The European Commission has outlined its desire for a new legal instrument that would require carriers, clouds, email service providers, and operators of messaging apps, to produce someone's data within six hours to assist investigations of “criminals or terrorists”. The proposed European Production Order will "allow a …

The Trump administration wants US Congress to extend the military's drone-downing powers to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, even as it backs broader commercial deployment for unmanned aircraft. The proposed rules, obtained by the Washington Post, would give civilian agencies powers similar to …

Twitter removed more than 270,000 accounts for terrorism-related violations in the last six months of 2017 – and most of these were detected by internal tools. According to the anger platform's latest transparency report, which covers 1 July to 31 December 2017, this takes the total removed to date to 1.2 million. In the most …

Vodafone has come in for criticism for the "catastrophic failure" of its National Mutual Aid Telephony system (NMAT) in today's review of the deadly suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena last year. Twenty-two people were killed and over 100 injured in the attack at an Ariana Grande concert at the northwest England indoor …

The European Commission has given tech firms three months to set up systems that will allow them to take down terrorist content within an hour. The Commission's missive is a recommendation and builds on a communication made last September – although it is technically a legal text in EU-ese, it isn't legally binding for the …

Analysis The UK government launched its swish new tool to fight online extremist content to much fanfare this week – leading news bulletins and generating reams of coverage. But it also faced a whole host of criticism and concern. Underneath the claims made by Home Secretary Amber Rudd yesterday, there are many questions yet to be …

UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd has announced a tool that purports to detect and block jihadist content online, and tech companies may end up being legally required to use it. London-based firm ASI Data Science was handed £600,000 by government to develop the unnamed algorithm, which uses machine learning to analyse Daesh …

Secure end-to-end encrypted comms is a desirable technology that governments should stop trying to break, especially as there's other information to slurp up on crims, UK politicians were told this week. Blighty's former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson, told the House of Commons Home Affairs …

Tech firms are indirectly costing the UK government millions in "human surveillance" of extremist content and should have a windfall tax levied against them to make up for it, according to security minister Ben Wallace. Wallace said that inaction from internet giants means the cost of tackling terror content is "heaped on law …

A British teenager who tried to order a car bomb on the dark web and get it delivered to his address has been found guilty this week. Gurtej Randhawa Failure ... Gurtej Randhawa (Source: NCA) Gurtej Randhawa, 19, of Wightwick, in the West Midlands of England, was cuffed by cops in May after purchasing what he thought was …

A lawsuit accusing YouTube of playing a key role in the November 2015 Paris terror attacks has been all but thrown out of court. Northern California District Judge Donna Ryu ruled [PDF] this week that the Mountain View ads broker could not be held liable for killings apparently inspired by terror bastards' propaganda videos on …

UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd has once again demonstrated she does not know how encryption works, this time by explicitly admitting it to delegates at a Tory party fringe conference where she also hit out at "patronising" techies that "sneered" at politicians. Speaking at a Spectator event, Rudd said: "It's so easy to be …

Muhammad Rabbani, international director of human-rights non-profit CAGE, was today convicted under UK anti-terror law for refusing to unlock his iPhone and laptop for police when entering the country. Rabbani, 36, was found guilty at Westminster magistrates’ court of willful obstruction under Schedule 7 paragraph 18(1)(c) of …

DerbyCon An analysis of the hacking groups allying themselves to Daesh/ISIS has shown that about 18 months ago the religious fanatics stopped trying to develop their own secure communications and hacking tools and instead turned to the criminal underground to find software that actually works. Kyle Wilhoit, a senior security researcher …

The UK's Prime Minister has once again raised the tech stakes in the fight against online terror, with her latest, er, bright idea being for internet giants to stop extremist content before it's even online. At a meeting with companies including Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Google today, Theresa May urged them to "develop …

Two Middle Eastern airlines have lifted the ban on in-cabin laptops on flights to the US. The ban, imposed in March over fears that terrorists could smuggle bombs disguised as laptops on aeroplanes, has been scrapped with immediate effect on Emirates and Turkish Airlines flights. Passengers were asked to leave devices larger …

Russia's communications regulator is threatening to lower the boom on popular encrypted messaging application Telegram. It might look like yet another government attack on user-accessible encryption, but in this letter, the head of regulator Roskomnadzor Alexander Zharov says the messaging app is violating Russian legislation …

Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube have created a super-team to tackle terrorism. The fearless foursome currently face a tricky foe: public and government sentiment that their social licence could be revoked if they don't do something about their platforms being used to spread hate speech that radicalises users and …