Silicon Valley Vs ISIS, US Recruits Tech Leaders

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Obama's top national security officials to meet with Silicon Valley CEOs -  Much of the national security leadership of the Obama administration is flying to California to seek tech firms’ help in figuring out how to thwart terrorists who use the Internet to recruit and radicalize and to plan attacks, according to U.S. officials.

Among those attending a meeting Friday with Silicon Valley top executives are Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey, Obama counterterrorism advisor Lisa Monaco, Director of National Intelligence James B. Clapper, National Security Agency director Michael Rogers and Deputy Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken.

Companies sending senior executives include Google, Facebook and Twitter. Apple chief executive Tim Cook is also expected to participate.

The meeting at a federal government building in San Jose, to be led by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, follows President Obama’s televised call in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings last month for tech leaders to “make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice.”

The officials see it as a bull session to learn how they might use technology to “disrupt paths to radicalization to violence” and “identify recruitment patterns” as well as to provide “metrics” to measure efforts to countering radicalization, according to a copy of the agenda obtained by The Washington Post.

They are also interested in knowing how they can encourage others to publish content that would “undercut” the Islamic State’s message online.

The Islamic State or ISIL has, like no other terrorist group before it, made effective use of the Internet to spread its message, recruit followers and inspire them to carry out attacks in the United States and western Europe. Officials such as Comey have decried its use of slick videos, use of social media platforms and encrypted communications services to grow its ranks and plan attacks.

“As the Internet erases the distance between countries, we see growing efforts by terrorists to poison the minds of people like the Boston Marathon bombers and the San Bernardino killers,” Obama said in his address last month.

The encryption issue is also on the agenda, but is not a main focus, officials said. That issue has divided the administration, with the tech and economic policy agencies supporting the use of widespread encryption and law enforcement and national security agencies concerned that such a trend is aiding terrorists and criminals. Indeed, Comey’s participation in the meeting was conditioned on encryption being on the agenda, an official said.

Some of the largest social media firms have already moved to counter extremism online. Facebook has been the most aggressive in this area, adopting a zero tolerance policy that calls for removing posts related to terrorist organizations.

That includes taking down videos of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American cleric and al-Qaeda propagandist whose sermons inspired Muslims around the world to violent jihad. Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011, but his words live on in videos that reportedly were viewed by one of the San Bernardino shooters, the Boston Marathon bombers, and the attacker in last year’s Chattanooga, Tenn. shootings.

Twitter, which has been especially outspoken about protecting freedom of speech on its platform, last year updated its abuse policy to make clear that “threatening or promoting terrorism” violated its rules.