TECHNOLOGY plays an important role in modern society but government, law and the society itself is still struggling to catch up with how quickly it has advanced in the last 30 years. That is why, it has been difficult to Tackle extremist content online. The internet is meant to be free to do and say as you please, but the issue comes from fake news and propaganda spread into the very heart of communities across the world.
There must be a happy medium where the internet is still a free place but is also free from the problem extremism. However, the laws attempt to or brought in by the government have been too intrusive into the personal details of the population.
AI to tackle propaganda?
Amber Rudd, Home Secretary, has stated that in the future, UK firms must use an AI-powered tool to automatically remove extremist content from its website. The software that was developed by ASI Data, a London-based software developer, was specifically trained on Daesh propaganda, with a 94% success rate in being able to spot the content. ASI received £600,000 in public money and the government have stated that they wanted smaller firms to adopt it voluntarily, however, haven’t ruled out the potential for legislative action.
It is currently unclear as to whether the tool will be rolled out at ISP level to improve the UK’s state firewall, after it was proved substandard at best on Sunday.
For a few hours of the day on Sunday, UK government Websites were hacked by cryptocurrency miners, the hack meant that anyone who accessed any of these websites would have help people mine the cryptocurrency, Monero. The websites all had one thing in common and that was the plugin Browsealoud which adds the functions of speech, read and translate to the website. But the plugin was compromised and was injecting Coinhives miner onto the websites.
