Why, politicians and public ask, can’t these companies give us just the benefits of digital communication, and not the downsides? It’s the implication of May’s remarks it’s the implication of the frosty meetings between successive home secretaries and internet executives, such as the one two weeks ago between Amber Rudd and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, who, the Sun reported, planned to “refuse MI5 access to terror plotters’ encrypted messages”. (In the FBI-Apple case, public opinion about which side was correct was almost evenly split the FBI eventually dropped the case when it found another company to carry out the hack.)
In the meantime, the public is caught in the middle: relying on both tech companies and government, and often as puzzled as the politicians why so little can be done. The European commission’s decision to fine Google €2.4bn (£2.1bn) for favouring its own shopping service – with decisions yet to come on its control of Android and the Google Play app store – suggest that some problems, at least, are seen as the province of legislators. However, governments have much to say on the matter. Internet companies, meanwhile, suggest that governments should butt out because these companies control the tools that can sort out the problems. France and Germany have implemented fines for companies that allow Nazi content to remain online, while in the US the FBI demanded that Apple write software to hack into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino killers, and took the firm to court when it refused. From encrypted apps used by terrorists (but also by peaceful activists) to online abuse, and fake news to hacking and radicalisation, the friction between the two sides is growing. May’s speech was only the latest example of the frustration among governments with the way that the internet, and internet companies, seem to elude and ignore the rules by which everyone else has to live.
“Yet that is precisely what the internet – and the big companies that provide internet-based services – provide,” she continued. “When it comes to taking on extremism and terrorism, things need to change.” And one of those things was the behaviour of internet firms, which should not allow extremism a place to breed. “E nough is enough,” said Theresa May outside 10 Downing Street after the London Bridge attack last month.
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