Today marks the Second Anniversary of the Christchurch Call to Action, co-initiated by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019. Supporters of the Call to Action include governments, tech companies, and initiatives such as the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, the EU Internet Forum, the G20, the G7, and the Aqaba Process, and are focused on a common principle: there is no place for terrorist and violent extremist content online. Tech Against Terrorism is mentioned in the call as a positive example of capacity building to tackle terrorism online.
The Call received its name from the 15 March 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks where a far-right terrorist killed 51 people in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. The attacker spread his manifesto online and livestreamed his attack, and a recording subsequently went viral across social media platforms – you can read our summary of how tech platforms were used to spread this content and how they responded here.
We are proud to be part of the Christchurch Call to Action advisory network, aiming to tackle terrorism online whilst maintaining a free, open and secure internet and without compromising human rights and fundamental freedoms. We recognise the Government of New Zealand’s efforts in leading a coordinated and collective effort to counter online terrorist content whilst respecting human rights. We also commend the Call for supporting proportionality and acknowledging the capacity of smaller tech companies to manage terrorist content online.
Today, the Terrorist Content Analytics Platform (TCAP) will expand its inclusion policy to include material produced by the Christchurch attacker, who last year was designated by the Government of New Zealand. The TCAP will alert material directly produced by the attacker to tech companies, including the manifesto and copies of the livestream of the attack. In cases where content is either a direct translation, or an audio version of the manifesto, we will also alert such content to tech companies. You can read more about this here.
Going forward, we will continue our longstanding support to tech companies along the principles of the Call, including through capacity building as part of our Mentorship Programme and in supporting platforms in introducing transparency reporting and facilitate crisis coordination.