Transcripts For CSPAN2 Discussion On ISIS And Social Media 20160506

[inaudible conversations] good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this panel, disrupting isis online, the challenge of combating online radical, this is to the congressional internet pockets and hosted by the congressional internet caucus. We would like to thank the cochairs, Bob Goodlatte and senator john sthune for hosting us today. We talk about salient topics to the internet and policy, and likes to come out to events for the summer. We have several excellent panelists with us. From the center for democracy, roughshod hussein from the department of justice, countering violent extremism over there and Shamus Hughes on the program for extremism at George Washington university for cyber and homeland security. I am a fellow at the internet law and policy foundry, a fellow at the congressional internet caucus. Lets get started. Lets get a brief overview and jump into it and get into what is the real issue with extremists online, what role do platforms like facebook, and google play in this and what is the right way to be approaching the issue of dealing with extremists content online and recruitment for terrorist groups abroad. So as you may have seen, the social media platforms like twitter and facebook especially in their early years been quite in favor of leaving their platforms, places for Free Expression, adamant supporters of that but gradually we have seen that being taken advantage of through out shabaab in somalia, and al qaeda and the Islamic State using the platform even more actively than that, to a totally different level. Now the platforms are facing pressure on multiple sides, and the users to do something more to take the content out, not something you want to see every day, something that we want spreading around because it is generally effective in recruiting people to go abroad and join these causes. Shamus has been tracking this phenomenon over time. When did this start . How are platforms being used . What are the groups doing . In the early ages when we looked at terrorist groups online, the forms that a dozen or so we worried about, as the internet shifted to more open programs like twitter and facebook so did improvement. If you look at the number of individuals arrested for isis related charges, 85 individuals since march 2014, and they are going online in the demographic, and moving back over to telegram another platform, it is conducive to them to recruit. They use it as grooming. Over the summer the program on extremism at George Washington did a six month study of isis recruit online mostly focusing on americans but also englishlanguage speakers. We look at 1000 accounts on a daily basis. Of those we see them as a grooming online so we watch a young woman from the midwest with questions about her faith and an isis recruiter realized she was naive and answered questions in a nonjudged way. And would introduce the isis narrative, they use it as spotters to recruit people, and logistical support, an individual like a 19yearold kid from chicago when he is picked up at Ohare Airport and siblings planning to go to join isis, they went through his stuff and realized he had four numbers, and the contacts he made on twitter and lowers the bar to be able to meet a radicalized recruiter online. The last way to do it is the devil on the shoulder, aching people on. And the numbers pale in comparison to any form of conversation online, you talk about 44,000 twitter accounts, englishlanguage accounts online, some are bought and some are not, they are using the online environment. The other thing is it is not as if there are recruits that are joining. The fact there is a physical space and the caliphate is a driver for people, twitter, telegram, things like that helped facilitate that recruitment but the reason people decide to become radicalized and join groups like this, in the us, when you see people who have been arrested, communities dont radicalized in america, individuals do. We dont have pockets like you would have in some european countries. Here if you find a likeminded individual you are usually trying to find that online. I believe it right there. Assad, you can tell us how the department of justice is approaching the phenomena and and how you are working to combat that. It is a threat we take very seriously. First priority at the Justice Department is to protect the American People from attacks, and what we are seeing isil do online is get sophisticated techniques. Seamus talked about some of the approaches they have used. They have done Something Different than previous groups, they have adopted crowdsourcing models for which they encourage anyone anywhere to go out and commit attacks against innocent people. We have to be successful 100 of the time, isil is overwhelmingly rejected recruiting millions of people around the world, they reach out to an audience of 1. 6 billion muslims. Even if they are successful in a minuscule number of those cases you still have a problem of 20,000, 30,000 foreign fighters, and the problems of isis getting followers all around the world. Very adept at using different techniques, targeting different audiences in different languages, they tried to reach out to disaffected youth and offer a sense of purpose, sense of belonging, they use a combination of strength and warmth they try to lure recruits with, since of, rotary, as twisted as it sounds they claim to be building something. We have all seen atrocities they broadcast around the world, they also put out positive messaging, i mentioned themes of, rotary and strength and warmth and claim to be building something and calling people to build something which is in their conception the caliphate, so one of the realizations we have as government is there are multiple audiences, we have to be smart using the right messengers to reach the audience. Government isnt always going to be the right messenger to reach the various audiences we are trying to reach. Roughly speaking taking a look at the audience, we have a class of fence sitters thinking about joining isil in the short term and immediate influences of family, friends and peers at a sense of cultural influencers that influence public generally and a mass audience, government may be more effective in the prevention space reaching out to people who havent bought into aspect of the propaganda or ideology, but you really need specific audiences to reach specific classes of fence sitters. That is the question we think about, perhaps they will only listen to other extremists and maybe those are not violent extremists but people extreme in their views that can persuade them to come back, that is not a role for the government to play. Who is the best audience to reach out for cultural influence . What we try to do in government is where possible message ourselves to the audiences we think we can reach, some of the common themes we have used our to highlight isils atrocities against muslim communities and also killing in big numbers, amplifying stories of people that have defected from isils former radicals, highlighting their battlefield, and have territory they can point to and say help us establish the office so we point to losses they are taking particularly in iraq and syria and exposing Living Conditions and done that under isil territories and we think it is important to work not just government but partners to disseminate positive messages the clear what the rest of us stand for and the Muslim Community stands for and to highlight positive alternatives. When someone says i really have a problem with what is happening in syria, and want to do something with it. We have got to find other paths for people to take that are constructive. We have the dual use of the internet as a platform for recruitment and engagement on the other side and also the platforms are torn between taking down violent content and threatening content and on one hand leaving up for intelligence purposes and on the other hand minimizing what they are taking down so they dont have to be the ones judging appropriate content and what is not. Tell us the response we have seen from the company than the concerns they might be considering when asked to comment on how to approach this issue. Over the past year and a half can you hear me now . Clearly over the past year and a half we have seen a huge amount of scrutiny on major Internet Companies, big social media platforms, how they are responding to the existence of socalled extremist content online. It might help to describe a little bit the Legal Framework around speech, what enables the exchange of information, and the will we all enjoy. In the us we have strong protections for the First Amendment for speech where we have very high standards for what is speech the government can say is unlawful, relevant issues in that context is a comment direct incitement to imminent lawless action or imminent violence, is it a true threat of violence or intended violence against another individual but we dont generally have broad prohibitions against hate speech and there certainly is no definition of extremist content on unlawful speech so we are in an environment where what exactly are we talking about . What speech and content are we talking about is unclear. What we are seeing a lot of companies doing trying to apply their terms of service which are variable across platforms, to remove content that gets reported to them. Internet companies, hosts are generally protected by any legal liability for speech that they are not the author of, the Communications Act ensures that if i for example tweet something defamatory about seamus, seamus can sue me if i said the comments but cant go into twitter. This law, the innovation we have seen with the internet and Online Platforms and to supporting speech online. And post and transmit speech. And to face legal liability for the speech. So also in that Law Companies are protected from liability to remove speech so this is where we see the terms of service, set standards for what speech they will accept on their platforms and a violation of their rules and standards so a lot of the platforms have rules about hate speech even though this is very often speech that is protected under the law in the us they may say they dont want to host speech that is denigrating particular group, most of them have standards against direct threats or threats of violence, facebook has a standard against dangerous organizations, they mean terrorist organizations, had seen a range of different terms on different platforms over the years and companies in response to user flags about speech that seems to violate their terms will look at content and does this go too far . Does this step over the line of what they describe to be acceptable or not acceptable on their platform . I want to hear from the rest of the panel about this balance, the opportunity of the internet platform to spread various types of speech, positive speech, the desire to control dangerous speech, hate speech, in the Research Arena how do you see that playing out . We have a fellow on extremism, and if takedown was effective and here is the take away with a caveat. The takedown of accounts reducing the number of followers that came back on twitter. There is the first part. The second part we should keep in mind, there is a built in system of resiliency, an individual like terrance mcneil, last fall, nominal 7. By the time he was arrested he was nominal 21, kicked off 14 times. Every time he came back it was 8, 9, 10. The isis echo chamber has shout out accounts, here is lone wolf, needs to be little 7, everyone follow him. There is a builtin system that says we will get written out for violating terms of service but we will help other people to make sure they get back on. From a research perspective, they clearly want more data, clearly a balancing act, whether takedown is the necessary way. I tend to be more positive on messaging than takedown. Enforcing terms of service, there are echo chambers out there about extremism, violent tweets and beheading videos and not a lot of echo chamber, there may be limited cases that can be helpful and there is some intelligence that can be communicated to companies, but for the most part i agree with seamuss view on it. Overwhelmingly isil is rejected around the world and there is a reason for that. It is because of their own actions. A lot of atrocities they are committing, the stories that have been told by people impacted by isil and other groups, all those are getting out through social media as well. Thousands of people targeted by isil have gone and joined and that is unexpectedly high for all of us because we are trying to prevent any single attack from ever happening. Important to remember these platforms provide an opportunity to put not just counter messaging but positive messaging that allows the rest of us including muslim communities to communicate what we stand for. The risk of the overbroad content policy, increasing pressure on companies to strengthen their policies, make them so more content can come down is that potentially vastly overbroad response to what ends up being as seamuss research seemed to indicate a lot of 1on1 communication that end of driving the individual to commit an act of violence and if you are trying to capture highly tailored direct conversation, taking down speech in the general area for discussing isis and terrorism, throwing out a whole lot of baby with little bathwater. That is a good segue from the Us Government, at least to compel them to provide certain information if they come across it or Government Agencies that use certain information in their response. And collaborative approaches with the summit from Silicon Valley in california, what is your sense of the right way to approach it if the overbroad approach is just that . There have been some proposal in congress to require Internet Companies to report apparent terrorist activity if they identify it and this kind of proposal is pretty concerning. Particular bills that have been proposed there is no real definition of what terrorist activity might be and what that sort of model would set up is a huge incentive for all Communications Providers to air on the side of caution in reporting their users to the government as a suspected terrorist and involved with terrorist activity. The result of that would be a huge amount of overreporting, incredibly concerning in individual civil liberties. And for Law Enforcement. And and and positive viewpoint and positive ideas. And it can happen. And the journalist and the way antiterrorism laws, countries that are allies in the fight against isis, using antiterrorism laws to put journalists in jail. And that kind of overbroad approach that end up constraining the speech, people we need to get different messages out there is a real risk. You can think about the governments amazing ability to be in power. If i call ten social media writers and get them in a room it is a hard pitch. And i look back to my days in government, i was in sacrament of talking to anyone who wanted to do isis videos online. I will talk about how isis is wrong for the following reasons. And holding the phone. And the next and we wont be anywhere near this thing but heres somebody we know you want to talk to. That is how we have tried to use our competing role by bringing together types of Community Leaders you mentioned, society artists, people adept at using social media in the platform, Silicon Valley, after that our job is the same communication to some extent but realizing government is not the best messenger in this space, our job is to step back and allow the creative people, can you get on counter messaging to do their kind of thing. To indicate we are making steady progress in this area and social Media Companies, and not only have we seen enough, twitters announcement has taken down 120,000 isil affiliated accounts. We have seen polling data indicating larger and larger percentages of young arab populations totally ruling out any possibility of joining isil. A survey came out recently saying 80 of 18 to 24yearolds in the arab world in 16 countries that were surveyed said they would never consider joining it and if you were to do a full disapproval rating of isil in many, it is even higher. And one to keep in mind, there is a lot of good work being done. And those that might be susceptible to isil dont fall prey to their message. We are talking a manageable number. The fbi director talks about 900 to 1000 active investigations. From and if the i perspective it looks large but from a messaging perspective, you can view your messaging to those 900,000 people, you can do one on one interventions online. You will never be able to the radicalize or disengage someone online but you might introduce a seed of doubt about killing civilians and then have a real life or offline conversation about how the person should come back. Reaching the target audience is the challenge. The numbers you stated, possibly correct in terms of the number of people in the United States that might be susceptible to isils ideology, you dont want to messaging campaign when you want to target that group that sends a message that all muslim youth are vulnerable or just because muslim youth, some muslim youth might face discrimination, that means they might be susceptible to violent extremism, that is not the case. Muslim youth in the United States overwhelmingly are selling in a number of fields, data indicates per capita at the same level or higher education, per capita higher income levels, people of other faiths, so you dont want to have a 1sizefitsall mass messaging approach, if you look at seamuss report as far as isil related arrests, and recent converts, there is a youth that have grown up alienated, somehow muslim youth are generally susceptible or vulnerable to isils recruitment and 40 of those, they didnt even grow up, muslim communities as muslim young muslims, and Muslim Americans sitting at the dinner table are talking about the same issues as all other americans. Just because muslim is not the number one conversation point at the dinner table and in fact there are overwhelmingly rejecting the message isil is putting out by all the data we see. Messaging itself is one issue. What do we say, not like targeting is equally important so is there a role for internet platforms to help in advising how to go about that targeting or to prioritize algorithmically, and is that equally as problematic as taking down content . Some of the things we see from social media platforms have been much less about affecting the main contents, the Facebook Newsfeed or twitter feed or search results, they have been pretty clear about not wanting to change or start manipulating those displays of information, core product because of pressure from governance and that is the right call. That is the kind of overbearing government effect on our access to information and what views and perspectives are out there that undermine a lot of the very good counter narrative we see coming out. We have seen some companies programs they had with nonprofits around a number of topics really focusing in on the question of radicalization and extremism where in the advertising space that might appear alongside Search Engines or on your Facebook Page kind of sponsoring different nonprofits so that they can have their message show up as an ad alongside related content. There are still questions about Companies Getting too far into promoting certain ideas over others, we have a funny relationship with social media platforms where in a lot of ways we really like it when content we care about is displayed to us and we dont want to see 19 million baby photos if that is not what we are into but also when it seems companies are taking a nonneutral or very ideologically motivated position, that can make people feel really uncomfortable so the key point is transparency. People are particularly uncomfortable when it is not clear where the motivation is coming from or how viewpoints are shaped so the more we can hear from the companies, what are they doing, the more we can see open public discussions about what government might be considering or what companies are considering as opposed to closeddoor meetings where we only get leaks of agendas and bits and pieces of anonymous reports in the news, the more transparent we can be about how things are being worked out and what influences are there, the more comfortable a lot of people will be. A lot of talk not recently but before the platform seemed to be doing a little less that maybe they were actually helping but didnt want to talk about it for two reasons, one being you dont want to show your cards to the people trying to gain the system or put the content up and also cooperating with the government post snowden revelations was not necessarily desirable for the users. My sense is we have seen a shift at users want to see more of that. Is that something you have seen . You think that trend of trying to keep your distance will evolve away from that and see more public cooperation or do you see that continuing . I would come back to the point about transparency. One take away we can have from the end snowden revelations is people, you dont want to surprise people with the scope of what is going on, that creates a strong backlash. It is our right as citizens to know how our government is affecting our environment for speech, how is our government influencing what access to information in public that we have. Having these conversations more publicly is important which is not to say that necessarily we want really close coordination, very much for the point, glad to hear you talk about when government needs to step back because the worst would be to undermine the effort of the people providing alternative viewpoints because those people are cast as being too close to the Us Government and discounted for that reason. I understand the sensitivity, but at the same time, social Media Companies are very clear that they dont want to have their platforms being used by terrorists to spread their message so there is a lot of basis for cooperation and we are seeing progress in that area and the trend is going in the right direction. Given the sensitivities, given the overbroad purchase, that may not be the right way, what would be helpful if companies from civil societies, the American People, helping combat this content in the right way, a smart way . Some low hanging fruit on that. We did a report on isis in america we talked to a muslim of Muslim American community members, leaders, legislators, i want to do some messaging online. I want to engage, talk to someone i am worried about and bring them back to the fold but i am worried if i do i will get secondary airports, engaging with respect to terrorists. There is some level the department of justice or others could provide, at least some policy or legal guidance for what is acceptable online. Which are very broad charge. And going to hit up against. And to ask somebody from Middle America who once counter messaging to understand those nuances without a right or left latitude that is something at least the government could provide relatively easily. One Contribution Companies can make in all of this in addition to all the work they are already doing and more improvement in appeals processes for when content came down or their account is deactivated. We know they are focusing on trying to enforce their terms consistently, mistakes happen. The scale of content gets posted it reviewed by companies every day is enormous so there are going to be cases where 10 or 15 seconds of human review that make the decision that accounts should come down there is too far on the side of takedown. You might be losing important countering voices in that process. And generally in the way we look at how content policies are enforced to make sure they are looked at, how to keep the most extreme content and the platform, and the discussion and debate, more generally, to persist. With additional guidance, or countermessaging. And providing Material Support, we look at all of those examples on a casebycase basis in cases where they were doing good work, rather than supporting what isis was saying. I want to open up to questions from the audience so the panels have a chance, and the final questions we can keep the remaining panelists. Anything you would like to ask . One other question, several lawsuits against the platform for posting this content they are immune to under the law, but can you explain a little more about do you think those cases will go anywhere . Just people jumping on the topic of the day . The law is very clear, there are strong position, liable for speech for users post, there have been a few cases, the death of a loved one that they try to ultimately tie back to content that had been posted in social media networks. And there was some restitution, and how broadly we would scope who is the proximate cause of the death of somebody in a terrorist act. Trying to sweep Online Platforms under a very broad idea of general liability for actions that are many steps removed from anything they are directly involved with is ultimately not going to succeed. The department of justice played with people sharing content, is that something you are continuing to pursue or people who are not promoting the content directly, not the recruiters but supporting it in sharing it . Our approach, there is a lot of speech that is protected speech we may not agree with but we are not prosecuting the cases. The cases which could be prosecuted are ones in which there was specific threat or solicitation of crimes against particular individuals and reference one of the cases from ohio to mcneil, those are the types of cases we are talking about. In a few minutes given this is such a life issue and an important one because it is affecting lives on whatever scale it is happening, it is very distressing to the public and the platforms having to deal with this and everyone working in it. What do you think the most important thing for congress to take away from this issue is moving forward as they think about how to legislate or hold up on legislating asking companies for help, and maybe on the flipside any other parties involved, what do you think is the most important thing we should be doing to continue the trend of individuals rejecting the message isis is spreading online . It is clear we wont kill our way out of this problem or meet our way out of the problem and we need to continue reaching the right audiences through the right messengers, not since the government but a whole range of actors. We put into place at the government level and working with a number of mechanisms by which we can get out the right countermessaging, positive messaging and the right positive alternative for young people and as i spoke about at the beginning may be disaffected for whatever reason, what is happening on the other side of the world which they view as an injustice, atrocity against a whole people and they say i cannot sit still, i have to do something about it. We have to Work Together to find mechanisms for that small segment of the population that may be attracted to isils message and keep in mind their message is overwhelmingly rejected and we dont want to be reaching out in the name of reaching targeted communities with overbroad tactics or messages that could paint entire groups and as a problem, a distinct audience with some actors and in the preventive space, general audiences that were trying to reach through a set of those actors are different actors. For congress, the us will be watched closely for responses to all this, the standard we set and the model we set, or a lot of harm. If we keep it on the side of good, show that there are ways to pursue the fight against isis that dont involve broadbased censorship, but dont play where, with extremist content or trying to a droid stigmatizing muslim communities. And the fundamental values of freedom of speech and right to privacy, can help us succeed in the fight. That is ultimately, what does it mean to flight from democratic ideals will be more convincing. To crack down on more speech and put more people under scrutiny for the government. I will be contrarian for the sake of conversation. Congress has the ability to have a large megaphone. You see when congress uses the megaphone you see action so i dont believe there would be a summit by the white house if it wasnt for congress, social Media Companies to deal with the content. There is a reason youtube has flagging for terrorist content. They got beat up on the hill about videos of us soldiers being killed posted by a baghdad sniper. It is a balancing act. I understand free speech and Free Expression issues but congress can play a role forcing the convening as uncomfortable as it is and the default of social Media Companies is very libertarian and understandably so. But there is a balancing act between the numbers we talk about in the lawsuit and conversation online. To be contrarian. Any luck . The importance of countermessageing, this positive content. Anyways of measuring the success of that in terms of someone exposed to this content and translating offline behavior and being able to correlate that that is proving to be radicalizing, is there a way to measure that or guessing in the dark . I guess i will start. It is hard. It is possible when you focus it, if you look at a small sample size, 14 people, direct online interventions to see how this engagement would work, small sample size and very labor intensive in terms of broadbased messaging and how you measure that, very difficult. And you see something, say something, it is a very difficult thing. Difficult approval negative. Absent this messaging, who would have gone into violent extremism and who wouldnt, there is data out there and we see the types of messages that tend to resonate, that get traction, stories of defectors, family members, data indicating the best interveners, family members, mothers, there is polling data. I mention the pole indicating 80 of arab youth between the ages of 18, and 24 would never consider joining isil one year prior when it was taken, the number was 60 . You do see trends in some of the polling, we measure what types of messages and often times not government messages, picking up traction. At the end of the day finding the right metrics has challenges, that doesnt mean there arent metrics we can use, we should continue to develop the use of data as we engage in what we are doing. It is important to make sure you have Empirical Research particularly in the area of intervention because you get a sense over time of what types of tools and strategies work and what types dont, the work done in europe and other places, as government we draw on studies that have been done by groups such as exit in germany and others operating in space. We have examples of programs that worked and programs that havent worked and try to draw from the best and go forward. Keep questions going for other panelists, right here in the front. The numbers are so small in the United States. Given mister husseins concerned that we dont want to create the illusion that muslim youth are at risk, the focus is on violence or violent extremism, doesnt that create that, and the violence in the United States, overwhelmingly the violence committed in the United States, and inspired by isil. And toward violence, sort of the same thing, alienation, frustration, that whole general thing that drives people to do violence. That is a fantastic point and one of the critiques of countering violent extremism, worked on this area, there is this back and forth between talking about all kind of violent extremism, threats, domestically, violence against civilians, and antiradicalization, recruits to isis. People notice that sort of target, and encourage the government to be the focus. And much more significant threat to the United States to the safety of the civilian population that have nothing to do with isis, prioritizing, focus on that, be very important. Dont think it should be an either or proposition. And they said they would focus all sorts of extremists and practice on isis, and the dylan roofs of the world, and all sort of interventions. And a paper that looks at isis supporters online versus White Supremacists on line, or the same, we can have a nuanced conversation, and focus research is on these things. I hate to do the numbers on who has been killed more, it is then either or proposition. And terrorism, similar to White Supremacists, a few months back, would be very small and look at a general population. One is about volume, specifically with american users or american content, over the past five years, has isis traffic gone up or down . Is there a way to measure that . If there is not a way to make an observation, one on take down, thoughts around when takedown campaigns are takedown efforts from the government either funding organizations are convening these conversations to talk about how to do takedown, when does this become i am sorry, take that question, when the government funding organizations participate and lead campaigns, Civil Society campaigns, is there guidance that can be offered where campaigns are run, it is right for civil liberties, counter messaging, government, with Tech Companies and funding organizations, a domestic Propaganda Campaign about religious views and policy views in particular. An excellent point you raised. A structured example is programs that are going on in the United Kingdom and the European Union level, programs called internet referral units which are one step further than your hypo about funding nonprofits where members of the government themselves, the metropolitan police in the United Kingdom, chief Law Enforcement body who has a unit dedicated to going to social media platforms identifying content they want to see come down and figuring out which platforms in terms of service it violates and flagging it to the platforms for their review, this way of saying the platform whether it comes up or down, filling them with content to violate ways of service but we think there is a huge concern with that approach. There is a formal Government Program seeking to have certain content removed and terms of service can be more restrictive than government can go after under the law. It is a way for governments to succeed getting content taken down, that they can go after a court. When you expand out of step and say governments are incentivizing private parties to do that kind of flagging, you end it back at this question of Government Action and when you have government identifying particular kinds of content, particular kinds of speakers and try to restrict that through attenuated means in the us, that could raise major First Amendment issues. The first was the increase in social media, can lead to other terrorist transitions. It is clear to see isis has been adept at social media, anywhere from 4000 new videos a year, go on twitter, telegram, various platforms that can come out to play on the day, on 50 telegram isis different ways to talk to these individuals, think about the democratization of improvement, there are three girls in denver, and bound to go to turkey to syria, they got picked up in frankfurt, turned around and called every phone number 2 phone fbi agents, how do they do that . Goes with similar page about english language with stepbystep direction and who to talk to when they get to turkey and customs. It lowers the bar for a 17yearold kid from denver to realize how to make the next step and always people will figure that out. It allows for an ability to head for it. And i can have a conversation with them that i would not have five years ago, we can go back and forth similar to a conversation with foreign fighter in falluja and ask everything i need to know in terms of what do i bring or not bring or who i talk to . It is concerning and from that perspective that is where isis has been adept, allowing for those who do not necessarily it is making abuse in a way that is concerning. I will leave it there. I would have to point back, charlie winter at Georgia State university does really good work on looking at isis propaganda online and you may want to look at recent reports on that but i will hold this and get back to you. [inaudible question] what qualifies as extremist content and what is overreach, what should not be . It is a great question and i would love to hear from seamus how you framed your research . The concern that we see is it depends on which government officials you are talking to . Are you talking to someone in the us or uk, you can hear everything from somebody planning a specific attack, it seems clearly something that would be unlawful to general pro isis propaganda, heard references to videos that are not about inspiring any pacific that a specific violence, what Economic Opportunities there are, views that are disagreeable or flat out wrong, and nothing that falls under traditionally what we consider unlawful speech. And the building of peoples positive healing about isis. And sliding back and forth, stop specific commission ofviolence or try to convince people they are wrong to think in a certain way, that latter that is trying to convince people they have the wrong view or the wrong ideas, i dont think should be the goal of any programs because i dont think it is going to work. Stop people from committing specific acts of violence is a great goal but trying to win people over to think according to a certain set of values or beliefs is a losing proposition. This is one of the reasons people brought up why the platform is not put in and out the rhythm like they do child pornography, the answer being it is so subjective, every piece of content is propaganda, extremist content, incitement to violence, a scale you have to look at individually. Technically when companies are filtering for child pornography fears or childabuse imagery what they are doing is comparing known images of that material to things that are uploaded to their own server. Is somebody trying the file one of our users is trying to upload does it match something we know about not wanting to have on our platform . That is the kind of image matching that is very different from the subjective assessment day today of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pieces of content that could run everything from a direct threat to somebody, a stupid joke between friends, a thoughtful discussion about the ideas that isis is putting forward or an invitation, instructions for how to cook a turkey. A huge range of content that gets picked up in the extremist content bucket, algorithmic assessment. Have you defined the buckets in your research . It is important when we talk about isis in america, it is a spectrum. On one side you have a 17yearold tweeting to 4000 followers how great isis is and drives the best friend to the airport to join isis and spend years in jail for terrorist support. That is one factor. On the other side is a guy from st. Louis, spent 20 years in the us, gets dual citizenship and days later goes to syria and becomes a midlevel commander running a battalion of foreign fighters, that is also isis in america. There are two extremes on that. They could tweeting it in apparents house, when we look at the report we looked at, mostly Material Support to terrorism charges with a few communicating threats depending on the next isis and in terms of extremist content we look at notes. If someone tweeted one follower, they are and isis supporter but im less interested than i am if they tweet to 10 or so that are pushed mute, interesting content i hadnt seen before. Connected to the more talking or communicating saying that is when i become more interested. The connections to it, not just speech. A little bit more about who rather than what. Any of the last questions . Wait for the mike if you would. Considered marking or making fun of isil and some of its practices. But putting them in context, these do seem to be guys who cant get a date. Are there alternate approaches . This is an important question. What kind of counter messages is going to be effective and obviously. As opposed to countering. Right, and this is where kind of the term counter speech or counter narrative or messaging really falls apart because what we are talking about is people sharing their views, sharing the their ideas and one thing we all sort of have seen from content of social media is that funny content gets shared a lot more than kind of nice, five paragraph essays carefully breaking down points. Theres definitely a role for that also but. It seems to me to be a very interesting method. Kind of absurd. I would hesitate in terms of what intuitively makes insta us to what would be effective for isis recruits. The data we look at in july of mocking videos on that was less effective when they had videos mocking hui and they were they were and they were talking about killing civilians. So vice at a news article last week about a isis fighter who couldnt shoot straight and that got shared thousands of times and everybody in the media thought it was great. Didnt get any residence in the echo chamber we were looking at. In a way that, which is englishlanguage isis supporters online, they tend to have to run the data a little more than we are doing collection now. They tend to care more about both sections so people that stand up and say i was wrong or things like that. They get angry about that and want to counteract that. Theres been a marked shift inmessaging since the admin station talked about the losses of territory. Isis videos have shifted from giving candy out the kids to, we are winning battles here and there so they are key in what we are doing is how they are adjusting their visiting on these type of things and the last thing i think is quite effective, at least from looking at it in different instances is, when you bring up families and the dangers. What happened when an individual goes to interact and what happens when they leave their families behind. Theres a level of effectiveness there. Im talking to a number of individuals who are true believers on this when you bring up family members, hey, have you talked to your mom lately or what do you think about the fact that you left them behind they tense up in a way that im not used to seeing from them. I think theres effective in a few things. Its a highly complex and not a linear process, right . Humans by their very nature are complex. If this engagement or deregulation is going to be equally as complex and not linear. Before going to float in and out. Things that work for you are not going to work for you. How do we figure that in terms of tailoring our messaging question mark is very difficult to figure out a dynamic. Thank you all for coming out. We appreciate you coming out and we have Upcoming Events in the next few months so stay on the mailing list for the caucus or the website caucus. Org and have a great weekend. [applause] [inaudible conversation] tonight on cspan Republican Party chair rance primus on the 2016 president ial campaign and donald trump is the republican nominee. Mister rivas set down with mike allen of politico. A few minutes from their conversation. You saw yesterday donald trump tweeted a picture of himself digging into a tortilla bowl, a big dollop of sour cream and. I didnt see it, i heard about it. You can imagine i had other things to deal with yesterday afternoon. Anyway, the tweets is happy cinco demayo. The best taco bowls are made in trump tower grill, i love hispanics. [laughter] hes trying. [laughter] honestly. Hes trying. And ill tell you what, i honestly think he understands that building and unifying and growing the party is the only way we are going to win. And i think he gets that. What did you think when nate told you about the tree . Honestly, i had other pressing matters that i was dealing with that were far more important than that week. What are your plans for the convention . Well, it makes things a little bit simpler. We dont have to worry about three separate headquarters, hotels and programming is going to be something were going to be working through. Theres a lot of things that are already done. The stages done. Theres things that just have to happen. We moved the convention up seven weeks of july. Certainly, when we were talking about an open convention it seemed like i wasnt genius for doing that but now we just have to get cruising and get going. You can see this entire conversation with Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus tonight on cspan starting at eight eastern. Book tv has 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors every weekend and heres some programs to watch for. This saturday and sunday at 1 30 pm eastern, book tv as of the 13th National Black writers conference from Medgar Evers College in brooklyn new york. Our twoday coverage features Panel Discussions on hiphop and literature with mikelarry dyson, author of know what i mean . Reflections on hiphop and race and gender with cora daniels, author of an polite conversation as well as panels on diversity and writing programs and black writers in the digital age. That 7 30 p. M. Eastern, Pulitzer Prize winning historian gordon reed and jefferson scholar peter onyx examine intellectual maturation of Thomas Jefferson from his early influences to political ideologies in their book, most blessed of the patriarchs Thomas Jefferson and the empire of the imagination. Sunday at nine, afterwards with Washington Post reporter peter marx, author of good for the money my flight to pay back america. He discusses how former aig ceo bob dennisshaver revived the company after the 2008 financial crisis and help the Company Become profitable again. Peter marx is interviewed by bethany mclean, contributing editor. He was the only person who thought this was possible essentially. The government didnt think this was going to happen. The company certainly didnt think it was going to happen, they were getting ready to sell it for spare parts and the American People had no expectation this was going to happen so that idea that he was a little crazy, you have to be a little crazy to take this on and he was the right kind of crazy. Go to book tv. Org for the complete weekend schedule. Next on cspan two, a conversation on smart homes with lighting, heating and appliances that can be can be controlled remotely. We hear about the benefits of smart homes and also the privacyand security risks. From the Atlantic Council in washington, this is about 90 minutes. Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the Atlantic Council im very probell, director of the center here and a Vice President for the council we are thrilled to welcome you to our event , smart design for smart homes for the launch of the new issue brief which we have out there. Smart homes and the internet of things. And our discussion also on the opportunities here that Network Homes will offers to society as well as the commensurate risks that they pose to security and privacy so a really interesting topic that will be increasingly prevalent in our daily lives but also with broader implications. It is thursday and this afternoons conversation is part of our monthly cyber wednesday series. Im going to go home tonight and try to figure that out. Thursday, but its wednesday but the series as many of you know if you come every month, is designed to convene cyber experts from various sectors to examine topics at the core of the councils cyber mission. Today is a special cyber thursday because its my great pleasure to announce that one of todays panelists, Joshua Korman will be starting tomorrow april 1 as the director of our Cyber Statecraft Initiative and even though its april 1, that is a true statement. Josh is also the cofounder, no one is happier than me about that. [applause] josh is also the cofounder of i am the cavalry, its a Grassroots Organization that encourages new security approaches in cyberspace and beyond in response to the worlds increasing dependence on Digital Infrastructure so sort of watch this space. The program will be heading more in the direction of todays conversation even much further. Josh has employed a very unique approach to security and policy. By connecting human factors, adversary motivation, social impact to help position him is really one of the most trusted names in this space. Before joining the council he served as chief Technology Officer for sony type, an adjunct faculty member for Carnegie Mellon college and a fellow at the holloman Institute Area we are thrilled to have him read before i let josh take the state for his remarks, id also like to thank our media partner pascoe from the Christian Science monitor for joining us and welcome those of you for following the conversation online. I encourage all of you to join the conversation on twitter hashtag at ac cyber as well as at csm passcode and josh will give you another account to also tweet from and now josh, over to you. Thanks very much. All right. Thank you for coming, naming my name is joshua corman. Im excited for the next hour i will be the chief Technology Officer but im excited to start tomorrow. I think we are at the point in history. Three years ago we decided to do this i am the calvary thing and in some ways its a terrible name, in other ways a wonderful name but what we found is we are growing more concerned that our dependence on connected technology was going much faster than our ability to secure it and while many of the breast and brightest Cyber Security realms were trying to protect credit cards and highly replaceable assets, we saw this dependence was now creating our automobiles, medical devices, our homes, the internet of everything and we are putting software and collectivity into every aspect of our lives. What we know in Cyber Security is once you add software you make something hackle and once you connected to Something Else you make it exposed. The internet of things, its not that software is eating the world, if that software was infecting the world and if we were going to place our dependence on it we needed to make sure is dependable and worthy of trust. The name cant came from the recognition that the cavalry isnt coming and it was a call to action to the voice of reason and technical literacy in the Research Community to say stop waiting for someone to consult this for you. Look to your left, look to your right. If you are not sitting in your chair, theyre not coming so its a personal anesthesia that i am the cavalry. I will be part of the solution and the idea was to get outside our comfort zone and go talk to public lc makers, the general public and affected industries where bits and bytes meet flesh and blood. We wanted to focus on the intersection of technology and human condition but more specifically to where the consequences of failure included Public Safety and human life. Without much of a plan other than boldly going in that direction, we started be buzzing the chain of influence and meeting with people in washington and going to places we didnt normally go and speaking to people we didnt normally speak with you but really with empathy at its core and the heart of an ambassador, we tried to bridge the divide between the Technical Community and policy community. In just the last three years of experimentation weve seen the fruits of that labor. In fact, right here on this stage last march i met Suzanne Schwartz from the food and Drug Administration which really catalyzed a very high trust, i collaboration relationship and at the end you saw this januarys postmarket guidance for medical devices, theyve now done a complete 180 in their attitude sort Port Security researchers. Now essentially almost requiring medical Device Manufacturers have a positive relationship with the Research Community by encouraging the adoption of coordinated exposure programs for vulnerability research. So weve seen the experiment work and was become clear in the meantime is that if you look at the headlines, this has gone from a concern that we are worried about on the horizon to one is happening in real time. The week before the security conference, we saw the hack of the nissan leaf, we saw the first self driving car have an accident, maybe two miles an hour but google did hit a bus. More recently we saw ran somewhere be so debilitating to a hospital in Hollywood California that they had to move patients, affecting patient care, critically care patients and now we are seeing another one which is now actively probing other hospitals so whether they are targeted attacks or indiscriminate collateral damage, this dependence in areas of human life are really coming to the forefront. I was just in munich for the security conference discussing how maybe this isnt about norms and treaties betweennationstates the way we should also be looking at our cyber safety exposure to subnational, ideological adversaries, activists , people with resources and less hacking skills than the will and might of a nationstate but with more willpower to use it and assert their will on others and is seen recently we saw the unsealed documents confirming some iranian hackers manipulating controls in a water facility so if not now, then when . And what im really excited about coming your in todays topic is someone has to fill this void and we have to act quickly to know what the right plan and responsible needs to cyber safety and im really honored to be picking up where jason healy left off with the cyber state initiative and really bring a heavy focus into cyber safety because this is not only going to measure the impact in Public Safety and human lives but also in confidence and key markets like automotive, like medical and if we fight to avail ourselves of safety advances we can get from connected vehicles or if we would like to improve the state of patient care through use of modern technology, the critical element of that is that the public trust these technologies. And its not up to us in his room to drive the conversation and make sure we dont wait for a really serious failure that scares people away from trusting these technologies. But we reserve and deserve the trust weve already placed upon them. In todays installment would like to talk about a paper that was originally a collaboration between members of i am the cavalry and the Atlantic Council and greg lindsay on smart homes and while there are several reasons to look at safety and privacy in the home with interconnected things like Consumer Electronics and home alarm systems and appliances and while there are promises, i want to make sure that in our desire to adopt these technologies we can maintain the trust and confidence in them we dont have a nightmare scenario. The report came out today and if you havent looked at it, if you read one and only one thing look at the scenarios for 2025 with the Haunted House that we are going to get into that a little bit on the panel here so without further ado im very excited to bring my first panel here to the council. In a different role and lets invite our panelists up to the stage please. We can clap for them while i do so. [applause] all right. And ill go down the line here. Lees wave your hand, greg lindsay . And andrea matwyshyn. And bo woods, the Deputy Director for the cyber state Traffic Initiative so would you like to introduce yourself . Im the council with Strategic Foresight Initiative and also a senior fellow for new city foundation, and a variety of other things regarding cities, technologies and various risks. Once we go down the line were going to give them a few opening remarks. Andrea matwyshyn hi, im andrea matwyshyn, a person professor of law and Computer Science at northwestern university. Im also a visiting Research Collaborator at the center for Information Technology policy at princeton and a affiliate scholar of Stanford Law School center for internet society. I also have the privilege of serving in 2014 as the federal trade commissions senior policy advisor focusing on security and privacy and their academic in residence. And bo woods. Unfortunately i got to follow that intro. I bo woods, Deputy Director of the Atlantic Council Cyber Statecraft Initiative, ive got about 10 years on more the technical side and now for the past couple of years working with i am the cavalry coming more to the policymaking side. All right, so we are going to start with grady and give us framing thoughts on the idea of smart homes. The promise, peril, how do you see this issue . In the writing of this, im covering the notion of smart cities into my way of this issue. Idm had a breakthrough in 2008 after the election of president obama and the financial crisis and really, there was a whole shift in language route how we started approaching what is the whole discourse around the internet of things so we look at smart homes. Its interesting historically because its always been an extremely tech heavy campaign. Theres no organic reason to want to smart home. If you go back to the 1930s, the first visions of the smart home started appearing in magazines published by the likes of kinko brooms back, popular mechanics, science. That trickled into the 1960s with the jetsons, the 6465 world fair, walt disney, the notions of these pushbutton homes that would relieve us from drudgery but by the 1980s you saw the big Tech Companies like microsoft were pushing this idea that the future of computing was the smart home, home of tomorrow and was filled with all these stillborn visions of how we basically would automate our homes. Consumers never really wanted them and it was only in this elaborate push to create these interoperable Network Homes and of course they were brittle , they were funky, taking great and on systems and making them harder to use. The real problem with smart homes is different from hacking and Everything Else is just the notion that we all remember that time in the early 1990s when it was on that we couldnt make our Computers Work without printers. The question is, do you want your house to operate the same way . Consumers never seem to embrace it. Until security which you might have seen the press release, pulled 9000 people around the world, ask them about their appetite for smart homes and 45 percent of them could see no reason at all why they would want to have a smart home. By far the number one reason why they would want it at you with cost savings around the utility, electricity so even today this notion that we are going to live in these beautiful, perfect, seamless homes made of glass where everything is a touchscreen surface, people just want cheaper electricity bills. We are still looking for that first real killer app and part of the paper is we have a whole nightmare scenario which josh mentioned about what its like owing to be living in one of these Haunted Houses, made haunted by hackers and worms and Everything Else but really it boils down to the question of how can we realize the problems . How do we make good on this vision and what will those products be question mark will it be the powerball, electric cars that will free us from grid dependence and lead to more sustainable lifestyles . Ithink the jury is still out on that and hopefully we can discuss this. You are a coauthor so will let you go next on framing remarks. Yes, so one of the things in doing the research for this that became really clear quickly is looking at the statistics of some of the statistics intel announced today for instance but also some of the other work thats been done in this space. It became clear that while consumers have an expectation that they will have to have these devices, they are terrified of them. Something like 66 percent are afraid that their Smart Devices are going to be hacked and that the data in them will be extracted out of their homes in kind of a commercial value by an unwanted intruder. Thats a scary number. For anybody whos trying to sell into that market. So one of the biggest things as josh highlighted early on is, we are already starting to trust these devices area and smart homes clearly, consumers dont necessarily trust them. They may not want them what they feel like theyre going to have to buy them and then going around to some of the other places, some of the other Industries Like the automotive industry, like the medical device industry, every auto conference i go to now people say oh, i dont want one of these new cars. Taxable. Im going to get an old car from the 70s or 80s and drive at around because that will be way safer. No, it wont. Its the opposite. In medical you see people like diabetes patients like Jay Radcliffe who had said i dont trust this device to work in a way thats automated that can affect my body chemistry. Im going to go back to injecting myself 18 or 20 times a day with insulin. These are personal choices those people make but in aggregate, those personal choices have a really significant potential impact on the market share that organizations think they are going to get from some of these investments theyve made in other things and smart home devices so if you are a kick starter size project and you think youve got a 10 million potential pipeline, that ends up only being 1 million and you go out of business. Your Business Model wont sustain a 90 percent degradation of your market. Its the same thing for larger players, only with less severe consequences as a Business Model but some of those internet connected things they are creating may go offline. You may not have the products and services associated with the smart homes. That you thought you would when you bought it because theres going to be Financial Impact if we dont recognize and realize the market potential that exists for these or the projected market potential so i think thats one of the hidden bad things that could, in two or three years is we start to see some of those significant investments made by corporations and by cities in connecting everything go away. And they are not realized. And that has a significant financial consequence to the us as well as global product makers in the markets. Indeed. All right. What about you andrea . I will highlight on competition concern and on Consumer Protection concern. On the competition side, following those comments, there is currently a deficit of Market Information to allow consumers to make informed decisions across devices. For example, pricing structures and disclosures with products currently usually disclosed what the plan obsolescence lifecycle is of a product. How many years will the product be patched . How many times have penetration tests then run . The quality of the security and code integrity in a particular device is not necessarily something that a reasonable consumer can take into account when trying to decide whether this product that costs 15 more is worse that extra 15 against other products when they are both the same iop device with functionality so thinking about those hidden costs and whether the market is rewarding Iot Companies that are investing in security and taking care of the consumer that is him trusting those devices with access to their homes and information. So that the competition point. On the Consumer Protection side, there is a bigger conversation playing up on some of the other comments about the question of what i calltechnology suitability or more colloquially , the federal bacon problem. Sometimes the fancier technology is not necessarily the better