UK may use taxes to get tech giants to do more to fight extremism, minister says
UK may use taxes to get tech giants to do more to fight
extremism, minister says
Reuters December 31, 2017
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain may impose new taxes on tech
giants like Google and Facebook unless they do more to combat online extremism
by taking down material aimed at radicalizing people or helping them to prepare
attacks, the country's security minister said.
Ben Wallace accused tech firms of being happy to sell
people's data but not to give it to the government which was being forced to
spend vast sums on de-radicalization programs, surveillance and other
counter-terrorism measures.
"If they continue to be less than co-operative, we
should look at things like tax as a way of incentivizing them or compensating
for their inaction," Wallace told the Sunday Times newspaper in an
interview.
His quotes did not give further details on tax plans. The
newspaper said that any demand would take the form of a windfall tax similar to
that imposed on privatized utilities by former Prime Minister Tony Blair's
government in 1997.
Wallace accused the tech giants of putting private profit
before public safety.
"We should stop pretending that because they sit on
beanbags in T-shirts they are not ruthless profiteers," he said.
"They will ruthlessly sell our details to loans and soft-porn companies
but not give it to our democratically elected government."
Facebook executive Simon Milner rejected the criticisms.
"Mr Wallace is wrong to say that we put profit
before safety, especially in the fight against terrorism," he said in an
emailed statement. "We've invested millions of pounds in people and
technology to identify and remove terrorist content."
YouTube, which is owned by Google, said it was doing more
every day to tackle violent extremism.
"Over the course of 2017 we have made significant
progress through investing in machine learning technology, recruiting more
reviewers, building partnerships with experts and collaboration with other
companies," a YouTube spokeswoman said.
DEADLY ATTACKS
Britain suffered a series of attacks by Islamic
extremists between March and June this year that killed a total of 36 people,
excluding the attackers.
Two involved vehicles ramming people on bridges in
London, followed by attackers stabbing people. The deadliest, a bombing at a
concert in the northern city of Manchester, killed 22 people.
Following the second bridge attack, Prime Minister
Theresa May proposed beefing up regulations on cyberspace, and weeks later
interior minister Amber Rudd traveled to California to ask Silicon Valley to
step up efforts against extremism.
"We are more vulnerable than at any point in the
last 100 years," said Wallace, citing extremist material on social media
and encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp as tools that made life too easy
for attackers.
"Because content is not being taken down as quickly
as they could do, we're having to de-radicalize people who have been
radicalised. That's costing millions. They can't get away with that and we
should look at all the options, including tax."
Facebook said it removed 83 percent of uploaded copies of
terrorist content within one hour of its being found on the social media
network.
It also highlighted plans to double the number of people
working in its safety and security teams to 20,000 by the end of 2018.
YouTube said that progress in machine learning meant that
83 percent of violent extremist content was removed without the need for users
to flag it.
(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon, editing by Larry King)
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