The British army has spied on several political, media and even citizens who have expressed their opposition to confinement during the coronavirus epidemic. The information was revealed by the daily Daily Mail. The newspaper claims to have the documents which demonstrate how the authorities, as revealed in the United States by the Twitter Files, pressured social networks to censor content hostile to the official policy of management of the Covid crisis. -19.
The espionage operations were carried out by several bridles and cells, military and governmental. The most famous is probably the 77th Brigade of the Ministry of Defense. the Daily Mail says the documents, obtained by Big Brother Watch, a UK civil liberties and privacy rights group, also show the involvement of a “Counter Disinformation Unit” affiliated with the Department of Digital , Culture, Media and Sport and a Rapid Response Unit, directly affiliated to the UK Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office.
The revelations published by the Daily Mail also come from a whistleblower, an anonymous member of the 77th Brigade, the “British information war machine”, whose soldiers know how to handle weapons as well as audiovisual equipment, editing software, analysis data, social networks and digital marketing techniques.
Accounts monitored, pressure on social networks to censor
The daily said on Saturday January 28, 2023 that these brigades have collected files containing the divergent opinions of personalities such as David Davis, former British minister or even Peter Hitchens and Toby Young, journalists. Operations far removed from the primary mission of this brigade “which is to target foreign enemies”, regretted the whistleblower. “I got the impression that the government was more interested in protecting its policy than uncovering any potential foreign interference. I regret being a part of it… Frankly, the job I was doing would never had to take place”he added.
Could you imagine joining the army and you get stuck spying on Peter Hitchens Twitter account ????https://t.co/RwQ49qc1Vs
— Phil Raynolds (@PhilRaynolds) January 29, 2023
Just as was the case in the United States, where the Twitter Files revealed the pressures and “omnipresence” of federal and security institutions on the social network in content moderation, the Daily Mail asserts that “Ministers pressured these platforms to remove content and promote official versions”.
Regular citizen accounts were also scrutinized, contrary to claims by the Ministry of Defense. The documents show that the people targeted “to counter misinformation” were qualified as “so-called experts” who published “harmful stories”.
Civil servants, aided by artificial intelligence, carried out “scraping” operations on social networks (automatic data extraction, editor’s note). The information gathered was then used to tailor government responses to criticisms of their decisions and policies.
The Daily Mailquoting the whistleblower, writes that he “is quite evident that the activities of Brigade 77 have resulted in surveillance of the population, monitoring the social media posts of ordinary and frightened people”. Of the posts who “did not contain false or coordinated information”.
Disagree with “official opinion” and “not with facts”
People whose names appeared in the documents obtained by Big Brother Watch reacted quickly to these revelations. “It is outrageous that people questioning government policies have been subjected to secret surveillance”said Member of Parliament and Her Majesty’s Privy Council, Conservative David Davis, at the Daily Mail. “What was happening was simply an attack on people who disagreed with the official opinion, not with the facts”he also told TalkTv.
Tory MP David Davis, who was spied on by the army’s 77th Brigade for lockdown criticism, says the surveillance was “sinister” and “problematic.”
“What was going on was simply an attack on people who disagreed with the opinion [of the state]not the facts.” pic.twitter.com/YXuMybXgak
— TalkTV (@TalkTV) January 30, 2023
Journalist Peter Hitchens of the daily Mail on SunDay was also the subject of a surveillance operation, after sharing an article based on leaked documents from the National Health Service (British health system, editor’s note) which claimed that the data used to justify the confinement were incomplete.
In a text published on the Daily Mail, the journalist wonders if he has not been “shadow-banned”, that is to say, suffered a visibility restriction on his content on social networks and search engines without having been informed. A practice used by the former Twitter moderation team that the American journalist Bari Weiss had unveiled as part of the Twitter Files.
“The most amazing thing about the great panic during the Covid pandemic was the number of attacks the state managed to carry out on basic freedoms without anyone really caring, without protesting. Now is the time to demand a full and powerful investigation into the dark elements that Big Brother Watch has bravely uncovered.” he wrote.
Big Brother Watch also reacted to these documents: “This is an alarming case of mission creep where public money and military power have been diverted to monitor academics, journalists, activists and MPs who have criticized the government, especially during the pandemic”.
The association’s spokesperson points out that the fact that “This political surveillance has taken place under the guise of ‘countering disinformation’ shows how open this concept is to abuse and has become a blank check that the government uses to try to control online narratives.”
The Daily Mailciting a source close to the Prime Minister’s office, said that these operations have “considerably” decreased since the end of the confinement.