Halting the hate

AMERICAN officials referred to Anwar al-Awlaki as a senior recruiter for al-Qaeda. After being connected to numerous terrorist attacks, in 2011 he became one of the first United States citizens to be killed by an American drone. Yet Awlaki’s online lectures continue to inspire Islamic extremists nearly five years after his death. His videos are thought to have helped radicalise those responsible for the attack this month on a gay nightclub in Orlando, for the shootings in 2015 at the Inland Regional Centre in San Bernardino and for the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013.

Once such extremist videos appear online they never disappear. YouTube removed hundreds of Awlaki’s videos in 2010. But a search of the platform reveals thousands of copies remain in circulation. Now a new technology promises to help prevent extremist videos from spreading on the internet.

The technique, known as “robust hashing”, was developed by Hany Farid at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, working in partnership with Microsoft. In essence, it boils down a photograph, video or audio file into a unique numeric code.

To generate a code for a…Continue reading
Source: Economist