Jolted by last month’s San Bernardino massacre and the ISIS’ mounting online push to recruit would-be jihadists, the US authorities have established a task force to bolster measures to combat violent extremism.
As part of the new offensive, tech giants of Silicon Valley have been tapped to devise ways to “make it harder for terrorists to leverage the Internet to recruit, radicalise and mobilise supporters to carry out acts of violence”.
Top officials of the Obama administration flew down to San Jose on Friday for a closed-door meeting with top executives from Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and other tech firms to deliberate on a new online strategy to combat violent extremism.
While the San Bernardino massacre was carried out by a young Pakistani-origin couple that was “inspired” by ISIS, several other young Americans have reportedly fallen for the extremist propaganda and made efforts to join the Islamic State.
“The horrific attacks in Paris and San Bernardino this winter underscored the need for the United States and our partners in the international community and the private sector to deny violent extremists like ISIl fertile recruitment ground,” National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said.
Attorney General loretta lynch, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Counterterrorism Adviser lisa Monaco and Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith met with the tech executives who included Apple CEO Tim Cook.
“We are bringing our best private and public sector thinking to combating terrorism,” a senior administration official said after the meeting. A statement from Facebook said: “This meeting confirmed that we are united in our goal to keep terrorists and terror-promoting material off the Internet.”
The new task force, coordinated by the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, will integrate and harmonise domestic efforts to combat violent extremism, Price said.
Separately, the State Department will establish a Global Engagement Centre to focus on “empowering and enabling the voices of international partners, governmental and non-governmental, and shift away from direct messaging”.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest spoke of the goal to “find additional ways to work together to make it even harder for terrorists or criminals to find refuge in cyberspace”.
“Given the way that technology works these days, there surely are ways that we can disrupt paths to radicalization, to identify recruitment patterns, and to provide metrics that allow us to measure the success of our counter-radicalization efforts,” Earnest said.