Cspan. Org landmark cases. Thursday morning were live in montgomery, alabama, for the next stop on the cspan bus 50 capitals to work. Alabama Senate President pro tempore del march will be our guest on the bus during washington journal. Starting at 9 30 a. M. Eastern. Witnesses from facebook, youtube and twitter talk about what the companies are doing to prevent criminal activity by users and the tech sectors cooperation with Law Enforcement. The Senate Commerce and finance Committee Held a hearing last week. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] good morning. I want to thank everyone for being a to examine what social Media Companies are doing to combat terrorism including terrorist propaganda and terrorist recruitment efforts online. The positive contributions of social media platforms are well documented. Youtube, facebook and twitter among others help to connect people around the world, give voice to those oppressed by totalitarian regimes and provide a forum for discussions of every political social scientific and cultural strife. These services have thrived online because of the freedom made possible but uniquely american guarantee of free speech and by light touch regulatory policy. But as a so often the case enemies of our way of life have started to get revenge of our freedoms to advance hateful causes. Violent Islamic Terrorist Groups like isis have been aggressive in seeking to radicalize and recruit over the internet and various social media platforms. The companies that are witnesses represent have a very difficult task. Preserving the environment of openness upon which the platforms have thrived while sick and responsibly manage and thwart the actions of those who would use their services for evil. We are here today to explore how they are doing that, what works and what could be improved. Instances of islamic terrorist using social media platforms to organize can instigate and aspire are welldocumented for example, the killer responsible for the orlando nightclub shooting in which 49 innocent people were murdered and 53 injured was reportedly inspired by digital material that was readily available on social media. This issue is not new. Over the course of several years youtube hosted hundreds of videos by senior alqaeda recruiter anwar alawlaki, although the company promised in 2010 to remove all videos that advocated violence, his call to jihad video in which he advocates for western muslims to count attacks at home remain onsite for years. In fact, the New York Times report suggested that his biggest influence afforded terrorist, a Boston Marathon bombers and the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and orlando. This issue is also international in scope. In response to recent terror attacks in london, which Prime Minister theresa may has been especially outspoken including social media platforms to do more to combat the kind of radicalization that occurs online. Last fall come for exemptions joined by other european leaders and calling upon social Media Companies could move terrorist content from their sites within one to two hours after it appears. As with her today the companies before us are increasingly using technology to speed up their efforts identify and neutralize the spread of terrorist content. In a recent blog post facebook said Artificial Intelligence now removes 99 of isis and alqaeda related terror content even before they can be flagged by a member of the community, and sometimes even before they can be seen by any users. Youtube is teaming up with jigsaw, the inhouse think tank of googles and company of the bit, to test a new method of counter radicalization referred to as the redirect method. Seeking to redirect or refocus potential terrorist at an earlier stage in the radicalization process, youtube offers users searching for specific terrorist information additional videos made specifically to deter them from being radicalized. A little over a year ago facebook, youtube, microsoft and twitter committed sharing a database of unique fingerprints of some of the most extreme terrorist produced content used for influence or recruitment. By cross sharing this information terrorist content on each of the host platforms will be more readily identified, hopefully resulting result in d more efficient deletion of this victory. A century these companies are claimed the contact individual videos and photos and using automation, can kick them off the platforms before they are even seen. We all have a vested interest in their success, and i believe this to me has a significant role to play in overseeing the effectiveness of their efforts. I do what you think ms. Bickert, ms. Downs, and mr. Monje are being here as represent is for the companies. To mr. Watts, i look for to hearing your thoughts about disrupting and defeating terrorism. With that i will now recognize the Ranking Member senator nelson for any Opening Statement he would like to make. Mr. Chairman, within a few hours of the pulse nightclub shooting i was there on south orange avenue in orlando. And i just want to comment that when a great tragedy occurs such as that, encouraging that the Community Comes together, like orlando never had. That saying you can say for boston, and so many other places where these tragedies occur. And yet we need to get at the root of the problem, which the chairman has outlined. Its the first time that the Commerce Committee has had three of the largest social Media Companies before us. These social media platforms, and those of many other Smaller Companies, have revolutionized the way that americans communicate, connect, and share information. And by the way, a comment that the chairman made about Artificial Intelligence screening out most of the bad guys stuff. I wish one of you would explain that. That is encouraging, but its not quite enough, as the chairman has outlined. But at the same time these platforms have created a new and stunningly effective way for nefarious actors to attack and to harm. Its startling that today at terrorist can be radicalized and trained to conduct attacks all through social media. And then a terrorist cell can activate that individual to conduct an attack to the internet, creating an effective terrorist drone, in effect, controlled by social media. So thank you, all of our witnesses, for being here in helping explain this. And particularly explain what you are doing to rally to the common defense of our people and our country. Because using social media to radicalize and influence users is not limited to extremists. Nation nationstates, too, are exploiting social media vulnerabilities to conduct campaigns against this country and to interfere with our democracy, and then on basic values, we have seen the attacks utilizing social media that in up in child trafficking and so forth and so on. Now, the Russian Hackers at Vladimir Putins direction, attempted to influence, and did influence, 2016 president ial election through all of these things that weve been reading about for over a year, and we also know that putin is likely to do it again. Will seek to influence future elections. And i will be asking mr. Watts if you would outline what he sees is happening in this 2018 election. This should be a wakeup call to all of your companies. Indeed, it should be a wakeup call to all americans. And this should be, regardless of party. This was an attack on the very foundation of american democracy. We welcome the expert that each of you bring to the table today. We welcome mr. Watts and his expertise. Over many years of how bad actors like russia used the internet and social media to influence so many things. Not just elections. And we even know that Vladimir Putin is reaching down, deep into our government. Not just at the top. Remember a few weeks ago, part of the Net Neutrality proceeding, have a million comments were traced to russian ip addresses. That is shocking. That is concerning. We should want to know why these comments were filed. What were they trying to do . And all of us should be very concerned about what is going to happen next. In the end, the basic questions that we want to ask is what have we learned . What are we correcting . What is going to happen in the future and how can we get ahead of it before it does . Thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you senator nelson. We do appreciate the great panel of witnesses we have in front of us today. Thank you all for being here. On my left inherently of the head of counterterrorism facebook. The head of Public Policy and Public Relations youtube, the director of health Public Policy and philanthropy us and canada on twitter and the senior fellow of Foreign Policy at the research institute. I will start with one and will move across the table. If you could, confined your oral statements as closely to five minutes as possible. Any additional comments will be part of the record but it will give us an optimum amount of time for members to ask questions. Thank you so much for all of you for being here and we look forward to hearing from you. Thank you. Chairman, Ranking Member nelson and distinguished members of the committee. I am monica and the products policy and counterterrorism for facebook. I am also a former federal prosecutor. Having spent more than a decade as an assistant us attorney for the department of justice. The issues were discussing here today are of the utmost importance. On behalf of facebook i want to thank you and your leadership are seeking more effective ways to combat extremism, crime and other threats to the National Security. We share your concerns about terrorists use of the incident. That is why we remove terrorist content as soon as we become aware of it. It is also why we have a dedicated Counterterrorism Team of people working across our company. This includes experts with former academics, spent their careers studying terror groups. Tracking new trends and tactics. It includes former intelligence and Law Enforcement officials. And prosecutors who worked in the area of counterterrorism. It also includes engineers. You are constantly improving the technology that helps us find and remove terrorist content. In my written testimony ive described these efforts in more detail. I also want to note that we pursue this goal with the mindset that is important to maximize Free Expression while keeping people safe online. We work proactively to keep terrorist content off of facebook. Merely through the use of Automated Systems like matching and textbased Machine Learning. Now, more than 99 percent of isis and al qaeda propaganda that we remove from the service is content that we identify ourselves. Before anybody has flagged it for us. Once we are aware of a piece of terrorist content, we remove the vast majority of subsequent uploads within one hour. We do not wait for these global benefactors to put content on basement before putting into our detection system. Rather, we work with outside experts that track propaganda relief bracelets across the internet and send it to us and we proactively put in our system. Often, this means we are able to stop the content from ever being uploaded to facebook. However, much of this work cannot be done by machine alone. Accurately, removing terrorist content often requires a person. A photo of an isis fighter for instance, that could be shared by somebody who is a supporter of the group, can also be shared by a journalist who is raising awareness for a member of a Civil Society group is condemning violence and we need people to be able to assess that and tell the difference. We now have more than 7500 reviewers who assess potentially violating content including terrorist content in dozens of different languages. And by the end of 2018, we will more than double the 10,000 people who are already working on safety and Security Issues across our country. Some of these people are responsible for responding to Law Enforcement requests. We appreciate the Critical Role that Law Enforcement plays in keeping people safe and we do want to do our part. I was global team responds to requests from Law Enforcement consistent with applicable laws and policies and this includes responding to emergency requests. Where we strive to respond within minutes. We also want to do our part to stop radicalization. And disrupt the recruitment process. That is why we have commissioned multiple Research Efforts over the past three years. To understand how online speech can most effectively counter violent ideology. We have sponsored efforts to put those into practice. One such example is the peer to peer challenging extreme is a program which we sponsor with adventure partners. And through that program, we have had more than 6500 students participate. They have created hundreds of campaigns that have been viewed worldwide more than 200 million times. No one company can combat the terrorist threat alone. We partner with others, including companies, Civil Society, researchers, and governments around the world. Among other things, we work with 11 other companies. Including those here. To maintain a shared industry database of unique digital cans of terrorist content so that we can all find and remove it faster. And we have also recently launched a Global Internet forum where we can work with Smaller Companies to help them get better. In conclusion, let me reiterate that we share your goal of stopping terrorists from using social media and we will keep Getting Better at it. Im here today to listen to your ideas and concerns and to continue these constructive dialogues. Thank you for the opportunity and i look forward to your questions. Thank you monika bickert. Thank you, senator. Chairman, Ranking Member and distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify at todays hearing. And for your leadership on these difficult issues. I serve as the global Public Policy only for you too. At youtube, we believe the world is a better place when we listen, share and build communities through our stories. Our mission at you tube is to give everyone a voice to shut it will purely share over 400 hours of video every minute. With this comes many benefits to society. Unparalleled access to art and culture. News and entertainment. Educational materials, a remarkable diversity of viewpoints and the freedom to exchange ideas. We value the openness. It has democratized how stories and whose stories get told. We are aware however, that the very platforms that have enabled societal benefits like this may also be used by those who wish to promote ticket or extremism. To that end i am pleased on this opportunity alan the approach we are taking on the issues. We have developed rigorous policies and programs to defend against the use of our platform to spread hate or incite violence. You tube has long had policies that strictly prohibit terrorist content. This includes terrorist recruitment, violent extremism, incitement of violence, glorification of violence and videos that teach people how to commit terrorist attacks. We apply these policies to violent extremism of all kinds. Whether inciting violence on the basis of race or religion or as part of an organized terrorist group. We use a mix of technology and humans to remove these content quickly. Users can alert us to content they think may violate our policies through a flag found below every youtube video. We have teams dedicated to this 24 7 in multiple languages and countries around the world. We also work closely with members of our trusted flagler program. Ngos that provide highly actionable flags. Of course, we rely on our technology. Which has always been a critical part of our solution. Our image matching techniques for example, can prevent dissemination of violent content by touching real uploads of bad content before it becomes public. Nonetheless, given the evolving nature of the threat, it is necessary for us to continue enhancing our systems. Over the past year in particular, we have taken several steps to build on our efforts. The first is an investment in Machine Learning technologies for the detection and removal of violent extremist videos. We recently deployed classifiers that detected new terrorist content and flag it for review. Machine learning is now helping our human reviewers remove nearly five times as many videos as they were before. Today, 98 percent of videos we were loath for violent extremism are identified by our algorithms. Second, we are focused on improving and expanding our expertise and resources on these issues. We expanded our trusted program to an additional 50 ngos in 2017 including several counterterrorism experts. Working with these organizations help us to identify emerging trends and understand how these manifest and evolve. In 2018, we will have 10,000 people across google working to address content that might violate our policies. Finally, we are creating programs to promote counter speech on our platforms. I will create is for change Program Supports<