UK Spy Chief: Social Media is a Command Center for Terror

According to AP, the new head of Britain’s electronic spying agency, GCHQ, said US-based social media have become "the command-and-control network of choice for terrorists and criminals", and that tech companies are in denial about its misuse

UK Spy Chief: Social Media is a Command Center for Terror

Robert Hannigan (right) (Photo: AP)

The UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) chief Robert Hannigan, in an opinion article in the
Financial Times/>, said the British intelligence agencies know that IS extremists use messaging services like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp to reach their peers with ease. "However much (tech companies) may dislike it, they have become the command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals," Hannigan wrote.

Hannigan said spy agencies need to have greater support from the US technology companies which dominate the Web in order to fight militants and those who host material about violent extremism and child exploitation.

Hannigan also advised the intelligence agencies to enter the public debate about privacy. Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online privacy group that is partly funded by tech companies, told BBC radio that intelligence agencies' "powers are already immense. I think that asking for more is really quite disingenuous."

Yet the problem is larger than the question of social media, said Thomas Rid, professor of security studies at King's College London. Companies like Apple, cognizant of the privacy concerns of its customers, are installing powerful encryption programs on their devices. That leaves agencies like GCHQ facing the onset of encryption on a massive scale. "You cannot make the Internet super safe and keep it unsafe for pedophiles and terrorists," Rid said of GCHQ's dilemma.