White House presses Silicon Valley to aid in terrorism fight

WASHINGTON – The White House is increasing pressure on the tech industry to help rein in terrorism, sending top national security officials to Silicon Valley and announcing the creation of a task force to help prevent extremist groups from using social media.

When Barack Obama addressed the nation after the San Bernardino, California, attack, he urged high-tech “to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice.”

Although the industry says it wants to help, it’s reluctant to give away private data to government agencies, arguing that it fosters user distrust and raises the risk of hacker attacks.

The newly created Countering Violent Extremism task force will be led by the departments of Homeland Security and Justice.

In addition, the State Department will establish a unit called the Global Engagement Center to deter terrorists from carrying out attacks overseas.

“Given the way the technology works these days, there surely are ways that we can disrupt paths to radicalization, to identify recruitment patterns and to provide metrics that allow us to measure the success of our counter-radicalization efforts,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday.

The initiative will require a level of cooperation that historically has not existed between the White House and Silicon Valley, which have been at odds over surveillance – especially since leaks by Edward Snowden.

The tech industry has been lobbying nationwide to elevate standards, so law enforcement would have to go through more hurdles to receive private data unless there’s an imminent danger.

But with growing fears over the Islamic State, the pressure on tech companies to compromise will only grow.

The task force announcement comes as top national security officials met with technology and social media companies in San Jose.

Representatives of Apple, Google and Facebook attended the meeting.

Afterward, Facebook said the two sides were “united in our goal to keep terrorists and terror-promoting material off the Internet.”

Earnest conceded there were “complicated First Amendment issues” to discuss, but he said the tech companies in the meeting were run by “patriotic Americans.”

“They certainly don’t have any interest or desire in seeing their tools and their technology being used to aid and abet terrorists,” he said.