Social Networks as the New Frontier of Terrorism

#Terror

Laura Scaife

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317361848
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Jura
• Subtopic: Naturwissenschaft- & Technologierecht

Terrorism. Why does this word grab our attention so?

Propaganda machines have adopted modern technology as a means to always have their content available. Regardless of the hour or time zone, information is being shared by somebody, somewhere. Social media is a game changerinfluencing the way in which terror groups are changing their tactics and also how their acts of terror are perceived by the members of the public they intend to influence.

This book explores how social media adoption by terrorists interacts with privacy law, freedom of expression, data protection and surveillance legislation through an exploration of the fascinating primary resources themselves, covering everything from the Snowden Leaks, the rise of ISIS to Charlie Hebdo. The book also covers lesser worn paths such as the travel guidethat proudly boasts that you can get Bounty and Twix barsmid-conflict, and the best local hair salons for jihadi brides. These vignettes, amongst the many others explored in this volume bring to life the legal, policy and ethical debates considered in this volume, representing an important part in the development of understanding terrorist narratives on social media, by framing the legislative debate.

This book represents an invaluable guide for lawyers, government bodies, the defence services, academics, students and businesses.

1 One man’s terrorist is another man’s Facebook friend

DOI: 10.4324/9781315668680-1

Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.

Mitchell Kapor

In the 21st century, the explosion of the digital age has revolutionised the way that individuals engage with mass media – putting knowledge at their fingertips.¹ It is possible (common, even) to reach an unlimited audience with the click of a mouse or the use of an internet enabled smartphone: ‘we are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain’.² In particular, social networking sites accessible via smart phones have changed the way in which individuals socialise with one another, acting as a giant digital coffee shop for the exchange of ideas and connection of individuals, regardless of geographical borders.

1 Human Rights Committee, General Comment 34: Freedoms of opinion and expression, CCPR/C/GC/34 (12 September 2011) para 5 states: ‘Internet and mobile based electronic information dissemination systems, have substantially changed communication practices around the world. There is now a global network for exchanging idea and opinions that does not necessarily rely on the traditional mass media intermediaries.’ 2 J Swartz (2014), ‘Stephen Hawking opens up’ USA Today (1 December 2014) http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/MONEY/usaedition/2014-12-02-QampA-with-Stephen-Hawking_ST_U.htm.

As aptly summarised by New York Times columnist, David Carr:

[w]e live in an age where there is a fire hose of information, and there is no hierarchy of what is important and what is not. Where the truth is often fashioned through a variety of digital means. Are you your avatar? Who are you in social media? What face do you turn toward the world? How much does it have in common with who you actually are?³

3 J Lee (2013), ‘David Carr: Truth and Lies in Life and Art’ (30 January 2013) http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2015/02/12/new-york-times-david-carr-dead-at-58-his-interview-with-the-sun/.

Propaganda machines have adopted modern technology as a means to ensure their content is always available. Regardless of the hour or time zone, information is being shared by somebody, somewhere. However, propaganda is not the ‘insidious, deceptive, manipulative pattern of negatively influencing behaviour that many people consider it to be’.⁴ Propaganda, whilst it may conjure up images of the likes of Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels or contemporary examples such as Osama bin Laden, can also be used for good – such as spreading public health messages. Essentially, propaganda is ‘an ethically neutral idea – it is the content that varies’.⁵ Arguably, the evolution and advances in social media are influencing the way in which terror groups are changing their tactics and also how their acts of terror are perceived by the members of the public they intend to influence.

4 P Johnston (2013), The Internet, Social Media and Propaganda: The Final Frontier? (30 August 2013) http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/socialscience/2013/08/the-internet-social-media-and-propaganda-the-final-frontier.html#sthash.Zas8ExR9.0lkKeumO.dpuf. 5 Ibid.

The word ‘terrorism’ has become so entrenched in public consciousness in the post 9/11 international environment that traditional media outlets often overuse it to describe a wide spectrum of violent activity, such as insurgencies and civil war conflicts. The purpose and ultimate aim of terrorism is to frighten people into submission, often for an ideological cause. Unlike guerrilla or conventional war- fare, the objective is not the violent but strategic action of seizing ground, neutralising an asset or destroying an enemy’s military force, but the reaction of creating fear to influence political will or to intimidate people. An act of terrorism against a civilian target is not a political or strategic risk if people do not hear about it or see images of it, therefore understanding who did it and why. It has to be communicated to create a story and further promote the cause.

On the other hand, an attack against critical national infrastructure, such as a power station, stock exchange or port facility provides another dimension of risk that could potentially have direct economic and political impacts without the need for it to be communicated to a wide audience. A well selected and non-violent cyber-attack on a critical national infrastructure facility could, potentially, be catastrophic for the social fabric of a nation, but would not create the same level of fear, horror and trepidation as a gruesome, well documented and publicised execution.

Arguably, the modern era of live television ‘terror-communication’ started with the 9/11 attacks in 2001: the images of people jumping from the twin towers was bewildering and shocking to the wide Western audience who watched it unfold in their living rooms and work places. For Al-Qaeda, it was an event to celebrate and behold with joy. The 9/11 attacks achieved and provoked the reaction the perpetrators and masterminds of the attacks desired: a US and Western nation military invasion of a Muslim country, turning America’s ‘war on terrorism’ into an Islamic Jihad.

In this chapter we will explore how terrorism has been defined and interpreted throughout history, as well as the development of social media, in order to set down the groundwork to explore the areas considered in this volume.

1.1 Background to the development of social media

1.1.1 Development of social media

In the era before the existence of the internet, social networking was the process of conventional human interaction that took place in key locations such as schools, market places, religious centres and sports events.⁶ The potential for computer networking to facilitate newly improved forms of computer-mediated social interaction was initially suggested during the infancy of the internet.⁷ The genesis of social media as we think of it today can be traced back to 1971 when the first email travelled between two computers one metre apart (many co-workers and now teenagers on social media sites continue and actually prefer to communicate this way – rather than actually talking to each other).

6 Testimony of Evan F Kohlmann with Josh Lefkowitz and Laith Alkhouri to the UN Congress for Data Security (6 December 2011). 7 Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff (1978), The Network Nation: Human Communication via Computer (New York: Addison-Wesley, rev edn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1993).

Efforts to support social networks through computer-mediated communication were made in many early online services, including Usenet,⁸ ARPANET, LISTSERV and bulletin board services. Many proto-typical features of social networking services (SNS) were also present in online services such as America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, ChatNet and The WELL.⁹ Early social networking on the World Wide Web began in the form of generalised online communities such as Theglobe.com (1995),¹⁰ Geocities (1994) and Tripod.com (1995).

10 David Cotriss (2008), ‘Where are they now: TheGlobe.com’ The Industry Standard (29 May) 28727. 8 Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben (1997), Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet (Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press). 9 Katie Hafner (2001), The Well: A Story of Love, Death and Real Life in the Seminal Online Community (New York: Carroll & Graf).

Much of the early research on these online communities assumed that individuals using these systems would be connecting with others outside their pre-existing social group or location, liberating them to form communities around shared interests, as opposed to shared geography.¹¹ The early online communities focused on ‘bringing people together’ to interact with each other through chat rooms, and encouraged users to share personal information and ideas through personal web pages by providing easy-to-use publishing tools and free or inexpensive web space. However, other communities, such as www.classmates.com, took a different approach by simply having people link to each other by way of email addresses.

11 B Wellman, J Salaff, D Dimitrova, L Garton, M Gulia and C Haythornthwaite (1996), ‘Computer networks as social networks: collaborative work, telework, and virtual community’ 22 Annual Review of Sociology 213–38.

By the late 1990s, the nature of the sites began to change. User profiles became increasingly important as user demand for the ability to compile lists of connections, often referred to as ‘friends’, increased. The use of profiles with user data allowed users to search for and connect with other users with similar interests or shared connections. As user demand for such features grew, and sites developed increasingly sophisticated offerings that allowed users to find and manage ‘friends’.¹²

12 C Romm-Livermore and K Setzekorn (eds) (2008), Social Networking Communities and E-Dating Services: Concepts and Implications (New York: IGI Global) 271.

In 1997, the ‘next generation’ social networking sites began to flourish with the introduction of sites such as SixDegrees.com. In this way they significantly changed the way in which individuals communicated, ‘structured both to articulate existing connections and enable the creation of new ones’.¹³ The sites began to develop certain broad commonalities, usually consisting of a representation of each user (often a profile), his or her social links and a variety of additional services. The service typically allowed individuals to create a public profile, generate a list of users with whom to share connection and view the cross-connections within the system.¹⁴

13 N B Ellison, C Steinfield and C Lampe (2007), ‘The benefits of Facebook “friends”: social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites’ 12(4) Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 1143–68. 14 D M Boyd and N B Ellison (2007), ‘Social network sites: definition, history and scholarship’ 13(1) Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 210–30.

Today, most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the internet, such as email and messaging. Building upon this functionality, the third generation of networking sites started to appear in the early 2000s.¹⁵ Such sites soon became part of users’ regular internet consumption and, by 2005, it was reported that MySpace was getting more page views than Google.¹⁶ In 2004, Facebook was introduced as a Harvard social networking site,¹⁷ becoming the largest social networking site in the world in early 2009¹⁸ and reaching the 1 billion users mark in 2012. Six hundred million of those users were accessing the site using a mobile device.¹⁹ More than 200 social networking sites of worldwide impact are known today and this number is growing fast. Facebook now has over 1.65 billion active users.²⁰

15 Makeoutclub was introduced in 2000, with Hub Culture and Friendster following in 2002. See E Knapp (2005) A Parent’s Guide to MySpace (DayDream Publishers). 16 Steve Rosenbush (2005), ‘News Corp’s place in MySpace’ Business Week (19 July) (MySpace page views figures). 17 D M Boyd and N B Ellison (2007), ‘Social network sites: definition, history and scholarship’ 13(1) Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 210–30. 18 Andy Kazeniac (2009), ‘Social networks: Facebook takes over top spot, Twitter climbs’, Blog.compete.com (9 February) https://blog.compete.com/2009/02/09/facebook-myspace-twitter-social-network/. 19 D Lee (2012), ‘Facebook Surpasses One Billion Users as It Tempts New Markets’, BBC News (5 October 2012) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19816709 (last accessed 26 July 2016). 20 http://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/.

In recent years, they have become increasingly varied and they now commonly incorporate new information and communication tools, such as mobile connectivity, photo/video/sharing and blogging, creating the potential to enrich social and political dialogue through its ability to report, in real time, matters of public...