Terrorists on the Internet: BKA is more common against terrorist online content

In the past year, the Federal Criminal Police Office has committed much more often Internet companies to take terrorist content from websites. The Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Network Agency said that there were 482 such distance arrangements and thus almost twice as many as 2023 (249). The orders went to foreign hosting providers. You must then delete the content within an hour. The BKA did not find serious violations of this period.

The BKA did not order content removal against domestic providers. However, eleven orders against German hosting providers received from foreign authorities – nine more than 2023.

The legal basis on which the orders are carried out is from 2021 – so it is still relatively young. The EU regulation, which was decided at the time, is intended to prevent the Internet from being used by terrorists to intimidate or radicalize people with their messages. In addition, it should be prevented that terrorist groups recruit supporters on the Internet and control activities.

Numbers go up steeply

The preliminary stage for the mandatory orders is extinguishing searches to the companies based on voluntariness. Here, too, there was a significant increase: in 2023 there were 7,240 extinguishing requests from BKA and the police, so this number rained high to 17,045 in 2024. In the vast majority of cases, the companies complied with the request. If they did not do it, the authorities had a sharper sword in their hands with the distance arrangement.

In the report, the authors did not explain why the numbers rose so clearly as to whether it was due to tightened controls or an increase in terrorist online content. Both probably play a role.

“The latest figures testify that the distribution of terrorist online content is and remains a major problem,” said the inner and digital politician Konstantin von Notz (Greens) in response to the report. “The defensive constitutional state must continue to be used to combat the increasing distribution of corresponding content in the future.” He expressly welcome that the responsible security and supervisory authorities were determined. This is also necessary, since the operators of social networks and other online platforms are often evident, said the member of the Bundestag.