Terrorist Content Analytics Platform Launches in Canada

At a launch event held in partnership with the Government of Canada, Tech Against Terrorism unveiled the latest developments in its Terrorist Content Analytics Platform, which aims to identify, alert, and stop the spread of terrorist content on the internet.

Tech Against Terrorism showcased the latest phase of its Terrorist Content Analytics Platform (TCAP) in Ottawa on 1 May 2023. The event took place at Public Safety Canada’s Canada Centre 2023 Conference on Countering Radicalization to Violence, attended by front-line counterterrorism practitioners, academics, and industry representatives.

The Tech Against Terrorism team highlighted how the Terrorist Content Analytics Platform (TCAP) undertook to identify, alert, and archive terrorist content at scale.

First launched in 2020, the TCAP seeks to disrupt terrorist use of the internet by facilitating the quick and accurate removal of terrorist content. It does this by alerting tech companies to terrorist content found on their platforms.

The Terrorist Content Analytics Platform automates the swift detection and removal of verified terrorist content found on tech platforms, informed by the work of our open-source intelligence experts and AI-driven processes.

The first phase of the Platform’s development focused on the discovery of content and establishing alerting mechanisms.

At the launch event in Ottawa, the Tech Against Terrorism team gave an update on the second phase now underway, which is focussed on building an archive of verified terrorist content and the transparent hashing of terrorist material. It also features new APIs to enhance our ability to participate effectively in crisis response and threat-to-life situations.

The Government of Canada has supported the Platform’s growth at crucial stages of development. Speaking at the launch, Robert Burley, Executive Director at the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence, said “We are proud, as the Government of Canada, to be a strong supporter of Tech Against Terrorism and the Terrorist Content Analytics Platform (TCAP). We were delighted by its success as it became the world’s largest database of verified terrorist content online, shared for free with companies around the world.”

“We consider this to be an important contribution to our international efforts. It has a positive real-world impact on reducing the spread of terrorist and violent extremist content online.”

“Supporting Tech Against Terrorism and TCAP is one of the ways Canada meets its commitments to the Christchurch Call for Action, which explicitly calls for governments to support smaller platforms in building their capacity to moderate this content.”

Introducing the work of Tech Against Terrorism, Adam Hadley, Executive Director of Tech Against Terrorism said “our methodology is to identify terrorist content at source and when it is shared by a terrorist.  We are focused on finding the epicentre of that content and attempt stop its spread across the internet.  We aim for the Terrorist Content Analytics Platform to be a public good: alerting platforms and policymakers of threats to life, but also establish sustainable mechanisms for crisis response.”

Since its launch, TCAP has identified over 44,000 unique URLs containing terrorist content and sent more than 25,000 alerts to 100 tech platforms.

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. Tech Against Terrorism encourages and enables technology companies to counter the terrorist use of the internet. It is an independent public-private partnership initiated by the UN Security Council. https://techagainstterrorism.org 
2. Further details about the Terrorist Content Analytics Platform can be found at: https://www.terrorismanalytics.org/