The executive strengthens Pharos, a tool in the fight against "cyber Islamism"

An investigator from Pharos (illustration) -

• The Twitter account of Abdoullakh Anzorov, the terrorist who beheaded a history and geography professor in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines), had been reported to the authorities on several occasions, via the Pharos platform.

  The young man had yet passed under the radar of anti-terrorism.

• As announced by the Prime Minister on October 23, Pharos' workforce should soon be reinforced and their working range extended.

• The government also wants to facilitate exchanges with platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

Abdoullakh Anzorov was a follower of social networks.

Under the pseudo of "Tchetchene_270", the terrorist had claimed on Twitter, just a few minutes after having committed the facts, the assassination and the beheading, on October 16 in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines), of Samuel Paty, professor history-geography.

His account, which he had been using for several months, had been reported on several occasions to Pharos (Platform for Harmonization, Analysis, Cross-checking and Orientation of Reports), a service of the central direction of the judicial police which tracks illegal content on the Internet.

Despite these repeated alerts, the young man had passed under the radar of the anti-terrorism services.

"Pharos has done his job well," assured the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, in an interview with

 Monday.

Based in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), around thirty police and gendarmes, specialists in cybercrime, analyze the reports sent by Internet users on a daily basis in order to determine whether an offense has been committed.

In 2019, they treated 4,395 each week, or more than 228,000 in one year.

According to figures communicated by the national police to

, nearly 60% of them are linked to scams, 11.2% to attacks on minors, and 7.7% to discrimination.

Staff reinforcement

Terrorist content only constitutes a tiny part of these reports (4% in 2017, latest figure known).

But they tend to be more numerous after a terrorist attack.

"Pharos received more than 1,200 after the Conflans attack", explains for example to

the entourage of Marlène Schiappa.

The minister, responsible for Citizenship within the government, should soon detail the reinforcements of staff for this service, which she would like to be active even at night, which is not the case at present.

"They are able to work, it is not really a question of means", however tempers in the entourage of the Minister.

If the analyzed content violates the law, the Pharos investigators forward the file to a territorially competent police or gendarmerie service which will continue the investigations.

In the case of Abdoullakh Anzorov's tweets, some had been reported to the Counter-Terrorism Coordination Unit for the first time in July 2020. In charge of assessing its dangerousness, the DGSI considered that the messages posted did not allow for characterize an imminent threat and had not sought to know more about Tchetchene_270.

“Combating hate speech” on the Internet

The young man was therefore neither followed nor filed S. “This is one case among the more than 2,000 anonymous accounts reported in 2020. However, it is impossible to identify all the accounts,” explains 20 Minutes a safe source, specifying that the investigative work necessary to do so would be too important.

“There is therefore a prioritization of tweets and reports which are then exploited, these are the most threatening or recurring.

But it can never be otherwise without saturating the services ”, underlines this good connoisseur of the case.

Social networks and platforms must take their responsibilities and act more effectively with State services.

Yesterday we drew up several avenues of concrete action against cyber-Islamism 👇🏾https: //t.co/50w1TsmChY

- 🇫🇷 MarleneSchiappa (@MarleneSchiappa) October 21, 2020

Nevertheless, over the months, Anzorov no longer hesitated to display on Twitter a marked interest in jihad and religion.

“The fight against cyber Islamism is a priority for the government, people can become radicalized online.

There is no longer any tolerance for letting shocking content flourish on the Internet ”, continues Beauvau, stressing that Marlène Schiappa is determined to“ fight hate speech ”on the Internet.

"Our law does not allow us to effectively follow radical Islam"

The challenge is also to improve relations with platforms, most of which are located abroad, and which do not always systematically remove content considered illegal in France.

Indeed, even a service like Pharos “does not have the power to withdraw content on its own”, underlines Gérald Darmanin in

.

For several years now, France has therefore called on platforms such as Facebook or Twitter to redouble their efforts in the fight against jihadism online and wishes to facilitate exchanges with them.

The government would also like the reports to go more than one direction.

“Attempts to republish the photo of the head of Samuel Paty, posted by the terrorist after the attack, have been blocked, we welcome in the entourage of Minister responsible for Citizenship.

But this kind of blockage should also be traced to Pharos.

"

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• Islamism

• Society

• Police

• Cyber ​​jihadism

• Gerald Darmanin

• Terrorism

• Marlene Schiappa

• Jihad

• Conflans attack