News and Media

In a June 15 statement, Facebook described plans to reduce and remove the amount of terrorist content on its platforms, including by developing artificial intelligence capabilities, expanding its community operations team and partnering with private- and public-sector groups. Unfortunately, the announcement is bereft of specific details and raises additional questions concerning transparency and accountability.

Facebook’s announcement confirms what security and policy experts have known for some time—that terrorist and extremist content is easily available and pervasive online. It appears that as extremist and terrorist content proliferated online, Facebook’s content review and moderation teams remained persistently understaffed, and the company has only just begun experimenting with existing and new technologies in this space. Facebook should explain why it has (1) delayed in building appropriate staffing capacity and (2) delayed incorporating new and existing technologies to assist with detecting terrorist and extremist content for removal until now. Frustrated policymakers and the public deserve a clear answer.

Per Facebook’s request in its statement to “hear feedback so we can do better,” CEP has posed a series of questions and requests for additional information to better understand the tech company’s progress in detecting and removing terrorist and extremist content. We hope Facebook will follow through on its stated desire “to answer those questions head on.”

Artificial Intelligence

“Already, the majority of accounts we remove for terrorism we find ourselves.”

• How does Facebook define terrorism?
• How many total accounts has Facebook removed for terrorism in 2016 and 2017? How many were found by Facebook? How many were found by other parties?
• How many total takedown notices concerning terrorism did Facebook receive in 2016 and 2017? Of these notices, how many resulted in removal of content or accounts for terrorism?
• How many did Facebook report to government/law enforcement?

“Image matching: When someone tries to upload a terrorist photo or video, our systems look for whether the image matches a known terrorism photo or video. This means that if we previously removed a propaganda video from ISIS, we can work to prevent other accounts from uploading the same video to our site. In many cases, this means that terrorist content intended for upload to Facebook simply never reaches the platform.”

• The problem of online radicalization has festered and grown over many years. When was Facebook’s “image matching” technology deployed for the specific purpose of flagging extremist and terrorist content?
• How large is Facebook’s database of images?
• Is Facebook comparing all uploads on its platforms against a database of known terrorist images?
• How much extremist and terrorist content has been flagged using image matching? What percentage was removed and how quickly? What percentage of flagged content was not removed and why?
• How does Facebook define, catalogue, and categorize extremist and terrorist content that it has found and removed via image matching? Is this information shared with Facebook’s family of apps and other Internet and social media platforms?
• Does Facebook use image matching for purposes other than to detect extremist and terrorist content? For example copyright purposes?

“Language understanding: We have also recently started to experiment with using AI to understand text that might be advocating for terrorism. We’re currently experimenting with analyzing text that we’ve already removed for praising or supporting terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda so we can develop text-based signals that such content may be terrorist propaganda. That analysis goes into an algorithm that is in the early stages of learning how to detect similar posts. The machine learning algorithms work on a feedback loop and get better over time.”

• When did Facebook decide to start experimenting with AI for the purposes of addressing online extremist and terrorist content?
• Does Facebook use AI to identify and remove other forms of text, speech, and content?
• How much text and speech “that might be advocating for terrorism” has Facebook removed in 2017 using AI? 2016?
• What percentage of extremist and terrorist content is being detected using AI versus human detection?
• What is the current error rate of AI detection?
• Machine learning algorithms “get better over time” Can Facebook specifically quantify “better” and “over time”?

“Removing terrorist clusters: We know from studies of terrorists that they tend to radicalize and operate in clusters. This offline trend is reflected online as well. So when we identify Pages, groups, posts or profiles as supporting terrorism, we also use algorithms to ‘fan out’ to try to identify related material that may also support terrorism. We use signals like whether an account is friends with a high number of accounts that have been disabled for terrorism, or whether an account shares the same attributes as a disabled account.”

• How many “Pages, groups, posts or profiles” has Facebook identified as supporting terrorism in 2017? 2016?
• For how long has Facebook been using algorithms to identify potentially terrorism-related material and “signals” to disable extremist and terrorist accounts? Is this method the same as or in addition to image matching and language understanding?
• How does Facebook define “material that may also support terrorism”? Is this different from how it defines extremist and terrorist content, or “text that might be advocating for terrorism?”

“Recidivism: We’ve also gotten much faster at detecting new fake accounts created by repeat offenders. Through this work, we’ve been able to dramatically reduce the time period that terrorist recidivist accounts are on Facebook. This work is never finished because it is adversarial, and the terrorists are continuously evolving their methods too. We’re constantly identifying new ways that terrorist actors try to circumvent our systems — and we update our tactics accordingly.”

• Facebook appears to deliberately use vague, suggestive language—“started to experiment,” “begun work,” and “gotten much faster”—to describe its progress on detecting and removing terrorist and extremist content. However, these statements lack specific data or metrics to describe the scope of the problem or its success in confronting it. Facebook and other major tech companies freely leverage an abundance of data to customize the user experience and sell ads, which suggests that it could provide the public and policymakers with specific data related to online extremism. Why is Facebook being so opaque about the extent of the problem and its supposed achievements at combating it?
• What does Facebook mean when it says that “it has gotten much faster at detecting new fake accounts” and can “dramatically reduce the time period that terrorist recidivist accounts are on Facebook”? What was the average time period previously and what is it now? What methods were used to contribute to this purported improvement?

“Cross-platform collaboration: Because we don’t want terrorists to have a place anywhere in the family of Facebook apps, we have begun work on systems to enable us to take action against terrorist accounts across all our platforms, including WhatsApp and Instagram. Given the limited data some of our apps collect as part of their service, the ability to share data across the whole family is indispensable to our efforts to keep all our platforms safe."

• When exactly did Facebook begin work on systems to take action across all its platforms? When will such systems be completed and deployed, respectively?
• Does Facebook and its family of apps define extremist and terrorist content in the same manner?

Human Expertise

“Reports and reviews: Our community — that’s the people on Facebook — helps us by reporting accounts or content that may violate our policies — including the small fraction that may be related to terrorism. Our Community Operations teams around the world — which we are growing by 3,000 people over the next year — work 24 hours a day and in dozens of languages to review these reports and determine the context. This can be incredibly difficult work, and we support these reviewers with onsite counseling and resiliency training.”

• What percentage of Facebook’s overall operating budget is dedicated to Facebook’s Community Operations team and Terror and Safety Specialists?
• What is the average salary/wage of a Community Operations analyst?
• How many Community Operations reviewers are active presently?

“Real-world threats: We increasingly use AI to identify and remove terrorist content, but computers are not very good at identifying what constitutes a credible threat that merits escalation to law enforcement. We also have a global team that responds within minutes to emergency requests from law enforcement.”

• What percentage of terrorist content is identified by AI? How has the percentage changed over 2015, 2016, and 2017?
• Does Facebook have any ability to identify “credible threats that merit escalation to law enforcement”? Or does Facebook take a passive approach and wait for emergency requests from law enforcement?
• If applicable, how often does Facebook refer threats to law enforcement authorities? Of those flagged, how many result in arrest? Does Facebook respond faster to takedown notices submitted by law enforcement and other so-called “trusted flaggers” then the general public?
• If Facebook’s global team “responds within minutes to emergency requests from law enforcement,” why is law enforcement—particularly in Europe—so critical of Facebook’s efforts in combating terrorism?

Partnering with Others

“Industry cooperation: In order to more quickly identify and slow the spread of terrorist content online, we joined with Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube six months ago to announce a shared industry database of “hashes” — unique digital fingerprints for photos and videos — for content produced by or in support of terrorist organizations. This collaboration has already proved fruitful, and we hope to add more partners in the future. We are grateful to our partner companies for helping keep Facebook a safe place.”

• What does Facebook mean exactly when it says that industry collaboration “has already proved fruitful”? How exactly has industry collaboration been “fruitful” in the effort to remove extremist and terrorist content? How much extremist and terrorist content has the industry identified and removed from its platforms in 2015, 2016, and 2017?
• What is the current size of the database of hashes? How many pieces of content has each—Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube—contributed to the database?
• How are content selected to be inputted into the database? What are the criteria?
• Who has access to this database? The public? Media? Law enforcement?
• Are the companies comparing all uploads on their platforms against the database? Is there agreement that all matches will be automatically removed?  
• If so how much content have the companies removed as a result of the database?

“Governments: Governments and inter-governmental agencies also have a key role to play in convening and providing expertise that is impossible for companies to develop independently. We have learned much through briefings from agencies in different countries about ISIS and Al Qaeda propaganda mechanisms. We have also participated in and benefited from efforts to support industry collaboration by organizations such as the EU Internet Forum, the Global Coalition Against Daesh, and the UK Home Office.”

• Why have governments and inter-governmental agencies been so critical of Facebook and other tech companies?

“Encryption. We know that terrorists sometimes use encrypted messaging to communicate. Encryption technology has many legitimate uses – from protecting our online banking to keeping our photos safe. It’s also essential for journalists, NGO workers, human rights campaigners and others who need to know their messages will remain secure. Because of the way end-to-end encryption works, we can’t read the contents of individual encrypted messages — but we do provide the information we can in response to valid law enforcement requests, consistent with applicable law and our policies.”

• How often does Facebook refuse to comply with U.S. and European law enforcement requests that it views to be inconsistent with Facebook's policies?

“Counterspeech training: We also believe challenging extremist narratives online is a valuable part of the response to real world extremism. Counterspeech comes in many forms, but at its core these are efforts to prevent people from pursuing a hate-filled, violent life or convincing them to abandon such a life. But counterspeech is only effective if it comes from credible speakers. So we’ve partnered with NGOs and community groups to empower the voices that matter most.

“Partner programs: We support several major counterspeech programs.”

• If Facebook is involved in the creation of original content for promotion and dissemination on its platforms, can it credibly be characterized as a neutral third-party Internet actor?
• How many individuals has Facebook successfully turned away from extremism/terrorism using counterspeech content?
• How many resources has Facebook invested in identifying “credible speakers” and supporting counterspeech-type efforts to combat gang recruitment, bullying and harassment, “doxing”, revenge porn, racism and fake news and other areas not related to extremism and terrorism on its platforms?

To read Facebook’s June 15 statement in full, please click here.

In a bid to better its international standing, Hamas unveiled its new political platform May 1 in Qatar. Despite what are being marketed as ideological compromises, the new document is depressingly similar to its old political platform. What it reveals, instead of any meaningful movement toward a lasting peace, is a cynical attempt by Hamas to ingratiate itself with the region’s Sunni powers.

Since Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and began its authoritarian stranglehold on the citizens of Gaza, the so-called quartet of Middle East peacemakers (the United States, European Union, United Nations, and Russia) have demanded the group renounce violence, recognize Israel, and adhere to past Palestinian agreements before receiving international recognition. Hamas has routinely refused. But the group’s frayed ties with Iran have forced it to go cup in hand to neighboring Egypt and other Sunni nations, which led to this new document.

Hamas’s 1988 charter focuses on four central themes: Hamas’s allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood; Palestine’s sanctity as part of the greater Arab nation; Israel’s illegitimacy as a state; and Hamas’s dedication to destroying Israel through armed conflict and only armed conflict. The document is also peppered with anti-Semitic tropes that make clear that Hamas’s outrage is directed at all of “the warmongering Jews,” not just Israelis. For example, Article 28 specifies: “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.”

Gone from the new policy document, which does not replace the original 1988 charter, are the references to “the Jews.” But Israel remains, and Hamas’s leaders swear they are not anti-Semitic, only anti-Zionist. Yet that claim is inconveniently contradicted by everyday evidence.  Hamas’s official al-Aqsa television station continues to broadcast sermons demonizing “the Jews,” such as a January 6 sermon by a Hamas parliamentarian accusing “the criminal Jews” of smuggling drugs and pornography into Gaza in order to undermine Palestinian society.

Hamas’s new document falls pitifully short of meeting international demands. While it accepts a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 ceasefire lines, it does not recognize Israel’s legitimacy. “We were and we still are in an open war with the criminal enemy,” Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal said on March 27, referring to Israel. And while the new document accepts a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 lines, it also rejects “any alternatives to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

Nor has Hamas renounced violence or its determination to destroy Israel. In the last 10 years, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at Israeli civilian centers. In Late March, Hamas reportedly acquired dozens of new and more powerful missiles.  The recent election of hardliner Yahya Sinwar as Hamas’s political leader in Gaza reinforces Hamas’s commitment to armed conflict. Sinwar is closely associated with Hamas’s armed wing, which maintains ties to ISIS’s affiliate in the Sinai. Hamas’s new document continues to embrace “armed resistance” as “the strategic choice for protecting the principles and the rights of the Palestinian people.”

If Hamas’s core ideologies remain intact, what has changed and what is the purpose of this new document? The biggest modification is the removal of references to the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas’s original charter defined Hamas as “one of the wings of the Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine.” Since the 2013 fall of Egypt’s Brotherhood-led government, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf states have designated the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has cajoled Hamas to do the same as a precondition for restoring ties. Hence, Hamas has cleansed references to the Brotherhood from its offices and its new political program.

But words on a piece of paper cannot override genetics. Hamas is still an outgrowth of the Brotherhood, and the two groups share the core values of Islamism. Rather than an ideological shift, Hamas's rewrite is nothing more than realpolitik, an opportunistic ploy to get back into Egypt’s graces and reopen its smuggling tunnels to that country. Whether Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas will ally with whoever presents the better deal.

The disavowal of the Brotherhood may be enough to mend some fences, but the new political program remains far removed from the Quartet’s demands. It is a momentary distraction from the fact that Hamas’s core ideology of violent Islamism is immutable and remains in full effect.

Hamas may have put a new coat of paint on the barn, but the foundation is still rotten. They just hope you won’t notice. 

Turkish voters will decide on April 16 whether their country’s parliamentary system, where the prime minister is chosen by elected lawmakers, should be replaced by a presidential model with a strong executive. Should the constitutional referendum pass, the role of prime minister will be dissolved, and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will have new and unprecedented powers to appoint his own cabinet and name top members of the judiciary. A yes vote will also extend Erdogan’s hold on power by making him eligible for two additional five year terms and give him the authority to dissolve parliament on national security grounds without the approval from any other government body.

The Netherlands and Germany entered the campaign fray since they host a large community of Turkish ex-pats who will be voting on April 16. Given the greater press freedoms in Europe, the “No” campaign has a stronger voice abroad than in Turkey itself. This has increased tensions between Turkey and the governments of Germany and the Netherlands, reminding the public of the growing clash between the autocratic tendencies of Erdogan and the more open societies of Europe vis-à-vis politicians. Erdogan has arrested hundreds of journalists in the past few years for criticizing his political positions, and even demanded in 2016 that Germany prosecute a comedian for satirizing him.

Polling suggests the support for Erdogan’s constitutional reforms are as close as 50-50 and as they have done in the past, Erdogan and his party, the AKP, have waged a campaign based on the need to respond to internal and external terror threats.

Regionally, Turkey continues to oppose the Assad regime, but has also tried to patch up differences with Russia and has also played a role in arming and training fighters that are slowing clawing their way toward the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa.  

The April 6 U.S. bombing of a Syrian airbase used by the Assad regime to launch a chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhun, signaling a possible increase in U.S. involvement in the region, was supported by Erdogan. But Turkish support for a larger role in Syria is likely to wane in the long-term since the West’s anti-ISIS strategy heavily relies on Kurdish fighters – an ethnic group that the AKP and Erdogan consider a greater threat to Turkish borders than ISIS – and one whose demands at the end of the war will likely be recognition of a larger Kurdistan than currently exists in northern Iraq.

Should Erdogan prevail on April 16, and consolidate more executive power, the relationship between NATO member Turkey and the West is likely to deteriorate further. Erdogan may be intentionally gambling with Turkey’s western relationships in favor of cultivating a leadership role in Muslim-majority countries. Strong economic gains in the past 10 years gave Erdogan the ability to advance his neo-Ottoman agenda by building economic, charitable and religious ties from Bosnia to Pakistan. Moreover, Erdogan has used his international trips to Muslim-majority countries to push the argument that Muslim countries must unite in opposition to an anti-Islam agenda in the West. As a result, during the time Turkey has been stable and relatively prosperous, Erdogan succeeded in making himself popular among Muslims globally. Whether turning East is economically an effective strategy remains to be seen.

Erdogan’s over-confidence may become Turkey’s Achilles heel.  If the constitutional referendum passes, the West will likely become warier of the Turkish regime in general, hurting Turkey’s economy in the long-run, though probably not hurting Erdogan and his family personally.  Consequently, the economic power of Turkey, which is the engine of Erdogan’s soft power in the East, may lose steam, resulting in the AKP falling out of favor among Turks if the country’s economic growth rate continues to drop from a its high of 9 percent in 2012; to 6.1 percent in 2015; and to 2.9 percent in 2016.

Conversely, if Erdogan’s “Yes” campaign fails, the AKP is likely to also lose the next general election in 2019, having over-played its hand politically, providing Turkey’s secular parties an opportunity to prove  they can again lead, despite Turkey’s complicated internal politics and thorny regional issues like the response to terrorism. 

On March 22, 2017, terrorist assailant Khalid Masood killed five people during a vehicle and stabbing attack in London. The following day, a similar attack was thwarted in Antwerp, Belgium. On April 7, another assailant carried out a suspected terrorist attack, this time in Sweden, hijacking a truck and careening into crowds of pedestrians at the Ahlens Mall in Stockholm, killing at least three people and wounding countless more. Similar ISIS-claimed attacks in Nice, Ohio, and Berlin each involved armed assailants using cars and trucks as weapons, charging at pedestrians in crowded civilian areas.

The recent spate of vehicular attacks is not a new phenomenon. Attacks using vehicles were carried out beginning in 2006 in London, Quebec, Dijon, Nantes, Jerusalem, and North Carolina. ISIS’s explicit calls to employ cars as weapons—and encouragement from other terrorist organizations like Hamas—appear to have served as an inspiration for the recent wave of attacks worldwide.

Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas Call for (and Claim) Attacks:

Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas have called for or claimed responsibility for vehicular terrorist attacks. Al-Qaeda’s second issue of Inspire magazine, in October 2010, contained an article urging vehicular attacks and referring to a pickup truck as a potential “mowing machine” that can be used to “mow down the enemies of Allah.” Inspire editor-in-chief Yahya Ibrahim urged al-Qaeda followers to “[g]o for the most crowded location” and “pick up as much speed as you can” in order “strike as many people as possible.”

Other groups have similarly encouraged the use of motor vehicles as weapons of terror. In the fall of 2014, ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani issued a call to kill non-believers using any means at their disposal. In November of that year, French ISIS fighter Abu Salman al-Faranci appeared in an ISIS video calling for followers to carry out attacks if they cannot travel to ISIS-held territory. As Faranci said: “Terrorize them and do not allow them to sleep due to fear and horror. There are weapons and cars available and targets ready to be hit. Even poison is available…”

On July 14, 2016, Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel used a 19-ton refrigerated truck to carry out the Bastille Day attack in Nice, killing 84 people and wounding hundreds more. In mid-November 2016, ISIS’s third issue of Rumiyah included an article calling for its followers to carry out vehicle attacks. The article specified the ideal type, weight, and speed of a car needed for terror purposes, and encouraged attacks on “large outdoor conventions and celebrations, pedestrian-congested streets, outdoor markets, festivals, festivals, parades[, and] political rallies.” Later that month, Somali-born Abdul Razak Ali Artan carried out a car and knife attack at Ohio State University, wounding 11 people.

ISIS and al-Qaeda are not the only terrorist groups to urge vehicular attacks. In November 2014, Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups—including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—praised a wave of vehicular attacks in Israel and called for more. One such image posted online read, “Run [them] over, son of Hebron...and son of Jerusalem. Take your car...and run over the Zionists.”

Timeline of Major Vehicular Terrorist Attacks:

Terrorists have carried out attacks using cars and trucks in a wide range of countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Israel, Germany, and Belgium. CEP has documented 11 major vehicular terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe since 2000. Of these attacks, three took place in France and two in the United States. The single deadliest vehicular terrorist attack in Europe was the July 2016 Bastille Day attack in Nice, when terrorist assailant Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel killed 84 people and wounded hundreds at Nice’s Promenade Des Anglais.

• March 4, 2006: United States. Iranian-born Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar uses an SUV to ram into pedestrians at the University of North Carolina, wounding eight people. Taheri-azar tells investigators that he carried out the attack in order to punish the U.S. government and “avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world.”
• May 22, 2013: United Kingdom. Two British-born assailants ram a car into British soldier Lee Rigby before attacking and killing him with knives and a meat cleaver.
• October 20, 2014: Canada. Canadian-born ISIS supporter Martin Couture-Rouleau rams a car into a group of soldiers at a shopping center in Quebec, killing one and wounding another.
• December 21, 2014: France. A man rams his car into crowds in the eastern French city of Dijon while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” injuring 13 people.
• December 22, 2014: France. A man who had recently watched a program on Chechnya rams a van into a crowd of pedestrians in Nantes, western France, wounding at least 10 people.
• July 14, 2016: France. Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel carries out the Bastille Day attacks in France, killing 84 people and wounding hundreds more. ISIS claims responsibility.
• November 28, 2016: United States. Somali-born Abdul Razak Ali Artan carries out the car and knife attack at Ohio State University, wounding 11 people. Prior to the attack, Artan calls al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki “our hero” in a message posted to Facebook. ISIS claims responsibility.
• December 19, 2016: Germany. Tunisian-born Anis Amri carries out the Christmas Market attack in Germany, killing 12 people and wounding 48 others. ISIS claims responsibility.
• March 22, 2017: United Kingdom. British-born Khalid Masood rams a crowd of pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge, killing four people and wounding dozens more. The driver then crashes his car into the gates of the Palace of Westminster. He stabs to death a police officer outside the nearby Houses of Parliament before being shot and killed by police. ISIS claims responsibility.
• March 23, 2017: Belgium. A man is intercepted while driving at high-speed toward crowds at De Meir, the major shopping street in Antwerp.
• April 7, 2017: Sweden. An unidentified assailant drives a truck into a crowd at a shopping mall in Stockholm, killing at least three people and injuring others.

There has also been a wave of vehicular terrorist attacks targeting Israeli soldiers and civilians. These car-ramming attacks include:

• July 2, 2008: Assailant rams a front-end loader into buses and cars in Jerusalem, killing three people and wounding 40 others.
• July 22, 2008: Assailant rams a bulldozer into nearby vehicles in Jerusalem, wounding at least 16 people.
• September 22, 2008: Assailant rams his car into a group of Israelis in Jerusalem, injuring 15 Israeli soldiers and four civilians.
• March 5, 2009: Assailant uses a bulldozer to ram into an Israeli police car, injuring two officers.
• October 22, 2014: Assailant rams his car into a crowd of pedestrians at a light rail train station in Jerusalem, killing two people—including a three-month-old girl—and wounding seven more.
• November 5, 2014: Assailant drives into a crowded area in Jerusalem, killing two people and wounding more than a dozen others. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) both praise the recent wave of vehicular attacks and call for more.
• January 8, 2017: An alleged ISIS supporter plows a truck into a group of Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem, killing four people and injuring at least 10 others.
• April 6, 2017: Assailant carries out a vehicular attack in the West Bank, killing one Israeli soldier and wounding another in an attack praised by Hamas.