Yahoo News Controversial rights group teaches young Muslims how spies monitor social media
Young Muslims are being taught how the authorities can see what they do on WhatsApp by a controversial human rights group, it can be revealed.
Cage, an advocacy organisation, who once described killer Jihadi John as a “beautiful kind man”, is teaching people how to avoid criminality on the social media forum.
A poster for the event, showing a pair of hands holding a smartphone while bound in handcuffs, promises “guidelines” on what "can and can't be done online whilst using media technologies".
“Many people, in particular the youth [sic], are being criminalised based on things they may have watched or WhatsApp groups that they may have been part of,” it reads.
“This talk will present a guideline on what is private and what is not and how you should treat online and technological communications.”
It comes after the security services warned that extremists linked to Isil were attempting to radicalise people through WhatsApp and other social media forums.
Robert Hannigan, the former director of GCHQ, said in 2014: “The extremists of Isis use messaging and social media services such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp, and a language their peers understand.”
He said the terror group had “embraced the web as a noisy channel in which to promote itself, intimidate people, and radicalise new recruits.”
“GCHQ and its sister agencies, MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service, cannot tackle these challenges at scale without greater support from the private sector,” he said.
Mr Hannigan added: “Increasingly services not only host the material of violent extremism or child exploitation, but are the routes for the facilitation of crime and terrorism.”
Earlier this year an extremist who launched a fatal attack on Westminster was found to have sent a message on WhatsApp just minutes before starting the killing.
Khalid Masood posted that he was waging jihad in revenge for military action against Muslim countries in the Middle East, according to The Independent.
Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, criticised WhatsApp for failing to hand over the encrypted messages days after the March attack took place.
The security services have concerns that extremists are managing to communicate through social media while remaining undetected because of encryption.
In February 2016, a Cage spokesman Asim Qureshi triggered a furious row in his description of Mohammed Emwazi - the killer known as Jihadi John.
He said: “You might be surprised to know that the Mohammed that I knew was extremely kind, extremely gentle, extremely soft spoken, was the most humble young person that I knew.”
The social media event was advertised for February 25 and led by the Cage spokesperson Cerie Bullivant, according to the poster on the group’s website.
Ms Rudd earlier this year wrote an article for this newspaper calling on social media companies to do more to stop the spread of radicalised content online.
She wrote: “We need the help of social media companies, the Googles, the Twitters, the Facebooks, of this world. And the smaller ones, too, platforms like Telegram , Wordpress and Justpaste.it.
“We need them to take a more proactive and leading role in tackling the terrorist abuse of their platforms. We need them to develop further technology solutions. We need them to set up an industry-wide forum to address the global threat.”
Cage was approached for comment but did not respond.
