{"id":272941,"date":"2023-09-04T07:10:46","date_gmt":"2023-09-04T07:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=272941"},"modified":"2023-09-06T07:23:42","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T07:23:42","slug":"secretive-covid-disinformation-unit-worked-with-security-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=272941","title":{"rendered":"Secretive Covid disinformation unit worked with security services"},"content":{"rendered":"

GCHQ, the government listening post in Cheltenham, Glos, worked with MI5 and MI6 to monitor any communications that differed from the official Covid narrative.<\/p>\n

The Daily Telegraph.co.uk \u2013 Sept 1, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

A government unit accused of seeking to suppress free speech during the pandemic<\/a> worked with Britain\u2019s intelligence agencies, senior civil servants have confirmed.<\/p>\n

Documents submitted to the Covid inquiry and marked \u201cofficial sensitive\u201d reveal that the \u201cUK intelligence community\u201d has been involved in the Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU)<\/a> since it was founded in 2019.<\/p>\n

The unit was set up by ministers to tackle disinformation \u2013 false information that is deliberately spread \u2013 and initially focused on foreign interference in the European elections.<\/p>\n

However, in 2020 it turned its attention to the pandemic<\/a> and collected social media posts<\/a> by members of the British public.<\/p>\n

The intelligence community \u2013 which includes MI6, MI5 and GCHQ \u2013 continued \u201cworking closely\u201d with the CDU \u201cwhere appropriate\u201d during this time, documents show.<\/p>\n

Growing concerns<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The disclosures were made in witness statements by two senior civil servants, and come amid growing concerns that the CDU was monitoring the activities of British citizens during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, The Telegraph revealed that the secretive unit had paid an external AI firm<\/a> to trawl the web for so-called disinformation \u2013 but that the firm\u2019s reports had also included legitimate posts criticising lockdown policies.<\/p>\n

They included posts by leading scientists such as Dr Alexandre de Figueiredo, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who opposed a blanket policy of vaccinating all children against Covid.<\/p>\n

Documents revealed under data protection laws showed that he was one of several leading researchers and campaigners whose online activities had been collected by the CDU or the AI firm it instructed.<\/p>\n

\u2018UK intelligence community\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

There is no suggestion that the UK intelligence agencies were involved in or knew about this practice, or that they should not be involved in any other of the CDU\u2019s activities. The witness statements repeatedly refer to the \u201cUK intelligence community\u201d, but do not specify which or how many of these agencies were involved.<\/p>\n

However, the community\u2019s involvement sheds new light on the workings of the CDU \u2013 formerly known as the Counter-Disinformation Cell (CDC).<\/p>\n

In one of the disclosures to the Covid inquiry, Susannah Storey, director general for digital, technology and telecoms at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, in which the CDU now sits, said that the Government has a \u201cdisinformation board\u201d of around 12 people, which includes members from the \u201cUK intelligence community\u201d.<\/p>\n

This board is responsible for \u201csenior level governance of counter-disinformation policy and operational action relating to UK audiences\u201d, her 19-page witness statements state.<\/p>\n

It was chaired by Sarah Connolly, the director of security and online harms, whom The Telegraph has previously identified as the head of the CDU.<\/p>\n

\u2018Passing information over\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Ms Connolly has not submitted a public statement to the inquiry, but has previously set out to Parliament how one of the main functions of the CDU is \u201cpassing information over\u201d to companies such as Facebook and Twitter to \u201cencourage\u2026 the swift takedown of posts\u201d.<\/p>\n

The other statement to the inquiry was by Sam Lister, a former Times journalist who is now director general of strategy and operations at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).<\/p>\n

The submissions to the Covid inquiry mark the first time that the Government has publicly acknowledged that the intelligence agencies have been involved in the CDU.<\/p>\n

Ms Storey\u2019s statement also sheds new light on the scale of the controversial unit.<\/p>\n

As many as 50 staff<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The Government has previously refused to disclose the size of the CDU\u2019s operations, on the basis that it would be \u201cprejudicial to the effective conduct of public affairs\u201d but Ms Storey confirmed that during the pandemic, as many as 50 staff were working for the unit.<\/p>\n

Between six and 25 of these were \u201ccore\u201d staff in the DCMS, which had responsibility for the CDU at that point, while others would be drafted in from elsewhere in government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe CDC was virtual and flexible in nature, with DCMS and other departments pulling on their wider resources\u2026 as needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

A government spokesman said: \u201cThe unit operates under ministerial authority and uses publicly available information to tackle the most severe safety, security and disinformation threats, from suggestions that ingesting bleach can cure Covid-19 to Russia\u2019s denial of massacres in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does not, and has never, tracked the activity of individuals, and no dossiers exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Documents before the Covid inquiry reveal that the UK Intelligence services set up a unit to suppress what they saw as \u201cdisinformation\u201d about the pandemic; which effectively meant anything that didn\u2019t conform with the official narrative<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":46125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42,105,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-controlling-the-news-andor-the-free-exchange-of-ideas-and-information","category-coronavirus","category-mind_control"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=272941"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272944,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272941\/revisions\/272944"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=272941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=272941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=272941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}