We should pay more attention to the role of gender in Islamist radicalisation

by David Sutcliffe 04/07/2017

Understanding how men and women become violent radicals, and the differences there might be between them, has never been more important.

by David Sutcliffe 04/07/2017

The process of radicalisation still lacks clarity, and relies on theorising that is rife with assumptions. Image of flowers left at London Bridge in June 2017, by Gerry Popplestone (Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

One of the key current UK security issues is how to deal with British citizens returning from participation in ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Most of the hundreds fighting with ISIS were men and youths. But, dozens of British women and girls also travelled to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. For some, online recruitment appeared to be an important part of their radicalisation, and many took to the Internet to praise life in the new Caliphate once they arrived there. These cases raised concerns about female radicalisation online, and put the issue of women, terrorism, and radicalisation firmly on the policy agenda. This was not the first time such fears had been raised. In 2010, the university student Roshonara Choudhry stabbed her Member of Parliament, after watching YouTube videos of the radical cleric Anwar Al Awlaki. She is the first and only British woman so far convicted of a violent Islamist attack. In her Policy & Internet article “The Case of Roshonara Choudhry: Implications for Theory on Online Radicalisation, ISIS Women, and the Gendered Jihad”, Elizabeth Pearson explores how gender might have factored in Roshonara’s radicalisation, in order to present an alternative to existing theoretical explanations. First, in precluding her from a real-world engagement with Islamism on her terms, gender limitations in the physical world might have pushed her to the Internet. Here, a lack of religious knowledge made her particularly vulnerable to extremist ideology; a susceptibility only increased through Internet socialisation and to an active radical milieu. Finally, it might have created a dissonance between her online and multiple “real” gendered identities, resulting in violence. As yet, there is no adequately proven link between online material and violent acts. But given the current reliance of terrorism research on the online environment, and the reliance of policy on terrorism research, the relationship between the virtual and offline domains must be better understood. So too must the process of…

Collective Action, Democracy, Ethics, Governance & Security, Politics & Government

Exploring the Ethics of Monitoring Online Extremism

by Bertram Vidgen 23/03/2016

Exploring the complexities of policing the web for extremist material, and its implications for security, privacy and human rights.

by Bertram Vidgen 23/03/2016

(Part 2 of 2) The Internet serves not only as a breeding ground for extremism, but also offers myriad data streams which potentially hold great value to law enforcement. The report by the OII’s Ian Brown and Josh Cowls for the VOX-Pol project: Check the Web: Assessing the Ethics and Politics of Policing the Internet for Extremist Material explores the complexities of policing the web for extremist material, and its implications for security, privacy and human rights. In the second of a two-part post, Josh Cowls and Ian Brown discuss the report with blog editor Bertie Vidgen. Read the first post. Ed: Josh, political science has long posed a distinction between public spaces and private ones. Yet it seems like many platforms on the Internet, such as Facebook, cannot really be categorised in such terms. If this correct, what does it mean for how we should police and govern the Internet? Josh: I think that is right—many online spaces are neither public nor private. This is also an issue for some for privacy legal frameworks (especially in the US). A lot of the covenants and agreements were written forty or fifty years ago, long before anyone had really thought about the Internet. That has now forced governments, societies and parliaments to adapt these existing rights and protocols for the online sphere. I think that we have some fairly clear laws about the use of human intelligence sources, and police law in the offline sphere. The interesting question is how we can take that online. How can the pre-existing standards, like the requirement that procedures are necessary and proportionate, or the ‘right to appeal’, be incorporated into online spaces? In some cases there are direct analogies. In other cases there needs to be some re-writing of the rule book to try figure out what we mean. And, of course, it is difficult because the internet itself is always changing! Ed: So…

Democracy, Ethics, Governance & Security, Politics & Government

Assessing the Ethics and Politics of Policing the Internet for Extremist Material

by Bertram Vidgen 18/02/2016

Exploring the complexities of policing the web for extremist material, and its implications for security, privacy and human rights.

by Bertram Vidgen 18/02/2016

In terms of counter-speech there are different roles for government, civil society, and industry. Image by Miguel Discart (Flickr).

The Internet serves not only as a breeding ground for extremism, but also offers myriad data streams which potentially hold great value to law enforcement. The report by the OII’s Ian Brown and Josh Cowls for the VOX-Pol project: Check the Web: Assessing the Ethics and Politics of Policing the Internet for Extremist Material explores the complexities of policing the web for extremist material, and its implications for security, privacy and human rights. Josh Cowls discusses the report with blog editor Bertie Vidgen.* *please note that the views given here do not necessarily reflect the content of the report, or those of the lead author, Ian Brown. Ed: Josh, could you let us know the purpose of the report, outline some of the key findings, and tell us how you went about researching the topic? Josh: Sure. In the report we take a step back from the ground-level question of ‘what are the police doing?’ and instead ask, ‘what are the ethical and political boundaries, rationale and justifications for policing the web for these kinds of activity?’ We used an international human rights framework as an ethical and legal basis to understand what is being done. We also tried to further the debate by clarifying a few things: what has already been done by law enforcement, and, really crucially, what the perspectives are of all those involved, including lawmakers, law enforcers, technology companies, academia and many others. We derived the insights in the report from a series of workshops, one of which was held as part of the EU-funded VOX-Pol network. The workshops involved participants who were quite high up in law enforcement, the intelligence agencies, the tech industry civil society, and academia. We followed these up with interviews with other individuals in similar positions and conducted background policy research. Ed: You highlight that many extremist groups (such as Isis) are making really significant use of online platforms to organise,…