The head of Australia’s top intelligence agency has warned that people like the Christchurch bomber are being radicalized on social media and that artificial intelligence is likely to make things worse.
Australian Security Intelligence Organization (Asio) director-general Mike Burgess told a social media summit in Adelaide on Friday that social media is “both a gold mine and a cesspool” that creates communities. and divides them, and the Internet is “the most powerful incubator of extremism in the world.”
He said people were adopting anti-authoritarian ideologies, conspiracy theories and various grievances, and while social media was not the only driver, he said Asio considered it an “important driver.”
“Social media enables the sharing of extremist ideologies, conspiracies, misinformation and misinformation at an unprecedented scale and speed,” he said.
He said radicalization can now take days and weeks instead of months and years as before, with the most likely perpetrator of a terrorist attack being a lone actor.
“The Christchurch massacre is just one example. “The perpetrator used the Internet to research and refine his ideology, and social media to livestream his attack,” he said.
He said that in one case, an alleged perpetrator acknowledged that the availability of extremist content online had pushed him “over the edge.”
The Asio boss highlighted Telegram, which recently agreed to cooperate with authorities after the arrest and indictment of its founder, Pavel Durov, in France for allegedly failing to act against criminals using the app.
“They share Internet content on social media and use social media as a gateway to dark parts of the Internet, places like a Telegram chat room known as Terrorgram,” he said.
“Nationalist and racist violent extremists – including Australians – are using Terrorgram to communicate with foreign extremists and each other, discussing how to provoke a race war in this country.”
Burgess also repeated previous arguments about end-to-end encryption making it much more difficult for law enforcement to investigate crimes on social media platforms.
“I recognize that privacy is important, but it is not absolute. As I said before, technology should not take precedence over the rule of law.”
Burgess said algorithms combined with social isolation and poor mental health can lead some to go down online rabbit holes into extremist content such as “incel” material or terrorist content.
“As a nation, we must reflect on why some young teenagers hang Nazi flags and portraits of the Christchurch killer on their bedroom walls, why others share videos of schoolyard beheadings and, most worryingly, why “There are young Australians willing to kill in the name of their beliefs,” he said.
after newsletter promotion
“By the time Asio and the authorities deal with this problem, it is usually too late.”
Burgess said that if the internet was already proving to be “the world’s biggest incubator of extremism” and social media the “world’s biggest accelerator”, then artificial intelligence would “increase the incubation and accelerate the acceleration”.
“Asio assesses that artificial intelligence will enable a radical change in the threat environment,” he said.
“AI is likely to make radicalization easier and faster. “We are already aware that extremists are experimenting with AI and are likely to try to use it to enhance their recruitment campaigns, including through social media.”
He said AI would also increase the volume of espionage.
Despite painting a bleak picture, Burgess said Asio “is certainly not the answer and we don’t want to be either.”
“Any proposal to regulate social media must be balanced with freedom of expression, free choice and the free market.”
The two-day social media summit, held in Sydney and Adelaide, focused on the impact of social media on young people, ahead of the federal government’s plans to restrict access to social media by younger teenagers . The government announced on Friday that it would be up to the platforms themselves to enforce age limits, once decided.