Response to interpellations 2024/25:598 and 611 on combating extremism and violence networks online
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerns the fight against extremism and violence networks online. M argues that the government is taking measures through a national strategy, agency mandates, and international cooperation 1. M wants to expand the police's ability to issue removal orders 1 2 and investigate the disruption of crimes in cyber environments 1 2. M emphasizes that civil society can contribute with knowledge-enhancing initiatives for parents 2. M argues that the state's contribution to schools is among the largest in 20 years 3 and that the police receive new tools, including secret coercive measures against children under 15 years old 3 4. M is cautious regarding ID checks due to personal privacy 3. S considers that society is lagging behind in meeting radicalization and cybercrime 5. S wants to include civil society and public education in the preventive work 5. S calls for limitations on anonymous accounts and ID checks online 6. S argues that the government is powerless when it comes to closing the recruitment tap for children 7. S proposes that accounts on social media should be linked to a physical person via BankID 7. S criticizes the government's economic policy and argues that schools are hit by waves of savings that damage support functions 7 8.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Mr. Speaker! Heléne Björklund has asked me what I and the government are doing concretely to detect and stop closed digital networks where young people are radicalized, as in the case of the group 764. Mattias Vepsä has, for his part, asked me what measures I and the government will take to combat extremism in online environments. I thank you for the opportunity to discuss these important issues today.
I share Heléne Björklund's and Mattias Vepsäs' concern regarding how children and young people are radicalized in closed digital networks that use the internet to recruit members, find extortion victims, and spread destructive messages.
In January last year, the government decided on a new national strategy against violent extremism and terrorism. The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, Brå, together with the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, MSB, the Swedish Police Authority, and the Swedish Security Service have been tasked with taking measures to incorporate the national strategy into their respective operations. The Police have also been tasked with reporting on what measures the authority has taken to counter the online recruitment of children and young people into crime.
The government has also recently tasked the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, Brå, and the Swedish Defence Research Agency, FOI, with increasing knowledge on how criminal networks recruit and influence children and young people in digital environments. The agencies shall also propose measures against such recruitment and influence.
The Brå shall, among other things, investigate what role digital platforms play in the recruitment of children and young people and also study cases in the judicial process involving children and young people who have been recruited in digital environments.
FOI shall, for its part, increase knowledge on how a criminal lifestyle is marketed in social media and other digital environments. It shall also look at how it can affect children's and young people's attitudes towards violence and crime.
To that comes the fact that the Media Authority has received funds to further strengthen its already ongoing work to increase the resilience of, among others, children and young people against disinformation and influence through strengthened media and information literacy.
Regarding further concrete measures, we have during the winter announced from the government's side that we will now, in a fast-track, develop proposals for expanded possibilities for the police to act against illegal content online, for example by issuing so-called removal orders.
It is something that is possible today to remove terrorist content from, among other things, social networking services. Now we want to expand the scope of use to content that is illegal but that cannot necessarily be classified as terrorism.
The Government has also appointed an inquiry with a mandate to conduct a review of the rules on secret and preventive coercive measures. The inquiry shall analyze whether it needs to be introduced a possibility to be able to disrupt and interrupt ongoing crimes or criminal activities in the cyber environment.
I will also say something about the so-called online platforms or social media platforms. They naturally themselves have a key role in countering this type of activity. The Government has also had recurring dialogues with the platforms regarding those issues on its own or in interaction with Nordic colleagues.
Since it is a reality that the cross-border nature of the internet also requires international cooperation. Therefore, we are also pushing within the EU to strengthen the work against radicalization and the recruitment of children and young people into crime and violent crime.
Several important measures have also been taken to safeguard safety online. One of them is the EU regulation on a single market for digital services, which has been in effect since February last year. The regulation sets clear requirements for social media platforms to create a safer online environment, not least for children.
The Commission, which has the supervisory responsibility for the very large platforms, has also announced work on new guidelines for the platforms later this year in order to ensure a high level of privacy, security, and safety for minors on their services.
Together with the EU regulation on measures to combat the dissemination of terrorist content online, which has been in effect since June 2022, these tools collectively enable better opportunities to prevent and counter the spread of illegal hate and messages glorifying violence in digital environments.
It is also against that background that the police have established a so-called Internet Referral Unit, which, among other things, reports illegal content to the platforms. The authority also cooperates with a long line of platforms so that they can develop and strengthen their own measures against the problem.
Overall, the government is acting on several fronts. We are following the developments very closely, and we are, of course, continuously considering new measures and efforts, all with the aim of breaking the recruitment online and the radicalization online of children and young people.
Heléne Björklund (S)
Mr. Speaker! Thanks to the Minister for Justice for the answer!
It is very welcome and important that the government carries out and takes all the initiatives and measures that Gunnar Strömmer raises here in the chamber. It is both necessary and urgent.
Every day, more and more children and young people risk being drawn into these destructive environments. I must say that it was shocking to see both SVT's and TV4's documentaries about the death chat rooms where Swedish children end up and are radicalized to commit horrific acts of violence against both themselves and others in society in some kind of points system. Personally, I feel that no matter how many measures Gunnar Strömmer counts up here, we are constantly lagging behind this type of radicalization and cybercrime, as we may well call it.
What these reviews have shown, and what the much-publicized Netflix series has also shown, is that we miss the warning signs in society. This applies in particular to the fact that those who are parents do not see the warning signs or, if they do, do not really know what to do.
I therefore want to ask a question to the Minister for Justice, because in the answer, not a word is mentioned about the parents. Nothing is said about the parents' responsibility, but neither is anything said about how society could support those parents who want to do more. They may want to understand these symbols that are mentioned and which most of us have no clue what they actually mean. But it is also about the rest of civil society that works with children and young people, such as leisure leaders and association leaders.
I truly believe that it is a serious deficiency if we do not involve the whole of society much more strongly in these issues, because it is a truly urgent and decisive issue to achieve a safer society in the future that we save our children from these environments.
I would like to repeat the question and the suggestion that I had the other day to the Minister for Justice regarding including civil society in both the crime-fighting, the preventive, and the educational work directed at parents and families. There, one could use folkbildning, which has a long and strong tradition of working with parents. This applies to both the study associations, the folk high schools, and the entire association life.
Mattias Vepsä (S)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you, Minister, for the answer!
Let me put the question into a context. We are concerned about the developments we see in online environments, especially when it comes to children and young people. Expo, Sverok, and Bris state in various reports that 96 percent of all children between 8 and 19 years old are online pretty much every day. Half play games every day or a few times a week. And here comes the most frightening part: According to Expo's Fulspel, 64 percent encounter a terrible reality where they are subjected to hate, threats, and recruitment attempts.
We have had this debate before, the Minister of Justice and I, when it was relevant with these reports and when the government's strategy to counter violent extremism and terrorism had been presented.
I still think it is time to mark the seriousness, as since then, among other things, Adolescence on Netflix has drawn a lot of attention to what is happening in children's and young people's online upbringing environments and, above all, how difficult it is to detect radicalization. Uppdrag granskning: Dödens chattrum on SVT shows how hidden secret networks online go completely under the radar, not only for parents but also for authorities and the adult world at large.
More tools are needed for the police. Just as my colleague Heléne pointed out, an adult world that is given opportunities to keep up with the ever-faster developments occurring online is also needed.
In the answer, the Minister points to some new tools, primarily for the police, to be able to work with secret coercive measures in these environments. We also welcome the removal orders and the possibility of looking into whether it is possible to use roughly the same tools as for combating terrorism when it comes to working to remove, for example, gangs' recruitment advertisements in online environments. But it would also be good if the police could issue orders to shut down secret chat rooms where, for example, networks like 764 spread their hate and turn young people into both crime victims and perpetrators.
In a previous debate this spring, Erik Slottner stated that there are no planned initiatives regarding a ban on anonymous accounts. A year ago, Gunnar Strömmer and I stood in this chamber and discussed the effects of the secret troll factories that had been revealed at that time. We pointed out how serious it is for democracy when political parties organize secret campaigns and incite hate, threats, and lawsuits online.
It is clear that this is connected – anonymity when it comes to how adults behave and anonymity when it comes to children and young people being groomed into these extreme environments.
The Minister for Justice in the debate: For my part, I see no room for this type of anonymous accounts or anonymized ways of driving opinion.
I would like to start at that end and ask a question that was also mentioned at the seminar the Justice Committee had this week with the platforms. The police then opened up for the possibility that sharper legislation might be needed, linked to, among other things, the possibility of taking down material.
Does the Minister, like us Social Democrats, see a need for a limitation when it comes to being able to open accounts anonymously without being tracked? Would it not be appropriate to have ID checks in order to be able to operate online?
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you to both interpellants for the opportunity to discuss these extraordinarily pressing issues here today!
Let me take hold of the claim, the analysis, or the perception that we are falling behind as a society. Yes, we are to the highest degree. There is an enormous innovative power, not least among the criminals in organized crime but also among those who engage in other criminal activities digitally, namely violent extremism and terrorism.
But I want to emphasize that we are now doing everything we can to catch up and also preferably get ahead of the curve. How do we do that? I mentioned a long series of different measures being taken both nationally and in cooperation with other countries, not least at the EU level. However, I would like to draw extra attention to the digital offensive that we announced in February this year, then largely in light of the ongoing wave of violence with explosions. But it is clear that it has a much broader impact.
One of the possibilities we are now looking at is a fast track – that the police should be able to act against illegal content online, for example through removal orders, in a similar manner as is possible when it concerns content relating to terrorism and other matters.
But it is also, as I said, about analyzing more broadly whether a possibility should be introduced to disrupt, interrupt, and in other ways target ongoing crimes or criminal activities in the cyber environment. In that case, it is a broader toolbox that we are talking about.
The government will likely go to the bottom of investigating all legal possibilities, if I may put it that way. We have a lot of control over our own legislation, but we are bound by our constitutional laws, and the European Convention sets limits. So do our EU legal obligations. But we can still, within that framework, exhaust the possibilities when it comes to being able to tackle this type of both criminal and very destructive activity online.
Regarding the second part, I really take note of the importance of highlighting everything that is not politics and authorities but that society in general can contribute. We have another ongoing Brå assignment that deals precisely with the importance of civil society, not least in crime prevention work, and about inventorying what opportunities exist. That assignment has a rather local perspective – how one at the municipal level can involve civil society in a more strategic and operationally powerful way in crime prevention work. Here I see that both civil society and other actors, certainly also the business sector, can become much more involved.
When it comes to the relationship between parents and families and civil society, I also agree that, for example, knowledge-enhancing information initiatives in the area can very well be carried out by various actors in civil society. Then I believe, since a seminar held here in the Riksdag that we all participated in the other day regarding precisely the recruitment of children into criminal networks was referred to, that public actors can do very much more in the knowledge-enhancing work in relation to parents.
Despite everything, this happens in the phone in the children's bedroom in the home. It is not possible to think away the parents in this. It is not easy to be a parent, but we shall contribute in different ways, from the public sector and from civil society, to in any case make it easier to do the right thing and gain a better understanding of what occurs in the children's phones.
Heléne Björklund (S)
Mr. Speaker! Yes, it feels very urgent, as said. It is not just about the current situation but about our entire future when it comes to saving our children from these destructive environments. This is not only found in environments that attract young people with mental ill-health but also in gaming environments and many other closed digital environments.
We have a reality today where children and young people are recruited into violence-oriented environments via these platforms. At the seminar that has already been raised twice here, one of the tech giants spoke about creating a forum just for teenagers, a teen-Facebook, and that it would be some kind of safety. I personally felt that we would have another recruitment environment there. It therefore feels even more urgent to really have a grip on these platforms and what is happening there.
Then my question is: How does the Minister for Justice see that the Swedish police will be able to manage that? We talked about how police who patrol the internet will become even more important and that more of such will be needed. It requires operational presence, linguistic and cultural understanding, technical systems and very much else, but also that one understands these environments. Does the Swedish police do that? Does that competence exist?
I am not saying this to in any way disparage the Swedish police. But is this included in the training? The development has moved very quickly, and I do not understand how one could have been trained for the knowledge one might receive in gaming environments.
Does the Police Authority today have specially trained officers who understand the codes and the preferences of young people? If not, how can we accelerate that development? Or is it perhaps other civil actors who should be given the authority to work with this? How do the Minister for Justice and the Government view this?
Mattias Vepsä (S)
Mr. Speaker! I do not think I quite understood a straight answer to the question of whether there is a possibility to look at the Social Democratic idea of linking an account to a physical person via a BankID or at least some form of identification. I therefore choose to repeat the question of whether this could not be a way to access both secret accounts and the gangs' recruitment ground. In this case, it is also about the possibility of controlling who opens accounts and moves in social media, in order to address the exposure to extremism, hate, and threats that young people face online.
I would also like to broaden the discussion. It has also been raised in the debate that there is a national strategy against violence-promoting extremism and terrorism. The part of this which concerns prevention concludes by listing a number of important actors. Previously we heard that civil society is an important part, but also the school and social services have important roles to play in order to be able to prevent hate, threats and extremism from growing in online environments.
Against that background, it becomes interesting to examine the government on the point of what conditions the Swedish school has. A highlighted report from Sveriges Lärare shows that the school is currently going through the worst wave of savings since the 90s. It is not a matter of Sweden lacking resources, but rather that Sweden has happened to have a right-wing government. Now, as then, the country is governed by a right-wing government. That time we went through an economic steel bath, but this time it is about wrong priorities. Tax cuts for the very richest have taken precedence over investing in our school.
If one looks at Sveriges Lärares analysis of what is happening, one sees that it is the support functions required to be able to break the recruitment of students into these groups that are hit hardest, i.e., the support staff. It could be the school psychiatry. It could be the adults who exist as support functions in the classroom.
When it comes to leisure activities, we see that children's sports have become twice as expensive as they were 15 years ago. We see how more and more people in economically vulnerable households can no longer afford to participate in leisure activities, which is also something the government points out as important in the strategy to counteract and prevent more children and young people from ending up in these extreme environments.
We see how the social services in municipality after municipality are sounding the alarm about the difficulty of retaining their staff or being able to grow and realize the new Social Services Act, which everyone in this chamber welcomes and which will make it possible to work more preventatively and intervene earlier in the lives of young people in order to be able to break destructive life and path choices. But that also requires that there are social workers, field workers, and adults who have the possibility of being employed in these operations.
It is often the case, when it comes to the government's policy in the field of justice, that we can agree on the increased penalties being implemented or the tools that the police are to be given. When it comes to closing the recruitment tap, however, the government is silent.
I have two questions. I am jumping back to this with the anonymity and would like to know if the government intends to proceed with that issue. Will we also see money allocated to be able to strengthen the preventive measures that are discussed in the strategy to break down violence-oriented extremism and terrorism linked to school, social services, and leisure?
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Mr. Speaker! It is quite true that our discussions are beginning to follow a certain pattern. S says that we agree on everything we do in the municipal policy area, and then a rather sloppy economic debate follows.
Let us look at the resources for the school. The state's contribution to the school during last year, 2024, was the largest in 20 years measured in current prices and the third largest measured in fixed prices. Measured as a share of GDP, it was one of the largest ever.
I just want to start at that end. It is a farce to say that some kind of state drainage of resources to the Swedish school is now taking place. Let us discuss a very complicated reality in itself – there is no doubt about that – but let us at least do so based on reasonably true premises.
If we then speak about the issues that are particularly relevant when it comes to the school's role in the crime prevention perspective, the government is making the largest investments ever in school social teams. With the new Social Services Act which will finally be in place this summer and which will give the social services completely different opportunities to interact with the school in the crime prevention work, there will also be a historic investment of 10 billion kronor to municipal social services.
Furthermore, I say as I usually say: Firstly, the most important thing for the municipalities' finances is that the value of the money is not lost. The fight against inflation has been A and O. Secondly, I look forward to hearing a Social Democrat speak at some point during this mandate period about the importance of the work principle for increasing public resources. It is an incredibly central issue for us to be able to finance the welfare in the long term, including the school.
Then there were the questions about BankID and social media. My hesitation concerns more personal privacy and independence. In reality, anonymity is also an important value in an open and free society. Therefore, I think, in short, that question is difficult.
Then it is naturally reasonable that we would want better ways to access the identities of those who operate that type of account. The question is only at what cost it will come for transparency and privacy in general. Therefore, I have until now been cautious in the matter. That does not mean that the problems that Mattias Vepsä raises are in any way small – on the contrary.
All in all, my view is that the problems we are now talking about are extremely serious. I see that society is lagging behind. There is an enormous innovative power among the various actors, and there is a great need to equip the crime fighters with new and powerful tools to catch up. That work is ongoing, and some of it is already underway.
Let me add something else that has not been mentioned, namely the possibility for the police to use secret coercive measures also against children under 15 years of age. It is absolutely crucial for the police to gain full access into the children's mobile phones and thereby reach those who are behind, who order, organize and radicalize. All of this is now underway. What I just mentioned will come this autumn, and it will be incredibly significant in the field.
I will gladly return to the questions about how we can raise the knowledge level and help parents, whether it is with the help of public actors or with the support of civil society.
Heléne Björklund (S)
Mr. Speaker! I thank the Minister for Justice for an important and pressing discussion.
I want to conclude by underlining what has emerged in the debate, namely that this is an issue that really cannot wait. We are talking about children and young people who often suffer mentally, but not always. They are isolated from the adult world and from society's security, and in the closed digital spaces, they are fed with hate and the romanticization of violence. They are radicalized quickly, in some cases with ideas of purely deadly seriousness.
There is a completely new type of radicalization environment, and I have a great understanding that one does not, either politically or in other organizations, have full knowledge of how it works or how to counter it. It is also for that reason that we need to use the combined strength of the entire society to prevent and interrupt ongoing radicalization.
We must never get used to the fact that young people are radicalized in secret and then enter the path of crime. It particularly pleases me that the Minister for Justice – I perceive it as a promise – will return to the issue that involving the entire civil society is important in the education and information campaign. I want to call for the continuation of the discussion on pressuring the tech platforms. That is where one can see and do more.
We must, of course, continue the cooperation within the EU and with other countries so that we do the work together.
Mattias Vepsä (S)
Mr. Speaker! "Falsarium" is what the Minister for Justice says about our description of reality regarding how the country's municipalities are affected by the government's economic policy. It is a powerful expression considering that I referred to a report from Sveriges Lärare. Many are sounding the alarm that it is becoming difficult to maintain the teacher density and the opportunities required in Swedish schools to give all children and young people a secure upbringing. School is one of the most important protective factors, not only to increase resilience against extremism and terrorism but also to keep students on a path that can provide a decent future and the opportunity for higher education, to enter the labor market, and to stay away from crime and negative environments. I believe that we need to return to precisely that debate.
I note that there is a difference of approximately 15 billion between the Social Democrats' and the government's welfare financing. We can discuss that further.
But this debate has been about how we are to deal with extreme environments online and protect children and young people from ending up in these environments. From the Social Democrats' side, we have put forward a proposal regarding anonymity. We received a partial confirmation that the proposal could be something, but that there is a concern for privacy. An ID check to start an account is not about someone not being able to have a gamertag or an alias. You can have that when you write a letter to the editor in any newspaper. In that case, there is an editor-in-chief, and there is an editorial responsibility to ensure that the person who submits the letter is actually a real person.
During the election campaign, 20 percent of all posts on X were anonymous. We saw how a troll factory poisoned the EU election campaign, and we see how criminal and extreme forces groom children and young people online in these environments. It is time to put a stop to that possibility.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Mr. Speaker! It is absolutely true that it is time to put a stop to the forces online, and for all parts, which in particular engage in a very cynical recruitment and radicalization of children and young people in a way that is incredibly destructive for the children who are affected and impacted. Their lives may be destroyed because of this, and it has an incredibly negative impact on our entire society. In the long run, this is part of an organized crime that endangers our entire free and open society.
It is also in that light that the government is undertaking a long series of very far-reaching measures. They naturally should have been in place five or ten years ago. It would have meant that we would have been in a much better position today when it comes to tackling the problems.
This week, Uppdrag granskning on SVT had a long report on the gangs' cynical recruitment and handling of children and young people in schools. Several say that we are not equipped to meet this. Unfortunately, that is entirely true. But in addition to what I have just spoken about, we are doing so much more to achieve a turnaround in this area, namely to give the police completely different tools to operate in digital environments, act preventively, take down illegal content, be active themselves inside the forums or in other ways interrupt ongoing crime.
On April 1, the large, broad reform that breaks down secrecy barriers arrived. There are major school safety initiatives and new legislation in the area this summer. I have mentioned the importance of secret coercive measures being able to be used even against children under 15 for preventive purposes to reach those who are inside the children's phones and are causing a lot of trouble. All of this is underway, and even though the struggle will be long and difficult, it will be decided with much better conditions to address the problems that we all rightly highlight as soon as we get the chance.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.