Spy chiefs and law enforcers worry there’s much more to do to combat online terror instruction

GROUND forces are beating back Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and the Philippines but the terror group is winning the cyber war, inspiring thousands of global supporters.

ALLIED forces are winning the ground battle against Islamic State but losing the propaganda battle with jihadists posting 100 new pieces of content every week in an attempt to inspire lone wolf attacks around the world.

A study has found terrorist and extremist material was being pumped out in such vast volumes now that success claims from social media operators like Google and Facebook that the online presence of ISIS was being reduced was being “grossly overstated”.

Facebook with mounting pressure to use their technological clout to curb the spread of jihadist propaganda. Picture: AFP

The report comes as internal assessments by Five Eyes intelligence alliance including the UK, the US and Australia found spies and law enforcement were spending too much time hunting for offshore foreign-driven plots directed by groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda.

This is despite recent experiences notably in London last week pointing to conspiracies being created locally and inspired just from the internet than any direct contact with terror individuals.

But despite the flood of new postings from ISIS both studies have found more terror material than ever before was being taken down and intelligence on suspects gathered by better collaboration with social media giants like Facebook and Google and greater machine learning technology.

Authorities are worried not enough is being done to fight terrorists in the cyber battle ground.

Analyses by leading British think tank Policy Exchange has found terror attacks in the first half of 2017 confirmed online jihadist radicalisation was a real danger to national security with 100 new pieces of content including videoed, newspapers and articles put out by ISIS each week and viewed by tens of thousands of supporters with the top five downloads by country being highest in Turkey, the US, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Britain.

“The group has shown itself to be adaptable and durable — despite the loss of its physical strongholds — and there is a danger that the blood and treasure we have invested in Iraq and Syria will produce little more than a Pyrrhic victory,” it found.

“ISIS is producing extremist content online at a consistent rate and this is spread across a vast information ecosystem: it is disseminated to core followers via Telegram, before being pumped out into the mainstream social media space via Twitter, Facebook and other leading platforms.”

It suggests new laws be created by nations to counter possession and consumption of extremist material online.

Contributing to the report, former US military chief General David Petraeus said efforts to combat online extremism was inadequate with the London bombing last week where a bomb was made from instructions online underscoring the threat.

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A train, on which a homemade bomb exploded, stands above parked police vehicles on a road below at Parsons Green subway station in South West London last Friday. Picture: AP

“There is no doubting the urgency of this matter. The status quo clearly is unacceptable,” he wrote.

The sentiment is backed by Five Eyes spy agencies with mutual agreement organised threats involving travel, money movements and direct offshore input was being successfully identified but not enough was being done to block the messages inspiring “self radicalised” individuals to perform solo acts of terror.

An internal report last month found even if offshore plots were being detected, law enforcers were only seeing the ISIS “invitation” but not the conversation or later file sharing which moves to the dark web or encrypted and later pushed through to various social media platforms.

It concluded a shift was required to push for new approaches to detecting threats with a focus on sources like social media.

In January 2015 a group declaring sympathy for the Islamic State jihadist group hacked US Central Command's Twitter account and YouTube page posting internal military documents online. Picture: AFP

But all was not lost with more take-down than ever before; microblogging site Twitter alone was found to have suspended 636,248 accounts promoting terrorism between August 2015 and December 2016.

Both Google and Facebook responded to the criticism in the British report saying while the issue was “complex” it was being addressed to remove content quickly.

“We’ve also built a shared industry database of ‘hashes’ — unique digital ‘fingerprints’ — of violent terrorist videos or images, which we’re actively expanding and is helping us to act on such content even more quickly,” a Facebook spokeswoman said.

Justice Minister Michael Keenan said since July 2015, the Government had committed $21.7 million to address extremist propaganda, particularly online.

“The Government is working closely with digital industry and regulatory and international partners to tear down violent extremist material from the internet, and stop the use of their platforms to spread extremist propaganda and recruit supporters,” he told News Corp last night.

“This includes working with social media companies to make sure they have the policies and technological solutions in place to keep hate speech and violent ideological material off their platforms.”