Christchurch shooting investigators meet resistance from far-right websites, chat boards

Investigators looking into Christchurch gunman’s involvement in far-right chat boards have been met with an expletive-filled reply.

A police officer stands guard near Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. Picture: Getty Images

New Zealand police probing the online presence of the Australian white supremacist charged with killing 50 in a terror attack on mosques are being met with resistance from some websites.

Investigators have been looking into 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant’s involvement in far-right chat boards and other internet activity since the attack in Christchurch on Friday.

In one email exchange New Zealand police requested an American-based website preserve the emails and IP addresses linked to a number of posts about the attack, but were met with an expletive-filled reply.

In a reply posted on the site, its founder described the request as “a joke” before calling New Zealand as a “s***hole country” and an “irrelevant island nation”.

Police in a statement confirmed they had contacted the site, but would not comment further.

Tarrant posted a rambling 74-page “manifesto” online and foreshadowed the shootings on at least one other controversial forum popular among alt-right groups.

He also live-streamed the attack, with Facebook saying it had taken down 1.5 million videos in 24 hours as authorities scrambled to stop its spread. Facebook said the original video on its service, a live broadcast of a gunman firing in and around a mosque, was seen fewer than 200 times.

None of the 200 people who watched the live video of the Christchurch massacre reported it immediately to Facebook during the attack, the Facebook statement said.

It also took half an hour after Tarrant started his live video for anyone to report it using Facebook’s reporting tools.

Facebook vice president Chris Sonderby said the social media giant is working around the clock to prevent the video from being shared again. “The video was viewed fewer than 200 times during the live broadcast. No users reported the video during the live broadcast,” Mr Sonderby said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Including the views during the live broadcast, the video was viewed about 4000 times in total before being removed from Facebook.

“The first user report on the original video came in 29 minutes after the video started, and 12 minutes after the live broadcast ended.” The link to the live-stream was posted on anonymous message board 8chan, and shortly after the 17-minute video ended, a download link for it was also posted on the site.

Facebook removed the video and “hashed” it to automatically prevent it being uploaded again, but some users added watermarks or edited the video in order to slip it past the detection algorithms.

In the first 24 hours after the shooting, Facebook removed about 1.5 million versions of the attack video.

“More than 1.2 million of those videos were blocked at upload, and were therefore prevented from being seen on our services,” Mr Sonderby said. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has asked G20 members to consider practical ways to force companies like Facebook and Google to stop broadcasting atrocities and violent crimes.

Mr Sonderby said Facebook is committed to working with leaders in New Zealand and other governments to help counter hate speech and the threat of terrorism.

An archived copy drew about 3800 additional views on Facebook before the company removed it, Facebook said in a blog post today.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has written to the G20 asking them to crack down on social media companies that broadcast terrorist attacks. The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism — a consortium of global technology firms including Facebook, Google and Twitter — said it shared the digital “fingerprints” of more than 800 edited versions of the video. Earlier this week, an 18-year-old man accused of distributing the live-stream, but who is not connected to the attack, appeared in Christchurch District Court. The teen — who is also charged with posting a photograph of one of the mosques attacked with the message “target acquired” — was denied bail and could face up to 14 years’ jail if found guilty.

AAP