UK GOVERNMENT KEEPS SECRET FILES ON CRITICS, MONITORING THEIR SOCIAL MEDIA

Sun 19 October 2023:

Fifteen government agencies have been keeping an eye on possible critics’ social media activity and gathering “secret files” to prevent them from speaking at public gatherings, a new Observer report has claimed.

According to the report, several government departments, including the departments of health, culture, media and sport, and environment, food and rural affairs, have been instructed to monitor the social media accounts of certain experts who speak out against the government’s policies.

Shocking' scale of UK government's secret files on critics revealed | Civil service | The Guardian

Under the guidelines issued in each department, including the departments of health, culture, media and sport, and environment, food and rural affairs, officials are advised to check experts’ Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts. They are also told to conduct Google searches on those individuals, using specific terms such as “criticism of government or prime minister”.

According to the Observer, the UK government is compiling ‘secret files’ to censor its opponents, which is unlawful as per the country’s constitution.

In September, the Observer revealed how three early-childhood education experts discovered that the Department for Education tried to cancel invitations for them to speak at government-funded events because they were judged to have been critical of government policy. Many more education experts and school staff have since uncovered files of their critical social media posts held by the department.

But later, human rights experts at law firm Leigh Day revealed that the practice was not limited to the Department of Education and in fact, is quite widespread.

Now the firm is pursuing legal action against the government.

Tessa Gregory, partner at Leigh Day, was quoted by the Guardian as saying that these “hidden checks are unlawful, running contrary to data protection laws and potentially breaching equality and human rights legislation.”

The Observer reported that the individuals who make anti-government posts on social media are permanently blacklisted from public events.

It cited Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert, to reveal how his invitation to speak at a UK defence conference was cancelled after officials found his ‘controversial’ posts.

He told the Observer this weekend that he knows of 12 others who have uncovered evidence of similar government blacklisting, most of whom are frightened of speaking out.

“The full extent of this is shocking and probably not fully known. I was lucky enough to be given clearcut, obvious evidence. It’s truly awful,” he was quoted as saying.

“I don’t have a duty of impartiality. Nor should I,” Kaszeta said further, adding, “Trying to extend the civil service code to me because I was merely going to talk to an audience with a handful of civil servants is utterly wrong. I’m not a revolutionary Trotskyite.”

Smita Jamdar, partner at law firm Shakespeare Martineau who has been advising universities on how not to fall foul of the government’s new higher education “free speech tsar”, said: “The double standards here are astonishing.”

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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