UK secret agent chief says giant tech corporations should assist fight terror – CNN

File photograph: Robert Hannigan in Manila, Philippines, on November four, 2008.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• New chief of UK spying company says giant tech companies should cooperate in battle in opposition to terror


• GCHQ director Robert Hannigan says ISIS is professional in the usage of social media structures


• They “have turn into the command-and-keep watch over networks of option for terrorists,” he says


• Within the Monetary Occasions, Hannigan says intelligence companies face an enormous problem

London (CNN) — UK secret agent chief Robert Hannigan referred to as on large U.S. tech firms to do extra to assist governments fight terrorism Tuesday, as he described social media as “a terrorist’s command-and-regulate community of option.”

In an opinion piece written for Britain’s Financial Times newspaper, Hannigan, the new director of UK government eavesdropping agency GCHQ, said there must be greater cooperation from the private sector to tackle the threat.

His comments play into the continuing debate over the conflict between people’s right to privacy online and governments’ need to ensure national security, intensified by the revelations last year of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden over mass government surveillance programs.

In a rare public statement, Hannigan accused U.S. tech companies of being in denial over terrorists’ use of the Internet.

“They are exploiting the power of the web to create a jihadi threat with near-global reach. The challenge to governments and their intelligence agencies is huge — and it can only be met with greater co-operation from technology companies,” he said.

The extremists use such platforms as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp to reach their target audience in a language they understand, Hannigan said.

Their methods include making use of popular hashtags for other stories in the news, such as Ebola or the World Cup, to disseminate their message, he said. They create slick videos and have learned that showing the full extent of their brutality turns people off, he said — hence their posting of videos of beheadings that stop short of showing the moment of death.

Google, WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter have not yet responded to a CNN request for comment on the spy chief’s remarks.

‘Noisy channel’ for self-promotion

Hannigan, who took the reins as director of GCHQ on Monday, said that ISIS militants show an alarming ease with new media that presents a new challenge for authorities.

“Terrorists have long made use of the internet. But ISIS’s approach is different in two important areas,” he said.

“Where al-Qaeda and its affiliates saw the internet as a place to disseminate material anonymously or meet in ‘dark spaces,’ ISIS has embraced the web as a noisy channel in which to promote itself, intimidate people, and radicalise new recruits.”

If Britain’s intelligence and security agencies are to combat this effort, private sector firms — including the largest U.S. technology companies that dominate the Web — must do more to facilitate lawful investigations, he said.

“I understand why they have an uneasy relationship with governments. They aspire to be neutral conduits of data and to sit outside or above politics,” he said.

But, he said, “However much they may dislike it, they have become the command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals, who find their services as transformational as the rest of us.”

The new generation of extremists is also helped by the additional encryption measures now widely available to users of the Internet and smartphones, Hannigan said.

“These are supplemented by freely available programs and apps adding extra layers of security, many of them proudly advertising that they are ‘Snowden approved,’ ” he wrote.

“There is no doubt that young foreign fighters have learnt and benefited from the leaks of the past two years.”

Recent efforts by Google and Apple to encrypt their latest smartphones in ways that would prevent law enforcement from accessing certain private data have alarmed the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

FBI Director James Comey told reporters in recent weeks that he was “very concerned” that the companies were “marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves above the law.”

‘Lost insight’

A former top U.S. intelligence official also told CNN last month that ripping the quilt off secret U.S. surveillance applications had pushed overseas terrorists underground and out of intelligence services and products’ attain.

“We have now misplaced assortment in opposition to some folks, those who we had been considering we’re not amassing their communications,” stated Matt Olsen, who unless September led the Nationwide Counterterrorism Heart. “We misplaced perception into what they have been doing.”

Snowden, whose large leaks on intelligence-gathering applications resulted in espionage costs from the U.S. executive, has been residing in Russia for the previous 12 months.

In an interview in May just, he stated he had no possibility as opposed to leaking the extremely categorized data, considering he believed the Structure used to be being violated.

CNN’s Lindsay Isaac and Kevin Liptak contributed to this record.

The post UK secret agent chief says giant tech corporations should assist fight terror – CNN appeared first on Smart Health Shop Blog.

via Smart Health Shop Blog http://ift.tt/1xXrJ3w