Shaping the narratives, supporting protests, influencing the elections, promoting Jihadist ideas, producing ‘lone wolf’ attackers and enabling non-state actors to achieve their goals – these were not the ideas with which the internet and digital technologies were introduced. Can a democratic and diversified country like India afford its public opinion to get dominated by those forces that are a direct threat to the country’s national security? And what could be the scale of this challenge when these forces have uncontested access to our people’s minds but they remain located outside our physical boundaries and control? These questions have been thrown up by the unexplained but motivated protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
The role of Big Tech in challenging the idea of democracy, idea of government and the idea of the nation itself in the battlefields of public opinion is one of the most crucial and least discussed subjects of our time.
Today, we are observing a strange scenario where Google search algorithms can be corrected on demand (from Muslim community) to display the desired results on the search of words like “Jihad” and “Sharia” but newsfeeds on a democratically elected government’s decisive moves – from Article 370 to Ayodhya verdict to CAA – can never be sorted to reflect the truth, balanced and real information. Big Tech platforms like Facebook, which supports “voice and free expression” can openly assure full support to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan for their brutal blasphemy laws but when the security agencies of democratic countries like India seek their cooperation in decrypting terrorists’ communications and ask for data on potential national security threats, they play the weird “privacy” card. On one such hearing on privacy rights (October 2019) India’s Attorney General KK Venugopal told the Supreme Court that “a terrorist cannot claim privacy,” and these Big internet platforms “can’t come into the country and say we will establish a non-decryptable system.”
From many years, headlines about China’s counterfeiting and hacking capabilities and its censorship on internet/US tech products have caught attention the world over. From 2016, Russia’s attempts to influence U.S. elections have also been subject of popular discussion but, in between all these somewhere, serious threats that Big tech products (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc) can pose to national security, often get ignored.
There is a need to remember that, in 2014, Islamic State’s invasion of Iraq launched with the Twitter hash tag #AllEyesOnISIS, which later become its key propaganda machine and ISIS leveraged these popular tech platforms particularly Facebook and Twitter as its key instruments. From recruiting terrorists to calling foreign fighters (from some 100 countries) and to making Islamic State’s propaganda viral across the continents, these apps had facilitated almost everything.
These Big Tech platforms proudly claim that their goal is to provide the “power of voice” to billions of people across the world but does that claim give an excuse and scope for the exploitation of the same platforms by the terrorist elements too. Jihadist use of Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. is a hugely debated issue and with each passing year new dimensions are emerging – merely discussing them as they come to notice is not sufficient.
Sometime back android users of India have reported an app called “2020 Sikh Referendum” which was made available for download on Google Playstore – the official app store for Android apps. This app was linked to the US-based separatist group “Sikhs for Justice”, which the Indian government had banned in July 2019 for spreading secessionism and carrying out anti-national activities. In November 2019, on similar lines, it came to notice that some Apps at Google Playstorewere spreading literature on ‘Ghazwa-e-hind’ – a Islamic doctrine aimed at the conquest of India, which Pakistani terrorists groups were propagating since several decades. According to some social media users, who first reported this app, more than 5000 users had downloaded that app from the Google Playstore before it came to adverse notice.
Misinformation Campaigns on CAA
One of the most recent examples of these popular tech products’ experiments was seen in India, where, on the issue of amendments in the Citizenship Act, hundreds of people from the Muslim community, backed by Communist Party of India (CPI and CPI-M) and some opposition leaders, put the lives and properties of the common people in danger. The manner in which mobs organized via social media apps terrorized the common people including school going kids, attacked public transportation&railways, burned several buses and private vehicles and attacked the police and security agencies with stones and bricks in different locations – was disturbing for all democratic societies.
During January, security agencies traced more than 5,000 Pakistan-based social media handles, which were involved in actively spreading false propaganda on CAA. Some of them were using deep fake videos of protests to incite communal violence in the country. When violent protests in Jamia Millia Islamia and Jawaharlal Nehru universities broke out, then these Pakistan-backed Twitter handles, Facebook posts and YouTube videos were used widely to spread incitement and hatred against the Indian government and Delhi Police. The problem escalated to an extent that the Ministry of Home Affairs had to issue an advisory to States and Union Territories to act against fake news and rumors on social media.
Pakistan’s Warfare of Narratives
Lately, Opposition parties have repeatedly questioning the Modi government’s decision to shutdown the Internet in Jammu & Kashmir (after the abrogation of Article 370) and tried hard to internationalize the issue but they have completely rejected the alarming incidents, which have shaped a new form of militancy in the region. In promoting militants and their ideas, these popular tech products are playing a key role. Militants do not now need print or electronic media’s support to spread their “Call for Jihad.” They can simply share their videos or pictures on social media platforms and before they come to the notice of the security agencies, they reach thousands of users.
In 2017, nearly 300 WhatsApp groups (each with around 250 members) were caught mobilizing and coordinating with stone-pelters in Kashmir to disrupt the operations of the security forces by attacking them during crucial operations. Due to their in-built end-to-end encryption features, these apps facilitate in the communication/coordination of the militants. In 2013, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) expanded rapidly across all social media platforms and held Social Media workshops at Faislabad, Islamabad and Karachi. In December 2015, LeT chief Hafiz Saeed launched his cyber cell. In April 2017, Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) issued multiple advertisements for social media workshops, which sought volunteers for instigating unrest in the Valley and the cyber team of JuD North Punjab openly posted their campaign posters on Twitter and Facebook with “Join #SocialMedia workshops to know Social Media as an instrument for Kashmir uprise 2k17” kind of statements.
This ‘warfare of the narratives’ has gained new momentum with each passing year. In April 2019, a network of more than 100 Facebook and Instagram pages, run by the employees of the Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR) wing of the Pakistani military, was caught spreading anti-India propaganda and intense hate content. By disguising themselves as Kashmir activists’ voices these Facebook and Instagram pages/groups were involved in openly facilitating a coordinated strategy of the Pakistani Army. Some of these accounts had been active for five to six years; they spent dollars on Facebook ads to promote aggressive content against India and were openly mobilizing the followers and support for their radical Islamist ideas but strangely remained unnoticed by Facebook itself.
Even U.S. President Donald Trump has tweeted how US-based Big tech companies have not coordinated with his government and security agencies in dealing with criminals, terrorists and drug dealers. When these companies are ignorant about their home country’s national security concerns can we expect them to take our national security concerns seriously?
Time to Step In
These platforms are now becoming the facilitators of Jihadist actors’ intra-group financing and communication tools. Research conducted by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism highlights how the terrorists use these social media platforms to report about the live status of their operations to their fellow members through pictures, videos, and written statements and to circulate messages among their network.
Launched with the promise of promoting innovation and creativity, these digital and social media products are now the facilitators of lone-wolf attackers. According to a recent study (on 700 terrorists, who took part in 560 attacks in Israel) conducted by Israel’s Public Security Ministry and International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, 60 per cent of lone-wolf terrorists, who carried out attacks from 2015 to 2017, posted preliminary information regarding their intentions on social media and close to 95 per cent of the terrorists used social media at least once before carrying out those attacks, which indicates that an absence of fundamental intelligence and monitoring helped these lone-wolf attackers to fulfill their objectives. If these tech companies had coordinated in time with the security agencies many of those attacks could have been stopped.
It is quite evident that the core purposes of these Big Tech products is not business and profit anymore. They have developed a kind of fantasy to control minds through data and algorithms. Their smart business model allows them to keep the information about their original customers in the shadows.
Even after facing embarrassments from across the world on their careless approach towards terrorist and anti-national uses, instead of developing a mechanism of cooperating with the local governments and their security/counter-terrorism agencies these Big Tech companies decided to establish their own independent counter-terrorism body. In 2017, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Google’s YouTube founded the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), whose mission statement interestingly says the goal is to “prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms.”
Business and technology are crucial for economic growth, and the concept of “freedom of expression” is one of the essential ingredients of a healthy society. But at the same time, no business idea, activity or product should be allowed to disturb the foundational elements that bind a society and nation together, and can never be allowed to challenge national security goals.
The urgency for disrupting the Big Tech is already there. From time to time our industry leaders and defense personnel have raised voices on the need for building our own tech platforms. The monopoly of only a few foreign tech tycoons is neither a good sign for the tech industry nor our national interests. At the same time, we can neither follow a Chinese model of protectionism nor Islamic nations’ rigid approach. A country like India, which has a surplus of young talent, can deal with this challenge in the Indian way. We have the potential to disrupt the tech industry to make it a level playing field. We can remain open and come up with our popular and robust versions in parallel to Google, Facebookand Twitter.
