Tech Against Terrorism

Tech Against Terrorism describes itself as an independent counter-terrorism organization, "launched by the United Nations in 2016", that works with technology companies and governments and is "implemented by the Online Harms Foundation". The Online Harms Foundation is an English company limited by guarantee whose individual director is Adam Hadley and whose corporate director and controlling person is QuantSpark Limited, a consultancy of which Hadley is the sole director.

Origins

The United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) announced "Tech Against Terrorism" as a new initiative launched on the margins of RightsCon in Brussels, the second phase of a joint project between CTED and the Swiss non-governmental organization ICT4Peace, "with the support of ICT industry leaders". The announcement describes the aim as "the development of a normative framework of self-regulation that can guide responses to terrorists' use of the Internet."¹

Hadley told the West Point Combating Terrorism Center in July 2025 that his master's dissertation at King's College London, on a computational approach to detecting Islamic State propaganda, was "spotted by an official working at the U.N. Security Council", and that he was asked to join a research project with the United Nations "which at the time was just a very small initiative funded by the government of Switzerland." He said that he grew the project into Tech Against Terrorism while working as a freelance data scientist for private businesses in London, and that the year "ended with me founding Tech Against Terrorism and bootstrapping QuantSpark." The interviewer's note states that Tech Against Terrorism and QuantSpark were founded in 2016.² QuantSpark Limited (company number 10304694) was incorporated on 1 August 2016, with Hadley as its director and person with significant control from that date.³

On 29 November 2017 the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea, CTED and ICT4Peace held an event at the United Nations in New York City to launch the next phase of Tech Against Terrorism, a knowledge-sharing platform. The event notice describes the project as a public-private partnership bringing together "ICT industry leaders, e.g. Facebook, Google, Kaspersky Lab, Microsoft, Telefonica, and Twitter" with startups, governments and academia, and records speeches by the ambassadors of Korea, Spain and Switzerland.⁴

The organization's website states that it operates "pursuant to four UN Security Council Resolutions" (2129, 2354, 2395 and 2396) and the 2017 Comprehensive International Framework to Counter Terrorist Narratives, that it is "supported by" CTED, and that it is "implemented by the Online Harms Foundation."⁵

Corporate Structure

QuantSpark Foundation (company number 11656320) was incorporated on 2 November 2018 as a private company limited by guarantee. Its directors were Adam Ivor Hadley and QuantSpark Limited, and QuantSpark Limited has been its person with significant control since the same date. The company is now named Online Harms Foundation; its accounts for the year to 31 July 2021 carry the heading "Online Harms Foundation (formerly QuantSpark Foundation)."⁶⁷

The foundation files unaudited accounts for years ending 31 July, with no income and expenditure account. Its notes record the following consultancy charges invoiced to it by QuantSpark Limited, "a corporate director of the company and related party by virtue of common control and a common director":

At 31 July 2025 the foundation had net liabilities of 1,435,757 pounds (1,189,680 pounds a year earlier), cash of 15,903 pounds (149,245 pounds a year earlier) and an average of six employees (one in the year before). The going-concern note states that the company "is reliant on loans received from QuantSpark Limited, a related party, for finance," and that the director of QuantSpark Limited has confirmed that the amounts due will not be recalled within twelve months.⁷

QuantSpark Limited's accounts for the year to 31 July 2025 show net assets of 3,961,806 pounds (3,454,472 pounds a year earlier). Its related-party note gives the invoiced amount as 913,095 pounds net of value-added tax, states that the Online Harms Foundation owed it 1,374,157 pounds for those services and that it owed the foundation 180,769 pounds for recharged expenses, and records a loan of 250,000 pounds made in the year to 31 July 2022 to CGR Trading Limited, "a connected company by virtue of common control and a common director," with 219,500 pounds outstanding at 31 July 2025.⁸ CGR Trading Ltd. (company number 09944580), incorporated on 11 January 2016, lists Hadley as its only officer and person with significant control, with a business classification of letting and operating its own or leased real estate.⁹

In the July 2025 interview Hadley said that Tech Against Terrorism and QuantSpark "are separate entities, but certainly Tech Against Terrorism wouldn't have survived this long were it solely relying on government grants and tech companies," that it has had access to "an almost pro bono pool of technical specialists," and that it operates with "very limited funding."²

Funding

The organization's website states that its funding "comes equally from both democratic governments and the global tech industry," that it receives income "through the bespoke services we offer to tech companies," that the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) contributes, and that governments including Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom "have financially supported" it.⁵

GIFCT, a Washington, D.C. tax-exempt organization, files Form 990-PF as a private foundation. Its returns list two grantees in each of the five years from 2020 to 2024, King's College London for its Global Network on Extremism and Technology and the organization that carries Tech Against Terrorism:

The purpose entered against each payment to the Tech Against Terrorism payee is "to support Tech Against Terrorism initiatives." The five payments total 1,914,000 dollars. The 2020 return lists as board members Monika Bickert, Courtney Gregoire, Leslie Miller, Monique Meshe and Nick Pickles (the last through April 2020), with Nicholas Rasmussen as executive director, and records 80,000 dollars paid to Mercury Public Affairs LLC for strategy consulting. The 2024 return lists Naureen Chowdhury Fink as executive director and Gregoire, Miller, Pickles and Neil Potts as board members.¹⁰

Public Safety Canada announced on 26 June 2019, through the minister of public safety Ralph Goodale, that Canada "will commit up to $1 million to Tech Against Terrorism to create a digital repository" that would notify smaller companies of newly detected terrorist content.¹¹ On 20 September 2022, at the Christchurch Call summit in New York, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced up to 1.9 million Canadian dollars over three years to Tech Against Terrorism from the department's Community Resilience Fund for a second phase of the platform.¹² The department's list of projects announced on 3 May 2023 names the recipient as "Online Harms Foundation," the project as "Terrorist Content Analytics Platform (TCAP) Phase 2" and the amount as 1,945,904 dollars.¹³

Terrorist Content Analytics Platform

The organization's transparency report for the second year of the Terrorist Content Analytics Platform (1 December 2021 to 30 November 2022) states that the platform was launched in November 2020 "with support from Public Safety Canada." In that year its analysts submitted 18,995 URLs, of which 18,048 contained Islamist and 947 far-right terrorist content, and the platform sent 10,174 alerts to 57 technology companies, 9,436 of them for Islamist and 738 for far-right content; the report gives average removal rates after alerts of 84 percent for Islamist and 61 percent for far-right content, and states that 92 percent of alerts in the year concerned Islamist entities, against 98 percent in the first year. From February 2022 all URLs submitted were hashed, with the hashes to be shared with the hash-sharing consortium of GIFCT. The platform's inclusion policy is "based on the legal designation of terrorist entities by democratic nation states and supranational institutions"; the report lists the Government of Canada's designation of James Mason among five entities added during the year.¹⁴

Research

The organization and the Middlebury Institute CTEC published a report on two coalitions that formed on Telegram in early 2021, the United Acceleration Front and the National Socialist Coalition, centred on Feuerkrieg Division and its partner InJekt Division. The report states that the two organizations collected data from June 2021 to February 2022 and that Tech Against Terrorism identified 21 entities in the network.¹⁵

Honours

Hadley was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the King's Birthday Honours, which the organization announced on 14 June 2024.¹⁶