Tech Against Terrorism is urging heightened vigilance against foreign interference following far-right violence in Southport on 30 July. The spread of online disinformation and subsequent disturbances may reflect foreign efforts to stoke extremism.
31 July 2024 - After the tragic knife attack on girls in Southport earlier this week, there has been an exponential growth of online rumours and conspiracy theories which led to disturbances in Southport and violence outside a mosque.
A primary online instigator is a news website that falsely identified the attack suspect, fuelling far-right conspiracy theories about the attacker's motives. The provenance of the website is unknown, though the YouTube channel linked to the site have shared videos from Russia. Significantly, however, Russia Today, the state broadcaster, repeated the site’s claims.
This false information led Merseyside Police to issue an official statement refuting the baseless assertions. Both the rogue website and the state broadcast have since retracted the claim, though the false name still appears on their websites and the damage has already been done.
Adam Hadley, Executive Director of Tech Against Terrorism said:
“For some time, many of us have been concerned about the prospect of hostile nation states actors deploying disinformation tactics to drive domestic extremism. While we have yet to attribute the source of the online rumours, we do know that this feverish online speculation had real-world implications, galvanising extremist protests in Southport. The fact that a state-backed broadcaster chose to amplify a fake news outlet reporting on Southport reflects at best a woeful lack of journalistic integrity or at worst a cynical ploy to foment extremist riots through disinformation.”
Calling for action from government, Adam Hadley said: “This incident highlights the need for a national centre for open-source intelligence to analyse, share, and counter nation-state, terrorist, and extremist disinformation shared across the internet. The Home Secretary has rightly called on social media platforms to uphold their terms and conditions and challenge the feverish speculation that has taken place over Southport. However, given the possible role of foreign interference, we now need a concerted effort for platforms to identify and act against coordinated disinformation operations. A national centre of excellence that will conduct and openly share the results of their open-source intelligence investigations would enable society to hold platforms and the creators of online content to account, contributing to the resilience of our online and offline communities.”
Earlier this month, Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s independent review of terrorism and state threats legislations illustrated the problem in a speech: “Proportionate measures against digital Foreign Interference could in principle be swept up by action against “inauthentic behaviour”, although identifying such behaviour and taking action requires significant expertise and is likely to be limited to the largest platforms.”