terrorism

The US government has seized control of domain names for more than 30 Iranian news sites it accuses of spreading misinformation. The sites themselves are still online but are now much harder to reach. The sites were mostly used by the Iranian ... Islamic Radio and Television Union, which the US Department of Justice says is working on behalf of a Iranian military group the US had formally designated a foreign terrorist organization. It said the sites were posing as news organizations but had actually "targeted the United States with disinformation campaigns and malign influence operations." ( ... (view more)

The Director of National Intelligence has confirmed the government collected visitor information from a US webpage using powers stemming from the PATRIOT Act. It's reawakened political debate about whether search and browsing history should be part ... of these powers. The argument centers on Section 215 of the act which gives the government the authority to collect "tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information." In the past that's been interpreted to include electronic records such as phone logs. ... (view more)

A politician says online companies that don't do enough to help fight terrorism should be punished through the tax system. Ben Wallace's argument is based on the idea that one-off fines don't make enough difference to hugely profitable companies. ... Ben Wallace, a British government politician responsible for security issues, called technology companies "ruthless profiteers" in an interview with the Sunday Times. He complained about some companies refusing to hand over details of users alleged to have encouraged or incited terrorism, saying the companies "will ruthlessly sell our ... (view more)

Google says its artificial intelligence system is better at identifying guideline-breaking videos than human moderators. The claim is somewhat subjective, however. The company, which runs YouTube, made the claim as part of an update on how it deals ... with 'questionable' videos. Last month, Google said it was refining its use of computerized systems for examining videos and checking whether they breach content guidelines. It says that as a result of the improvements, three-quarters of removed videos are now caught automatically before the company receives a complaint from a human viewer ... (view more)

Google says it will use a combination of artificial intelligence and human expertise to combat online videos promoting hatred and terrorism. It's also going to tackle videos that follow the letter but not the spirit of its rules and will ... intentionally promote videos that can counter terrorist recruitment. The four steps are part of what Google and YouTube calls an ongoing program to enforce the principle that "there should be no place for terrorist content on our services." Step one is to improve the way Google's systems automatically spot videos that promote terrorism and ... (view more)

Facebook has announced four changes to its Safety Check feature for dealing with local crises. The changes will offer more detail about what's currently happening, coordinate local help, and help make fundraising easier. Safety Check is a feature ... that lets people in the geographic area of a natural disaster, terror attack or other crisis quickly mark themselves as "safe." The idea is that this saves people exchanging a plethora of messages in order to check if somebody is OK. That's particularly important with voice calls and text messages, which can easily overload local ... (view more)