Robert Siciliano discusses whether tech companies should be held legally responsible when terrorists use their platforms. The conversation weighs government cooperation against privacy rights, encryption backdoors, and whether platforms can police content without sacrificing user security.
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Cybersecurity expert Robert Siciliano joins me now with more on this. And I guess, Robert, my concern here is that U.S. companies are in some ways enabling these terrorists because these terrorists are using their platforms. Should they not be held accountable, the companies themselves?
I'm not sure how you could hold a technology company accountable for the actions of a criminal organization.
Well, let me jump in there because, for example, they're looking into the landlord of the terrorists who were living there in that northern suburb in Paris where you had that war zone happening overnight. They're looking into that landlord. That landlord, if he knowingly was renting to terrorists, is going to find himself in a whole big, you know, big problem altogether. Couldn't you make the same argument for U.S. companies? If they knowingly allowed these terrorists to operate on their platforms, then they also are in trouble?
I don't know if they are making concerted efforts to stop them, nor to police them, but I think that if it was to come across that there is a terrorist organization who's communicating on their platform, I think that they'd make mention of it at a minimum to a government organization. To hold them responsible for actions of criminal organizations, I don't necessarily see this as a technology issue. This is a boots-on-the-ground issue.
But you've got a lot of people in Silicon Valley right now, and they've told me they don't like that the government is breathing down their back, and they worry about what this means for them to be able to compete internationally. Because in other words, if you have the threat of the FBI looking at the Facebook posts, then that therefore is a threat to Facebook. We've seen Mark Zuckerberg be very critical of some of the NSA's activity. At some point, if they are enabling these guys, even if, you know, not fully knowing that they're doing so, it just seems as though they should be working together more with government to provide the information officials need to track down these terrorists.
I'm— I know that Silicon Valley is working with the government. They certainly are aware of the issues. I mean, they are families and concerned about national security, homeland security, just as well as anyone else is. The issue here is that when you create backdoors that allow government access to information, you're also creating backdoors for cybercriminals as well. And so that vulnerability that you're creating for a government agency, it can also be used for, you know, bad. So it's a tightrope that they all walk. And ultimately, you know, the goal for everyone is to to secure the homeland.
Without a doubt. All right, thank you very much, Robert Siciliano. Good to have you here.
