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A Democratic Licence to Operate
Olympics, some 2,565 intelligence reports were created, following analysis of 31 million
items across 56,000 social-media platforms. Similarly, photographs and geotags posted
by foreign fighters in Syria have been used extensively to identify their likely locations
and travel routes, and to build material and evidence for investigations.
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The CEG is concerned with lawful intercept, cyber-operations, and the attribution of
communications data. Its cyber-operations are particularly focused on detecting hacking,
for example on the City of London or by Islamist extremists.
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Extremist groups continually search for new ways to circulate extremist or harmful
material; websites justpost.it and archive.org are currently among the most popular.
New internet companies and apps are also constantly emerging, posing challenges for
investigators who often do not know from whom they should request data. Officers
have also noticed that many of the new, and often smaller, internet companies are less
comfortable with co-operating with law-enforcement agencies. Some are keen to ensure
the online anonymity of their customers, and therefore do not retain data that could
be passed to law enforcement; others are keen to first notify the customer that a lawenforcement agency has requested their data.
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Lastly, there is a need sometimes for law enforcement to ‘mix in with the noise’ and
covertly operate across multiple platforms when investigating crime and disorder.
However, during such investigations they must be careful not to leave a digital footprint
themselves; they do not want offenders to know that law-enforcement agencies are
monitoring them.
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The CTIRU was formed in February 2010 to seek out terrorist material online, as well
as receive referrals from the public, partner agencies and colleagues elsewhere in the
police. The CTIRU removes over 1,000 items a week from websites; most of the material
is terrorist propaganda or instruction material (for example, on how to build explosives).
This is an ongoing task and the unit recognises that it is impossible to ever have a clean
Internet, free from such material.
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In addition to the challenges facing the SIAs outlined above, the Metropolitan Police and
other law-enforcement agencies identify the lack of co-operation from CSPs, particularly
those based in foreign jurisdictions, as a significant ongoing challenge. There has been
some progress and direct lines of contact have been sought and forged to ensure a
priority service in urgent cases. Feedback has suggested that CSPs generally co-operate
more readily with requests to remove material related to terrorism because they are
high-impact, visible crimes and it is usually straightforward to demonstrate that the
content does not conform to the CSP’s terms and guidelines. However, the ISR Panel were
told that the further an investigation moves away from counter-terrorism, or immediate
‘threat-to-life’ criminality, the harder it generally becomes to secure co-operation.