DHS takes next step on research into algorithms and violent online content
The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate plans to award a contract to the nonprofit OpenMined for research and development-related services meant to curb online content related to violent extremism, according to a government posting.
The agreement comes as part of the U.S. government’s work in response to the Christchurch Call, which the Biden administration joined in 2021. That initiative, which brings together technology platforms and government leaders, was formed following the 2019 mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 51 people. The killer targeted two mosques and livestreamed the shootings on the internet.
Since the signing of that agreement, governments and online content providers who’ve signed onto the call have increased their focus on the role of algorithms on the internet, according to the posting, calling the pact the Christchurch Call Initiative on Algorithmic Outcomes.
The new contract will aid the Science and Technology Directorate’s work on the initiative by having OpenMined build “a platform based on privacy enhancing technologies,” the posting states. “Once tested, replicated, and validated, these technologies would form the basis for an infrastructure to support independent study of impacts of algorithms and their interactions with users, including across multiple platforms and types of platforms, and would dramatically lower the barriers to doing this work without accessing those underlying data and systems.”
OpenMined’s work is centered on privacy-focused open source tools, particularly for non-public data. According to its website, the group has backers that include Meta, the U.K. government, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Safety Institute.
An initial test related to Pysyft, described by DHS as “an infrastructure for remote access execution” created by OpenMined, proved successful. The goal was to build a way of studying the impact of online media algorithms without endangering security or going against American and European Union data privacy rules.
Now, the agency wants to move forward with a second phase of the project, in order to “build, evaluate, and refine the infrastructure” while also commissioning more research. The agreement covers improvements to the software and making the tools publicly available, among other obligations. That work is supposed to take place over the next year, according to the posting.
