Britain will never be safe from jihadis unless Islamic State is wiped from the internet by web giants, a Downing Street terrorism expert said yesterday.
Patrick McGuinness, the Prime Minister’s deputy national security adviser, said the speed at which fanatics were being radicalised was becoming almost ‘too fast to catch’.
His comments came as an EU counter-terrorism chief warned that young fanatics could use the internet to learn how to create viruses instead of bombs.
Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute’s counter-terrorism conference in London, Mr McGuinness said the internet had become the new front line.
The PM’s deputy national security adviser fears Britain will never be safe from jihadis unless Islamic State is wiped from the internet
In a stark intervention, he said technology firms had a ‘choice’ when it came to allowing extremists’ content on their platforms – and had the power to minimise the threat by deploying their ‘A-team’.
‘It is the online space that is the front line,’ he said. ‘Until Islamic State cannot occupy space online freely, we will not be safe.’
This is because ‘the speed at which people are brought to violence is almost too fast to catch without the most extraordinary intrusive surveillance techniques’, he added – techniques which ‘are not going to be sustainable or acceptable in a Western democracy’.
Laying out how the online threat should be tackled, he said: ‘It is massively about the choice that the tech companies make as to what they have on their networks.’
Asked if firms were doing enough, he said: ‘I’m not entirely convinced that we are genuinely at the peak of what we are able to do online.
‘These companies have got it in them to resolve this issue very substantially and free us largely in that space.’
Speaking at the same conference, Gilles de Kerchove, the EU’s counter-terrorism co-ordinator, warned of fanatics going online to learn how to make biological weapons.
There are fears of a new terrorist group being formed from the remnants of Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, which carried out the September 11 attacks
He said: ‘Unfortunately, it’s probably easier than before for a lone actor to perpetrate an attack with catastrophic consequences.’ While ‘some of them have learned it on the battlefield’, he also warned of the prospect of biological weapons being made in radicalised fanatics’ homes.
Recalling an online magazine for jihadis that included instructions on how to construct a bomb, he asked: ‘What if anyone [publishes] a similar article on how to process a virus in your mum’s kitchen?’ Chemical substances could even be carried on drones, he warned.
The Belgian also predicted that a new ‘Daesh 2.0’ group could emerge after the defeat of IS militants in Iraq and Syria if not enough is done to address their grievances. The successor group could be made up of Al-Qaeda and the remains of IS, he said.
Jane Marriott, UK director of the Joint International Counter Terrorism Unit, said that although crushing the IS caliphate was a positive step, more needed to be done to stop a new group forming.
Also speaking at the conference, foreign office minister Alistair Burt said terrorism was the ‘scourge of our age’ and warned: ‘No doubt the threat will continue to grow.’
Security minister Ben Wallace said it was vital that the Government stops jihadists returning to the UK, and prosecutes extremists where possible. However, he said this would be almost pointless if others were not prevented from being radicalised online.
‘It is important that we deal with that online content because if we don’t we will allow a safe space to develop in the future,’ he said.