Who Should Regulate Extremist Content Online?

As liberal democracies grapple with the evolution of online political extremism, in addition to governments, social media and internet infrastructure companies have found themselves making more and more decisions about who gets to use their platforms, and what people say online. This raises the question that this paper explores, who should regulate extremist content online? In doing so the first part of the paper examines the evolution of the increasing role that social media and internet infrastructure companies have come to play in the regulating extremist content online, and the ethical challenges this presents. The second part of the paper explores three ethical challenges: i) the moral legitimacy of private actors, ii) the concentration of power in the hands of a few actors and iii) the lack of separation of powers in the content regulation process by private actors.

Weapons of Mass Destruction—Conceptual and Ethical Issues with Regard to terrorism

The concept of WMD is part of numerous national laws and is the core of one of the most important treaties of the United Nations (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in Convention on the prohibition of the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons and on their destruction, 1992; United Nation Office of Disarmament Affairs in The convention on the prohibition of the development, production and stockpiling of bacteriological (biological) and toxin weapons and on their destruction, 1975). Yet, the definition of what should be considered a WMD is far from established and subject to controversial debates. Academics, policymakers, and legislators have been introducing a variety of partly conflicting conceptualizations of WMD into scientific debates, public discourse, and legislations over the last eight decades.

White Knights, Black Armour, Digital Worlds: Exploring the Efficacy of Analysing Online Manifestos of Terrorist Actors in the Counter Terrorism Landscape

Over the past few years, a number of major terrorist attacks have been accompanied by the uploading of detailed, online manifestos, which chart and publicise ideologies, motivations and tactical choices in the backdrop of a dehumanized foe. Such manifestos can also act as inspiration for potential copycats and group-think style supporters within an insulated network. However the types of conclusions that can be drawn from manifesto analysis is a complex issue. The broad aim of this chapter is to explore such identity construction and the usefulness of analysing terrorist manifestos through a narrative framework, with a view to demonstrating that manifestos can be understood as a script to a violent performance (the terrorist act) in the theatre of terrorism (the digital world). These insights can serve the development of policy directed towards aspects of the personal attitudes and the social drivers that are necessary for the amplification of violence rather than in the often impenetrable prediction of who is and who is not likely to become a terrorist actor.

Terrorism and the Internet of Things: Cyber-Terrorism as an Emergent Threat

In this chapter I present an argument that cyber-terrorism will happen. This argument is premised on the development of a cluster of related technologies that create a direct causal link between the informational realm of cyberspace and the physical realm. These cyber-enabled physical systems fit under the umbrella of the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT). While this informational/physical connection is a vitally important part of the claim, a more nuanced analysis reveals five further features are central to the IoT enabling cyber-terrorism. These features are that the IoT is radically insecure, that the components of the IoT are in the world, that the sheer numbers of IoT devices mean potential attacks can be intense, that the IoT will likely be powered by a range of Artificial Intelligence aspects, making it inscrutable, and that the IoT is largely invisible. Combining these five factors together, the IoT emerges as a threat vector for cyber-terrorism. The point of the chapter is to go beyond recognising that the IoT is a thing in the world and so can enable physical impacts from cyber-attacks, to offer these five factors to say something more specific about just why the IoT can potentially be used for cyber-terrorism. Having outlined how the IoT can be used for cyber-terrorism, I attend to the question of whether such actions are actually terrorism or not. Ultimately, I argue, as the IoT grows in scope and penetration of our physical worlds and behaviours, it means that cyber-terrorism is not a question of if, but when. This, I suggest, has significant ethical implications as these five features of the IoT mean that we ought to be regulating these technologies.

Technology as Terrorism: Police Control Technologies and Drone Warfare

Debates about terrorism and technology often focus on the potential uses of technology by non-state terrorist actors and by states as forms of counterterrorism. Yet, little has been written about how technology shapes how we think about terrorism. In this Chapter I argue that technology, and the language we use to talk about technology, constrains and shapes our moral understanding of the nature, scope, and impact of terrorism, particularly in relation to state terrorism. After exploring the ways in which technology shapes moral thinking, I use two case studies to demonstrate how technology simultaneously hides and enables terrorist forms of state violence: police control technologies and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones. In both these cases, I argue that features of these technologies, combined with a narrative of precision and efficiency, masks the terrorist nature of the violence that these practices inflict and reinforces the moral exclusion of those against whom these technologies are deployed. In conclusion, I propose that identifying acts of terrorism requires a focus on the impact of technologies of violence (whether they are “high tech” or not) on those most affected, regardless of whether users of these technologies conceive of their actions as terrorist.

An End to Encryption? Surveillance and Proportionality in the Crypto-Wars

End-to-end encryption has been a reality for at least 30 years. However, it is only with recent developments that it has become widespread on mobile phones operating over the internet. This has provided tools for terrorists to plan activities that lead directly to the deaths of innocent civilians. At the same time, it has also been used by dissidents challenging totalitarian regimes and holding liberal democracies to account. In this chapter I argue that while terrorist use of such encryption may render that encryption unjustifiable within a liberal democracy, within an international context the protection that it provides to those seeking to establish law-abiding democracies is too great to be ignored.

The Rise of the Modern Intelligence State

The rise of the formal surveillance state in the early twenty-first century was precipitated by political impetus to empower security and intelligence organisations to perform a broad range of counterterrorism functions. Ethical debates about the implications of the security intelligence reach of modern states have focused on balancing individual rights, liberties, and privacy against the security of the state. Meanwhile, the surveillance state has rapidly evolved into an intelligence state, capable not only of pervasive data collection, but also of analytical modelling which expands existing boundaries of surveillance. Existing concerns about the ethical collection and use of surveillance data are compounded by three emergent capabilities of the modern intelligence state: persistent data surveillance, pattern-of-life analysis, and activity-based intelligence. These intelligence methods provide descriptive and/or predictive models of human behaviour that empower governments to generate intelligence about the actual and the potential subjects of counterterrorism investigations. The ethical implications of counterterrorism intelligence extend beyond the collection and use of data to the application of predictive modelling to dehumanised patterns of behaviour. This process has the potential to redefine the boundaries of the person, particularly by blurring the distinction between thoughts and actions which threaten the state.

Sunlight Glinting on Clouds: Deception and Autonomous Weapons Systems

The art of deception has played a significant role in military conflict for centuries and has been discussed extensively. Yet there has been an absence in the literature of any scrutiny of the risks posed by the deception of Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS). After explaining the nature of AWS, we overview reasons given in their favour and arguments against them. Examples of military deceptive strategies are considered, together with reflections on the nature of deception. The core of the paper is a technical examination of some of the ways that AWS could be deceived and the potential humanitarian consequences. Since AWS have, by definition, an absence of meaningful human control, any deception could remain hidden until too late. We conclude that awareness of the vulnerability of sensing and image processing systems of AWS to deception reinforces and strengthens the case against their development and use.

Facial Recognition for Counter-Terrorism: Neither a Ban Nor a Free-for-All

This chapter starts from the fact that new technology has given new power to the state to automate the identification of previously known terrorists who are organizing attacks on the citizens that the state is supposed to protect. The power to do this (and associated powers), if it works effectively, would help in countering terrorism. Facial recognition technologies promise to give the state precisely that power.