zero now and their failure on the battlefield makes their whole virtual kind of Propaganda Campaign harder it will continue and we saw as fran said in manhattan in halloween, someone influenced by these ideas killed eight people, but i think, if we continue to put pressure on the isis physical caliphate because it exists in other places, and they are not winning and they are losing and i think that overall, that really reduces their romantic kind of allure because at the end of the day theyre in 2014 when they controlled sites in size the United Kingdom and switzerland. They were recruiting and theyre simply not now. They will continue. The other thing to think about, right now were concerned about twitter and facebook. Theres going to be some social Media Application five years from now will seem as revolutionary as both of those that we cant identify. Maybe recruiting people in virtual reality, but youll have a social application that somehow allows you virtually to be there. That would be very powerful. Much more powerful than twitter feed. So i guess what im saying, were going to see other iterations and also see isis we dont know what the son of isis is going to look like or the grandson of isis because the politics that produces these groups continue. The sectarian war in the middle east and massive immigration and into europe and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This is going to create something we dont know what, exactly what its going to like like. Theyre going to use the exactly isis playbook because they used the play book and ramped up. And whether its the u. S. Military or whether its the social Media Companies making more effort, i think right now, isis is looking at the prognosis is not great. And back page, which is the which is a site used for child pornography and trafficking and women and men, is that you can read it and if youre unschooled in it you might not notice the code language and i might say, whats wrong with this . If youre involved in the bad part of the business you can identify it. To what extent does the platforms it takes filtering through to look for the code conversations and signals. How in the world do you begin to identify that and even have what can social media platform, they cant sit and be reading those. Youre absolutely right, that back page has gone from explicit, you know, you can buy young women for sex, to have having coded language for that. This is where the ngo space is important. There are hundreds of people, amazing men and women working for National Organization of missing children, and they work in the space and the ngo space is powerful in sort of understanding these spaces and youre right that the social media, we cant ask the social Media Companies to police every platform, its not realistic and not practical, but we certainly can ask them when you are made aware of these abuses and the problems on the platform, to start to respond to it and that seems like a particularly reasonable thing particularly when the thing we are talking about are violations of your terms of service. Were not asking you to implement our rules or our view of right or wrong, were pointing where with are they are in your platform and these are the terms of service, would you please do something about that and that seems like a small ask. One of the things i advocated and on the national and missing and exploited children as the model, i dont want facebook to decide what i should and shouldnt see. I find that more terrified than them taking on a role for which theyre not qualified to do. The social media platforms dont want to appear too close to the government. What mimic did was create a Third Party Model where everybody could talk to one another and get the benefit of the collective wisdom to make the decisions about what had to come down. And i think thats whats needed here now, right . The social Media Companies, the private sector ought to fund it, it ought to pull together Law Enforcement, the intelligence world who can help identify with coded language, help identify, Bring Technology to bear and this is a place, a Third Party Center to address this sort of extremists online, i think, is whats necessary to be able to police it at scale. And if any of the members of the audience have questions, they have microphones. Question, anyone . Here we go. Can you hear me . I can hear you, we can hear you, theres a microphone right there. I see the microphone, its hard to see. Here we go. Hi, i just had a quick question regarding, obviously, a lot of thought has gone into this, a lot of actual coding has gone into this. My background being from the Intelligence Community being, im trying to think of best practices there and thinking if you have integrated that at all within the cyber realm, the equivalent of redteaming, theres billions of content loaded on the internet and hard to get ahead of. When i think of wouldbe terrorists or extremists, theyre constrained by hours in the day, by their ability to google, then read, and download, and make decisions. And i feel like that is a place that could be targetable and not only from the back end, but also from the front end. I was wondering about what ngos are doing this this space or the private sector was doing . Well, as peter mentioned what jigsaw was doing, which is pretty powerful, right . So its on the front end when youre googling extremists videos, theyre pulling up counter messaging and theyre trying to redirect you. I dont know you know, i will tell you, we at cep have targeted getting bad stuff off as opposed to the other stuff, the counter messaging piece. Ive worked and relied on sort of our foreign partners, right . These are people in the muslim world with credibility, its the programs out of the state department that peter mentioned. Getting those people with credible voices the money and resources to be able to do the counter messaging, while we stayed on kind of take the bad stuff down. Youre right. Theres a role for both to do that and you do have to do both because youre never going to, you know, in the hunt is never going to be enough all by themselves. Hi, im asking question from our digital audience. The first question, is there a risk of an Extremist Organization creating their own social networking site for sharing material . Absolutely. Weve already started seeing that here in this country, when some of the white supremacist groups got kicked off facebook and twitter, they created their own. Theres no question this is going to be a moving target. Right now we are focused very much on the mainstream social media sites because they have such a reach, thats unpress departmented. But theres no question, as peter said it earlier, tomorrow, theres going to be another front and the day after that, another front. This is what we know is that this will be a moving target so we solve this problem today and were going to have to solve another problem tomorrow. We have to think about what you do about these things when they go to end to end encryption and go dark. Really, really hard technical questions that were going to have to start addressing pretty soon. Thank you. Tara with the counter extremism project. Thank you for that talk. I wanted to focus on what the government would be. Sitting in the hearings last week about russian interference and elections on the platforms in terms of extremist content. It seems where the legislators were honing in on where laws were broken. I wonder if we sort of looked at where laws are broken and terrorist groups trying to use the platforms to raise money or linking out to websites, that would seem in the material realm, violates if its a Foreign Terrorism Organization off the foreign control list, theres potential for laws broken. So i was wondering if there are ideas for legislation or regulations to get in where the laws are broken, because a lot of this propaganda is used for a reason and some of that reason might actually go into that threshold of material support. Were both looking at the lawyer. Im not a lawyer. A followup question. The laws were written before the technology platform. Does the First Amendment cover bombmaking instructions . Oh, yeah, yeah, i think it does. It probably does. Tara, i would say what we ought to be doing first is looking i agree with you, many of these are being used to break laws that currently exist. I think the way, the best, the sort of safest and best way forward is to try and use those laws. Look, i think we ought to and we are, looking for the best possible fact set to bring a materials case. Someone is going to get killed in this country, by a lone wolf, selfradicalized and looked at some of this stuff and well fund it and well bring it. But i think to make the argument to congress that we need new laws, if i was senator johnson id say to me, what have you done to use the laws youve got and how successful has it been. I mean, now, theres legislation now on the ad buying side of the russia issue, thats where the laws are broken. Its hard to deal with the russia propaganda rit large. I wonder if theres a closing of loopholes applying to the online world . Im sure there are. Look, fundraising if you can prove it. Identifying the strongest set of facts to bring it because you want to be successful. Thank you. I have one more question from our digital audience, weve talked about text response, and other platforms, and mr. Burgen did mention this and jigsaws work. What actual responsibility do social Media Companies have do do counter narrative on their platforms, what is our argument in Civil Society for them to actually do this . Well, fran and i both mentioned jigsaw. And google is doing this. When al qaeda was a relatively small group trying to get into, like trying to get into harvard. You mean dartmouth. [laughter] isis is like the d. C. Public school system, theyll take anybody. So the model of crowdsourcing of jihad was highly effective and i think this this is kind of the model that the next generation will do because they dont care if theyre directed, trained, inspired, its all the same outcome, and i think its been enormously effective. But you know, but that doesnt mean that the social Media Companies havent done certain things, whether its hiring experts, hiring a lot of eyeballs, coming up with new ideas. I think we have to be careful of this sort of like not to demonize them because, you know, what is the difference, really, from jihad magazine in the 1980s, which youve got, mailed to your house and radicalized a lot of people and got them into the afghan war versus what we see today . The main difference is speed. And reach. Speed and reach, but, i mean, this has been going on for a while. It hasnt there were broadband video in the sort of mid 2000s where alzacari was radicalizing and al qaeda videos. This is not completely new, lets not pretend it is. The speed and the reach is differe different, and its created different outcomes. To be fair, i dont know if i would put the burden on the counter messaging. Theres a difference with jigsaw, theyre redirecting. Theyre capable of, its their responsibility and ought to be doing it, the redirecting piece. As opposed to counter messaging, im allergic to this whole countermessaging thing. Not necessarily your government, but people in the United States are incredible voiceses so i view that as wasted effort. Not that it ought not to be done, but it ought to be done by somebody effectively. I dont think the social media will be any more effective at counternarrative than the u. S. Government. Yes. I was interested in this topic that Fran Townsend touched on about the private sector potentially being part of the solution. Were at a time now where theres a lot of focus on the private sector, how much of pdp they can film and a lot of big global and social problems that dont lend themselves well to Government Solutions which you talked about articulately. So when you say that the private sector for corporations come forward and fund this, im curious to know, are you in those conversations and what sort of uptake are you getting . And in a broader context, pressuring big global, social problems and how realistic is that given the dynamic of capitalism and the way that profit plays out. So to describe them as having been reluctant to get here, i want to be cautious, because peter is right, weve gotten them weve enjoyed some success so they deserve credit for it, albeit really slow as you heard from hany. I do think, now its a question of, you say to the private sector, youre a profit making enterprise, but like every profit making enterprise you have capital costs, that is the cost of doing business and you must sink back in to continue to make money, and what were suggesting to you is an additional cost which cuts into your profits. Were telling you you ought to be doing that, because you have a social responsibility to do it. Or they dont cut into the costs and held accountable later, as pointed out. Correct. So youre using a carrot and a stick with them to try to make the argument that they have to do this, its not just a choice, but they must do this. I will tell you were in the very early stages, theyre at the point now because i think theyve been slow to get where they are. Theyre reluctant to open the door and sit down with us in a transparent way because then well really know just now well get more data out of that, right . We will know exactly whats on their network. And while theyre dragging their seat doing that, lots of time marches on. And whats to get them to do that if thats a good idea and the ultimate outcome of that. While theyre doing it, someone is doing something. Listen, i agree with you a thousand percent, but hany will tell you, we offered them when hany did the work to apply the hashtag, hashtagging to the extremist problem we offered to license it this them for free. It wasnt going to cost them a thing. They wouldnt talk to us. They wouldnt run it on their network. Theyve essentially got a monopoly in their world. If you do it to a soap company, they dont want to have something awful associated with the problem because the other company is going to steal their business whats effective day to get at them because they have a monopoly. And eventually youre going to have to sue them. Or shame. Or shame them, and this is exactly why senator johnson and our other allies on capitol hill have been so important to us. Alone from an ngo we couldnt get them there. Like the tobacco wars. Correct. And so, look, i do think this is a tough slog. We have been very fortunate to have raised money to support this effort from the private sector, but this is were in it for the long haul. I take it theyre not are they any of your big benefactors . Raising money. Not so much. Not so much. I would say that we its easy to lump all of these companies together, but there is a distinction between them so i will say microsoft has been one of the most aggressive on this front. Theyre not a social Media Company, but even back with photo dna and this site theyve been aggressive and i think a really good corporate citizen. On the other end of the spectrum is alphabet, the more reluctant of the parties and in between. We can twist arms all we want, at the end of the day there has to be incentive. Were seeing that public pressure, pressure from capitol hill, pressure from the eu and pressure from advertisers are what is going to take the day and i think we seem very concretely when advertisers say, this is unacceptable, we will no longer pay for advertising, things change dramatically. Host if you have a monopoly, theres no other place to go. They literally stop advertising. Host and a billion businesses a day and all of a sudden, arent they going to stop for a week and come back . What happened, the way the advertisers work, theyd flood advertising. Were going to be selective and pick a few careful things to make sure our products are not put aside with jihad video. That cut into profits by a huge margin, right . So it was effective. I think theres no simple answer here, i think a combination of capitol hill, we the public, the press, economic pressure combined are going to make the Companies Move in a direction that we want. Host what about antitrust threat . Any other questions . Yes, okay. Hi, shelby with the newseum. A question for peter burgen, as an admirer of your book on the longest war, i wonder if you could cast out on the sequel to longest war 2 and see where broadly you see this war going not just in the social media area, but throughout . Thank you, shelby. Five years ago i would have had optimistic, arab spring happened, al qaeda, personnel, and now im a pessimist. Im not by nature a pessimist, but what produced isis was a sectarian war in the middle east, and the economies, massive wave of immigration in europe, alienations in europe. 8 of the french population muslim, 60 of their prison population is muslim. I think of isis as a middle east phenomenon and a european phenomenon. We have 750 brits, 750 bell gums, 750 germans and relatively through americans even though were an international country. I think that what created isis are still there. In the iraq we have the referendum which may cause the country to kind of, you know, syria, theres no end to this war in sight. Isis after all sort of birthed in syria during the civil war there. So, my prognosis is unfortunately were going to see a lot more of the same. I was very glad that President Trump said we are going to be in afghanistan for the forseeable future because as senator johnson said kind of an unforced error to get out of iraq so quickly, but the political questions for another iteration exist, and continue to exist. Luckily were isolated by geography and ideology. So, we are somewhat isolated from this luckily, but europe is not. Weve seen five tres attacks in london in the last year, including one from a right wing terrorist attack and muslim. Its going to continue, its not an existential problem, but it is a problem and i dont see it ending. Host thank you very much, thank you very much for joining us. [applause] [inaudible conversations]. Now, we will be having a reception starting now in the back. So please stick around and help yourself to refreshments and food. [inaudible conversations]. [applause] [inaudible conversations]. While the hill is reporting this morning, the House Republicans are poised to pass a sweeping tax reform package that if enacted would deliver the first major legislative victory of the trump era. President trump will visit capitol hill ahead of the vote. Speaker paul ryan says the republicans have 217 votes needed to pass the act. And you can read more at the hill. Com. The house is now in session and theyre debating their bill live on cspan. Near on cpan 2, the u. S. Senate is ready to meet with executive nominations, votes coming up at noon eastern. Live coverage of the senate here on cspan2. Reverend brooks let us pray. O god, we firstha