An End to the War on Terrorism by Phil Gurski

Author:Phil Gurski [Gurski, Phil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Terrorism, Security (National & International), Intelligence & Espionage
ISBN: 9781786609557
Google: VOXaDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 40398734
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2018-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

113Chapter 4

Community Engagement: From Academics to Religious Leaders to Technology Companies to Citizens

I said I would love to do it. I want to help people. I want to make the world a better place.

—Navaid Aziz, spiritual counselor to the Calgary Police Services1

In the last six months we have seen our internal, spam-fighting tools play an increasingly valuable role in helping us get terrorist content off of Twitter … Our anti-spam tools are getting faster, more efficient, and smarter in how we take down accounts that violate our TOS [terms of service].

—Twitter spokeswoman2

Overview

Armies, spies, cops, and states are not the only potential actors when it comes to combating terrorism. In this chapter we will look at possible roles for companies and corporations, academics and communities at a grassroots level.

The Technological Battle

The Canadian philosopher and public intellectual Marshall McLuhan is famous for many things but perhaps is best known for his phrase “The medium is the message.” By this he meant that the vehicle chosen to frame or carry information—the telephone, art, social media, and so forth—is as important if not more than the message itself. At a very minimum the way in 114which data is conveyed affects how we perceive and react to it. This is certainly true when it comes to terrorism. Take but one example: a beheading video. The victim and the executioner are unimportant to the observer—what matters is the sheer brutality and violence of the act as it assaults our senses through imagery.

As an aside, on the question of how much of an impact the Internet and social media have on the radicalization-to-violence process itself, there is still much debate. Many have written, without much evidence, that people are radicalized by the Internet or on it. As a former intelligence analyst who has examined hundreds of cases of Canadian Islamist extremists, I can confidently state that neither of these statements is accurate. Radicalization to violence is first and foremost a human and social process that needs interaction with like-minded individuals. Those more deeply inculcated into violent extremism are a necessary component that serves to draw in others, answer their questions, resolve their doubts, and provide incentives. The Internet and social media can very well be the primary media through which this is done, and that is becoming increasingly true as both platforms invade more and more of everyday life. A recent UNESCO study found that “rather than being initiators or causes of violent behaviours, the Internet and social media specifically can be facilitators within wider processes of violent radicalization.”3 Nevertheless, the issue of what role social media plays in radicalization is slightly removed from the challenge of what to do with violent extremist material online and, more importantly, which body should be given the task of removing it.

There is no question that many terrorist groups, IS first and foremost, have mastered the new media. All means of messaging systems—Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, Telegram, and likely hundreds of other applications designed with anything but terrorism in mind—have been

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