G20 heads call for lawful access cooperation in anti-terror statement

A joint statement from G20 leaders stemming from their two-day meeting last week in Hamburg, Germany, pledges co-operation on fighting terrorism in part by looking for links with internet service and online platform providers. “We will work with the private sector, in particular communication service providers and administrators of relevant applications, to fight exploitation of the internet and social media for terrorist purposes such as propaganda, funding and planning of terrorist acts, inciting terrorism, radicalizing and recruiting to commit acts of terrorism,” said the leaders’ Friday joint statement on countering terrorism. The statement notes that “appropriate filtering, detecting and removing of content that incites terrorist acts is crucial in this respect,” and said the leaders “encourage industry to continue investing in technology and human capital” to help identify and remove infringing content. Last month, the biggest tech and social media companies, such as Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Microsoft Corp. said they were collaborating to combat terror content. Facebook has also said it wants to be a “hostile place” for evildoers. Additionally, the leaders raised the issue of lawful access in their statement, saying that they “also encourage collaboration with industry to provide lawful and non-arbitrary access to available information where access is necessary for the protection of national security against terrorist threats.” Device and platform administrators like Apple Inc. and Facebook have come under pressure from U.S. and U.K. governments regarding access to smartphones and WhatsApp accounts used by people connected to terrorist attacks in California and London. The G20 statement did not mention encryption, but a recent meeting of the Five Eyes coalition of international security agencies in Ottawa resulted in the group issuing a statement that suggested “encryption can severely undermine public safety efforts by impeding lawful access to the content of communications during investigations into serious crimes, including terrorism.”

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G20 heads call for lawful access cooperation in anti-terror statement

Brief | July 12, 2017

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