Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what her policy is on social media platforms which operate in the UK but are based in the US reporting communications sent via their service which might pertain to an imminent threat to national security of the UK to the FBI rather than to a UK security agency.

We believe that companies such as social media platforms should proactively prevent their services from being abused by terrorists and other individuals who pose a threat to our national security by detecting and removing terrorist material. Where such material indicates there is an imminent threat to UK national security, they should report that content to our law enforcement or security and intelligence agencies. Ministers and officials continually raise these issues with social media platforms who are based abroad.

The UK Government is already doing what it can to identify and disrupt terrorist and extremist abuse of the internet. Since 2010, the police Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) has worked with industry to secure the removal of over 250,000 pieces of terrorist content. Industry cooperation with CTIRU has significantly improved leading to faster and more consistent removal of referred content. CTIRU have established relationships with over 300 Communication Service Providers of differing sizes and removals at the request of CTIRU have increased from around 60 items a month in 2010, when CTIRU was first established, to on average of over 8000 a month in 2016. These arrangements mean that where companies take action this removes access to terrorist and extremist content from the whole platform, not just for users accessing it from within a particular jurisdiction, and therefore has a world-wide benefit.

However, although industry have taken some positive steps to address this issue, the internet is still being used to recruit, radicalise, incite and inspire and Governments cannot tackle this alone. Industry has both a social responsibility to tackle this threat and the technical expertise necessary to do so.