Tech Against Terrorism is pleased to publish a mitigation strategy for responding to terrorist operated websites (TOWs). To date, Tech Against Terrorism has found evidence of more than 200 websites being operated by terrorist and violent extremist groups, and a sample analysis of 33 of these sites found that they had 1.5 million monthly visitors. Tech Against Terrorism has led responses to TOWs by increasing our engagement with web infrastructure providers, and has to date facilitated the removal of 16 TOWs. Whilst we believe that this threat requires a global response led by democratic governments, we hope that our mitigation strategy is a good first step to addressing the threat of TOWs.

Tech Against Terrorism’s mitigation strategy consists of improving evidence-based reporting of suspected TOWs to infrastructure providers. Our strategy paper provides a reporting template to facilitate reporting to TOWs, and lays out suggested thresholds for website removal, an engagement prioritisation workflow and key underlying principles such as the rule of law, freedom of expression, and transparency.