Meeting with the Tech Giants - "Angry and Upset"

Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer (M) has called representatives from several tech giants to a meeting to discuss the gangs' recruitment of young people. It is crucial that we convert the anger we experience on a human level into political action, he says ahead of Friday's meeting.

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Meeting with the Tech Giants - "Angry and Upset"
Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

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In August, Sweden's and Denmark's justice ministers agreed to put joint pressure on the tech giants.

Shortly after, Strömmer invited Google, Meta, Snapchat, and Tiktok to a lunch meeting at Krusenberg Manor outside Uppsala. All have accepted the invitation.

The purpose is to create increased pressure on the gang criminals who use these broad platforms to trawl for young people, says Gunnar Strömmer.

Ministers gathered

The meeting is being held in conjunction with the justice ministers from the Nordic countries meeting in an already planned meeting.

This recruitment on the digital platforms has escalated, so we have decided that we want to take advantage of having the Nordic ministers gathered and bring this up as a central point on the agenda.

The focus will be partly on what measures the digital platforms themselves can take to increase security, and partly on information sharing between the digital platforms and the police authorities in the Nordic countries.

Strömmer's starting point is that information sharing should be mutual within the existing legal frameworks.

The platforms can certainly benefit from more information from the police to get an even better understanding of how these networks operate.

Conversely, it is natural that the platforms closely follow what happens on their own platforms. Their observations of what is happening are naturally very important for the police.

No invitation to Telegram

On the list of invited guests to the meeting, Telegram stands out with its absence – a platform where lists of gross violent assignments for payment have circulated recently.

We have made a selection that in the first step takes hold of the more open environment on the larger platforms, but it is naturally so that we, and also the police authority, have Telegram on the radar. We see that it is a platform used for recruitment, but it is often after contact has been initiated in the more broad and open channels.

In recent times, a number of young Swedes have traveled to Denmark to commit gross violent acts for payment. Denmark's Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard (S) has previously said that it is "hard to evoke other feelings than anger".

I fully agree with my Danish colleague, it is clear that one becomes both angry and upset when one sees how cynically the criminal networks operate, says Strömmer.

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By TTEnglish edition by Sweden Herald, adapted for local and international readers

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