The Mail on Sunday has revealed that RAF intelligence officers collaborated with a covert Whitehall operation that surveilled individuals critical of Covid lockdown policies, including Tory ex-Minister David Davis and Peter Hitchens. Here’s an excerpt:
Official military documents… show that analysts from RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire helped to scour social media posts by the public.
The MoS revealed in January how the Army’s secretive “information warfare brigade” was tasked with scrutinising online posts – an activity the Ministry of Defence, in public, repeatedly denied doing. …
These Whitehall outfits were tasked with tackling “disinformation” and “harmful narratives” during the pandemic. Their activities have faced fierce criticism after it emerged they also collected legitimate social media posts questioning Government lockdown policies.
Dossiers were compiled on public figures including Tory ex-Minister David Davis, who questioned the modelling behind alarming Covid death toll predictions, and the MoS’s Peter Hitchens. …
Jake Hurfurt, of the campaign group Big Brother Watch, last night branded Whitehall’s use of military personnel as “an attack on freedom of speech” and “behaviour befitting an authoritarian state”. He added: “The revelations that the RAF, as well as the Army, spied on the British people during the pandemic is yet more evidence that the MoD misled the public about the role of its psyops troops in 2020.” …
The papers also show how in 2020 the Government was considering a dramatic expansion of the Counter Disinformation Unit by ordering monitoring of online chatter about Brexit and the NHS.
Worth reading in full.
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