TCAP Newsletter- Two-Year Anniversary

This newsletter marks a special edition, as we mark the 2-year anniversary of TCAP alerts. We will detail our statistics covering the last 24 months, policy and development updates, as well as exciting plans for the year ahead.

At the Christchurch Call 2022 Leaders’ Summit on 20 September 2022, the Canadian Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, announced the funding for the TCAP. Following the event he tweeted:

We need to confront the rise of hate and violent extremism. At the Christchurch Call Summit, I announced that Canada will fund a new tool that helps small and medium-size online platforms better identify and counter content related to terrorism and violent extremism.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) September 21, 2022

Top achievements of the TCAP over the last 12 months

In September 2022, the Government of Canada awarded Tech Against Terrorism up to $1.9 million of funding over three years for Phase II of the Terrorist Content Analytics Platform (TCAP) which will expand our alerting functionality to support smaller tech companies, as well as release an archive of verified terrorist content. You can find the full statement here and the Public Safety Canada announcement here.
Over the last 24 months, the TCAP identified 38,032 URLs containing terrorist content and sent 21,235 alerts to 73 tech companies. 92% of this content is now offline.
Over the past 12 months, the TCAP identified 19,252 URLs containing terrorist content and sent 10,345 alerts to 57 tech companies. 90% of this content is now offline.
Over the last 12 months, the TCAP has played an important role in responding to crisis events. Following the terrorist attacks in Buffalo (May 2022) and Bratislava (October 2022), the TCAP's Inclusion Policy was expanded to include the livestream and manifesto of the Buffalo attack perpetrator and the manifesto of the Bratislava attack perpetrator. This allowed us to respond to the real-time dissemination of terrorist propaganda by alerting tech platforms to this content when we found it on their platforms.
In March 2022 we published our first Transparency Report, detailing the key metrics from the first full year of the TCAP (1 December 2020 to 30 November 2021). This report explains our policies, principles, and gave an in-depth look at our statistics.
Following the Transparency Report, we published a blogpost on a comparative analysis of our statistics for content collection and removal rates. This blogpost compared some key metrics between Islamist and far-right terrorist content alerted through the TCAP.
In February 2022, we published our Crisis Protocol which outlines the steps Tech Against Terrorism takes in a crisis event.
Since February 2022, our development team has built our internal hashing capability, through which we hash all URLs containing terrorist content and submitted to the TCAP.
To learn more about the TCAP listen to the Tech Against Terrorism podcast episode on the TCAP, “S2E12: The TCAP: A Tool to Tackle Terrorist Content.” Available here.

The TCAP Statistics

The TCAP statistics detail the number of automated terrorist content alerts we have sent. To reiterate, the TCAP alerts tech companies when we find terrorist content on their platforms. With terrorist content, we mean official content produced by one of the terrorist groups included in the first version of the TCAP, based on our Inclusion Policy. This entails that the TCAP identifies terrorist content, after which we verify whether that content falls within our scope before alerting tech platforms.

For weekly TCAP statistics, please see our Twitter, @TCAPAlerts.

The following graph shows our metrics for the past year, as well as our total statistics.

TCAP policy development

TCAP expansion

Over the past 12 months, we have expanded the TCAP's Inclusion Policy to widen the scope of entities whose official content we alert to tech companies. Given the relative imbalance in the designation of violent far-right compared to violent Islamist entities by governments, we have focused on expanding our inclusion of violent far-right material based on legal groundings where these existed. We now alert promotional materials (manifestos and livestreams) produced by individual attack perpetrators, based on their classification as "objectionable content" by the New Zealand Classification Office.

TCAP entities added in past year (26.11.2021-26.11.2022)

Norway attack perpetrator -following a classification by the New Zealand Classification Office - December 2021
Buffalo attack perpetrator -following a classification by the New Zealand Classification Office - May 2022
James Mason -following designation by the Canadian government - September 2022
Bratislava attack perpetrator - following a classification by the New Zealand Classification Office - October 2022
Halle attack perpetrator - following a classification by the New Zealand Classification Office - October 2022 -

Product development

Hashing capability

Since February 2022, we hash all URLs containing terrorist content that are submitted to the TCAP. These unique hashes will be shared with the GIFCT’s hash-sharing consortium, which forms a shared industry database of “perceptual hashes” of verified images and videos produced by terrorist entities on groups designated by the United Nations. This action will further achieve our mission to support smaller tech companies with removing terrorist content by allowing tech platforms to pre-emptively ban verified content without viewing user data. You can find the announcement and more details here.

New TCAP website

In January 2022, we launched the new TCAP website, with an updated user-friendly interface and lots of new features. The new site has updated graphics, a more user-friendly interface explaining exactly how the TCAP works, as well as our policies, and a timeline of our main achievements. You can find the website here.

Recognition of the TCAP

On 20 September 2022, the Government of Canada announced that it had awarded Tech Against Terrorism up to $1.9 million of funding over three years for Phase II of the Terrorist Content Analytics Platform (TCAP). You can find the full statement here and the Public Safety Canada announcement here.
At the Christchurch Call 2022 Leaders’ Summit on 20 September 2022, the Canadian Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, announced the funding for the TCAP.
Tech Against Terrorism was recognised in the Delhi Declaration issued by the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee on 29 October 2022. Tech Against Terrorism attended the special meeting organised by UN CTED, highlighting emerging trends in terrorist use of the internet and the work of the TCAP in tackling this threat. You can read more about the Delhi Declaration here.
Jonathan Hall Q.C, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation in the UK, published a report on "The Terrorism Acts in 2020" which mentions the work of the Terrorist Content Analytics Platform (TCAP).

Global Engagement

Over the last 12 months, we had the opportunity to present on the TCAP at several events and podcasts:

In July 2022, our Executive Director Adam Hadley attended the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism's (GIFCT) Global Summit, at which he emphasised the tremendous impact (see stats) of the TCAP in removing terrorist content.
In July 2022, Anne Craanen, the Policy Lead of the TCAP, appeared on the European Observatory of Online Hate's (EOOH) podcast 'Zooming in on Hate' discussing the future of the TCAP. You can listen to the full episode here.
In June 2022, Anne Craanen presented at the Terrorism and Social Media conference in Swansea, showcasing the successes of the TCAP and explaining how we aim to develop the TCAP in the future.
Anne also presented on the TCAP at the Radicalisation Awareness Network's Strategic Communications Meeting on "Exploitation of technology by radicalising forces: developing an agile response."
In May 2022, Anne Craanen presented at the Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET) Second Annual Conference. She showcased the TCAP and our last Transparency Report.
In March 2022, Anne Craanen presented at the Club of Venice conference where she gave a demonstration of the TCAP and explained how we plan to develop the TCAP in the future.
In January 2022, Anne Craanen spoke on the Radicalisation Awareness Network's (RAN) podcast, discussing the impact of technology and the TCAP in preventing and countering violent extremism. You can listen to the podcast episode here.

What's next?

Phase II of the TCAP development will ensure an archive is developed to effectively support both academics and tech platforms whilst respecting human rights and the rule of law.
We are expanding our Inclusion Policy! Over the coming months, we will announce which terrorist entities we will start including in the TCAP, based on the legal designation of terrorist entities by democratic governments and supranational institutions. Keep an eye out for upcoming announcements and blogposts on each new inclusion.
Given the end of year 2, we will begin working on the second annual transparency report of the TCAP, detailing more detailed statistics, policy updates, and next steps.