Joint statement by US Secretary of Homeland Security and the Home Secretary
This week, the US Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen and the Home Secretary Amber Rudd participated in the Silicon Valley Digital Forum on terrorism prevention.
The Digital Forum, led by a US interagency task force, brings together technology experts and community leaders to improve terrorism prevention activities.
Secretary Nielsen and Home Secretary Rudd released the following joint statement:
Over the past 2 days, we have had the opportunity to meet with tech industry leaders in Silicon Valley to discuss our shared fight against terrorist use of the internet. Terrorists utilize social media to radicalise and recruit individuals around the world. We want to expand understanding of violent radicalisation and terrorist recruitment so more people can identify it—and more importantly—prevent it. At the Digital Forum on terrorism prevention, credible community voices learned directly from startups, researchers, and the technology sector how to deliver messages to disrupt terrorist narratives.
While in California, we had the opportunity to meet with the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism. This group represents the first time major companies have come together to work on research and technology solutions to combat the exploitation of the internet by terrorists. These companies have made notable progress on fighting back against the threat, and we look forward to engaging with them to continue advancing concrete action that will make it harder for terrorists to reach our people.
We believe that, by combining the talents and resources of government, community organizations, researchers, and industry, we can combat terrorist use of the internet, and make our communities more resilient against radicalisation to violence.