Committee affairs in london. Lets call this to order and ask everyone in present and then i welcome our Witnesses Today for the ongoing inquiry into counterterrorism. I was leaving she that is been in the public debate at the moment has been about your tax, your committee is not concerned about this because but just as an opening question to have anything to add of anything that needs to be made public on this issue . No. Thank you. Were here to discuss them porton counterterrorism work that were doing. You have just become the Largest Company in the world with a bigger than norway, australia and and columbia. Congratulations. Thank you. Was far i think its important to talk about the global bill. Thank you very much for inviting me to the committee. Im aware of the News Reporters you are of the speculation in the media. Unlike other Companies Companies we have not made a statement about this so i am unable to go further. Any evidence . I would just say that like Large Companies we have regulations to follow about our affairs and where we operate. I have not come here to burden you. Have you given any evidence. [inaudible] we had in our inquiry who is the head of counterterrorism and who is the independent of the government on counterterrorism both expressed concerns that would have approached your companys and you can all answer the question even though its directed to one, it would be helpful in respect to having the information i respect to counterterrorism. In particular from internet firms that would deliberately undermining counterterrorism investigation which are used to hand over were threatening to tip off the suspects or protecting. Certainly it is fear to bring up. We we have a long history of working together with government, lawenforcement authorities to make sure they have the information they need to pursue an investigation. Our cooperation is governed under u. K. And u. S. Law. Do our best to make sure we can provide information in the cases of the investigations. In googles case we have long published statistics about her interactions with Law Enforcement and for the u. K. , their involvement with the request for information from us. It is gonna from 1,202,013 to 3000 in the first half. Is at 3000 . What about facebook. Its actually a similar number for each happier, three or 4000 and u. K. Just to be clear, thats just about a matter of things not just counterterrorism. An expert in the company that works in the spaces we confirmed that the inquiries in the. The first half of 215 we received requests. You can look at your account without having to look at a twitter account yourself. Theres theres a large amount of information available. Unicenter concern when the head of terrorism says that its in undermining efforts, he did not mean the company in general, he went on to this was published in june 2015 he said some providers will tip off the contraband that they are under surveillance unless theyre persuaded not to do so typically by court order. How do you tip off your consumers that there under surveillance. I think this is an issue some of the media reap ports have. Sure thats why were here. You dont have to rely on twitter, you can actually tell us. Have you tipped off customers that they are under surveillance are they under surveillance . And then under many jurisdictions around the world their Legal Frameworks to provide notice to that user. We are very clear about them and when david spoke with the committee he said that he wasnt aware of any circumstances where the situation. We would seek to give notice because in that case it is reasonable to do so. If the tech counterterror investigation is it an mp or a journalist to request information about, you would tell those people. Depending on the investigation. But you. But you just said you would tell them. If its context specific. It would be more reasonable, we understand and therefore we have to deal with these words all the time. Im just asking you for facts. Do. Do you tell people, other than journalist and end peas that the authorities have asked for information. Yes. Are you in the same position . To tip off people when information is requested and. We do not do that and the u. K. Do you do it in america. Yes, sometimes but not in every case. And it depends somewhat on the particular jurisdiction in the matter before the investigation. In that u. K. We dont do it. Even if we could we never would in respect to counterterrorism. So if they say we want this information with the terrace and for investigation you would never you would just hand over the information. If it met our criteria, we review every case by a casebycase that we dont tip anyone off. Yes in twitter, its a definite nonfacebook in the in the u. K. But in america it is different. What is the situation with google. Where in the same situation space bar. The jurisdiction dependent. We followed the law in the jurisdiction we operate. Where it is not prohibited and where disclosing is appropriate we will. Now, in respect to taking down isis from the internet we have received evidence of the last few months that persontoperson radicalization has been replaced by radicalization and therefore Internet Companies are important in that context. Theres 289 per day theyve taken down or reported 2555 websites and reported 19560 twitter pages and reported 40000 suspected material in total in the internet. Do you have figures as to the number of websites that you have taken down that you deem to be websites that propagate terrace. I think its probably worth going back in context and we also operate in the case of youtube where we are hosting materials and set Community Guidelines where the world is acceptable. First with flagging option for terrace content in 2008 and we have adapted our policy over time to take into account new ways people are abusing the platform to make sure they are put into effect as well. So how many have you taken down in total . s on the youtube site we receive about 100,000 likes per day. But thats across all types. On the u. K. In 2014 we did 14 billion videos for youtube it thats across all types. Are you able to be more specific in the future, would you be able to look at the number of websites and the number of have terrorism content . We cant do it right now but were certainly open and actively thinking about ways that we can be more transparent about what we remove and what really pilots. It is worth noting that one of the reason its difficult is because if someone is offended by something on youtube they go chart flagging procedure. And those flag over laps, could be for terrace content or they might for speech so at present we are not able to count that way but it is something so it was pretty critical a few days ago. About what was the content she said she felt it had become a place where heat was being disseminated. Is that right . How many pages has facebook taken down relating specifically to counterterrorism . So what happened we are confident theres weeks ago in berlin the joint commission that the u. K. Based organization had dialogue and the institute and soap for violence extremism so this is initiative which will combine support for each geo that we are trying to use the internet for researching what work and then training around best practices. It was not sudden. It was something as a company we take very seriously. For a number of years and events in the world has unfolded in recent years this has become the number one Public Policy issue that i talk about with governments. This is just written up the policy agenda. We want to ensure that we are learning from organizations that work from the ground but have the best Academic Resources and have the best support. Are you going to publish the outcomes of the initiatives . Absolutely. This is a threeyear initiative. Therell be more to follow. The second part of your question, we do not provide the same level of detail as google do. We provide similar information around the request but that moment we dont provide public data on the number of pieces of content that we take down. They just find twitter to refusing what it considered terrorist propaganda. Isis has been looking at the pages and the tweets that they have sent out today, we asked about this is pretty hot stuff in support. What are you doing about those who are using twitter and what theyre doing with terrorism. I think they understand that there are recruiting using twitter. In terms of this pages we have taken down tens of thousands of accounts. When google are thinking about how. Is that last year . So those figures would be in the last 12 months. And is a broken down between counterterrorism and other areas . So that specific figure is specifically relating to extremist accounts is. You taken a 10,000 twitter pages. Yes. They were they were trying to figure out how to be more transparent. We are having intel discussions about if theres more that we can do to provide extra data. And if we can were happy to do so. Would you be able to publish this information on a more regular basis . We would like to have this information. Were like a company that. So were sinking we have this kind of data . Yes or no that its the number one way that people are being groomed on the internet. The question is is it internet the number one way that people are being groomed. Im afraid i dont know how people are groomed offline to answer. It something we take very serious. Im not sure i do agree. I think youd be better off talking about other people like the properly named international radicalization. They are the expert. We are not. Were the experts on how we can keep this content outside of off of facebook. I would agree. Thank you gentlemen. Also want to follow a point on that you made 14,000,000 videos videos which is next ordinary figure. To look at this manageable he, are you confident that you are removing the dangerous material quickly enough in terms of preventing people from being radicalized . So typically something we think about on a regular basis. Its worth noting that 400 hours per video of video are uploaded every minute. The vast majority of that is people using the product in the way it is intended. Not to abuse anyone, not radicalized. Since it has started and grown we have had to think about what is the best way to do this. Continuing to this day, the best ways we have a billion people on the platform every month. We found the best way to get things down quickly and to get it done reliably remains that people flagging it. And it still happens very quickly in a number of hours. Thank you. The initiative on counterterrorism has recently come into the Public Domain, most would argue that its been an issue for a long time and your organizations are just now coming forward either just re accepting some responsibility that people have been radicalized on your platforms and that you have an issue. Your Company Seems to be hijacked by terrorists. What what would you think about that . I think its not something we have only just artie thinking about. We have a policy on youtube since 2008 when we implemented the flag. We host our first summit on violent extremists in 2011. We have been working with others at the home office since 2012. We hosted a counter speech event with the home office and then with you fairly soon after that. This is a multiyear commitment. In 2013 its been something weve been doing for years. Obviously obviously theres more work to be done. How can videos appear to enable them to support terrorism. So we have video uploaded every day and therefore we rely on the community to flake videos that violate our policy. People who violate that policy after multiple violation are one serious violation we will terminate the account and prevent those groups, the person from a creating the account for making another one. What is defined as a serious violation . I guidelines are clear on the different types of infraction. Their different ways that people will abuse a service like youtube. To be clear we strictly prohibit glorification of violence. We ban videos at Training Camps or direct recruitment. We ban incitement of hatred against people based on the gender, race, race, nationality. Those are all serious violation. I can understand why the announcement was made, thats not the case. Know i said the company was worried about its reputation for reese accepting responsibility. We absolutely know that we have responsibility to act in partnership with Civil Society and government. No responsibility that the platform is been used. We accept responsibility, we are not responsible for the behavior of the people who abuse our platform. We are responsible to make sure that we have a policy in place and welltrained people who connect quickly and take action is required. Most of all we have a responsibility to help organizations like connect justice who want to use our platform. So as well we assist others. We want to help and it could be a conglomerate or another religion, another belief, who want to use our platform, so that is something that we have taken to for long time. I have looked at it a few years ago to talk about this very issue. We continue to improve what we do and invest more money into it. Are clearly prohibit terrorism. Sometimes what is on our platform is a reflection of society . Sometimes is very uncomfortable. Lacy is a transparency and rethink our responsibility is is the role of the company is about making sure people can use our platforms for ideas. We can remove all of the content but even if we remove the content the idea remains. A lot of this is about ideology and idea. If we dont carry the ideas then the issues will not prevail. I find it difficult to understand they take no responsibility whatsoever for people using that platform for other people if you have a shop and people were trying to recruit someone to be involved in a terraced sect, i hope you as an individual would try to remove them from the shop. Not expect someone else to come in to do that. But you. But you are in your platform. To monitor and remove. Without any responsibility. If you use that example we remove them from the shelf and prevent them from becoming bullets in our community. Also a little bit about how we see working with experts, one of the questions we put for this why didnt facebook sit down and say hey thats not right. Actually the the work that we have done, looking at what kind of counter speech works, its people who are more like those young people. Its people who use humor, people who use eyecatching content so you can be more effective at drowning out the negative forces. Can you just tell us how many people are the places where this content is monitored and reported or taken down . More than a hundred. How many accounts worldwide to have. Theres 320 Million People using it we have a variety of tools. One of the issues is we have people coming back on the platform. That another technical challenges. We had Operations Team we do not have a public number for that but it does number in the thousands of employees. The vast majority of whom do not focus on counterterrorism. We have an expert theme. How many on that. Im afraid i cannot review a number that we provide. I be happy for you to come and meet them. You can come to our dublin office. You can come and meet the team and understand more about their expertise and where they work. Thank you for the invitation. Much like facebook im not able to share number. It is a significant number. Do you have such . We do. We have some people based in dublin but there staffed it 24 hours a a day so it is a global team. Speemacs how many accounts worldwide. Worldwide. So 1. 59 billion accounts. We are not monitoring them. But we are handling reports every day. Most are not not about the issue youre talking about. You believe in corporate, social and google. Is still is actually an you must accept the Largest Company on the internet, you accept that gladly. The internet plays a vital role in extremism. From the perspective of extremists and terrorists. Certainly. This would not exist if the internet did not exist. The problem it carries when you would except terrorism historically, now that its easier for extremists and terrorists to speak to each other than it was years ago. And just to keep an eye on it, as it also. Our company is on the forefront of trying to combat the. Criminals use the internet just as everyone else does. So i did none of your company choose to attend the joint committee which is scrutinizing the draft invest a great powers thats in the house at the moment . Theres a joint statement made that is the conference of statement of issues with the bill. Secondly in the committee is working on an accelerated timescale. Was in a refusal it was the fact that trying to get companies from people across the world in the same room at the same time with just a few weeks noticed. It was just difficult to get everyone in the room. I figure submission will evidence the fact that how seriously we have looked at the bill and indeed how the seriousness of which we take the bill was the fact that five Global Companies came together to make a unified statement. It demonstrates how seriously we are taking it. I should declare that im on the committee, this meeting today was organized very shortly like last week or two weeks ago. We have managed to get the three of you in the room. The joint committee made significant effort to sit in with your company timetables and yet you still decline. Why are you afraid to come to the committee to give about your views of one of the most important pieces of legislation. I think theres been a discussion with the committee for some time. I know ive made several comments about when i was free over plot. Of time. Secondly, we are very clear, our joint statements and i gave evidence to the previous joint committee on communications. I think the substance of the submission you saw from industry and the spill more than surpasses the counter discussion that happened last time. I dont accept the premise of the question, i i think weve taken very seriously. I would say that i reject any suggestion that it implies our company doesnt care about the issue. We care about it and we care about the issues and we particular dress in our submission. Nor does it mean that we dont take our responsibility seriously. Theres logistical challenge outside my area of expertise, but i would simply repeat that we are committed to working with the British Government to making sure. I should add that we heard evidence from a judge in new zealand, 5 00 oclock our time, but well leave it there. I want to hear your praise about when twitter chooses to support peo