The Daily Mail reported that it had definitive information about the British government, specifically its military apparatus, spying on U.K. citizens who voiced concerns over the safety measures imposed by leaders.
The Daily Mail said that a shadow unit of the Army carried out these highly covert operations during an unspecified date range.
The Daily Mail wrote:
Military operatives in the UK’s ‘information warfare’ brigade were part of a sinister operation that targeted politicians and high-profile journalists who raised doubts about the official pandemic response.
They compiled dossiers on public figures such as ex-Minister David Davis, who questioned the modelling behind alarming death toll predictions, as well as journalists such as Peter Hitchens and Toby Young. Their dissenting views were then reported back to No 10.
According to the story, one of the most secretive outfits of the Army, the MoD’s 77th Brigade, was tasked with “non-lethal engagement and legitimate non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviours of adversaries.”
Of course, the purported purpose and mission of this unit was for foreign, not domestic, engagement. A whistleblower with close connections to the 77th said otherwise.
The whistleblower suggested “British citizens’ social media accounts were scrutinised – a sinister activity that the Ministry of Defence, in public, repeatedly denied doing,” the Daily Mail wrote.
The Daily Mail continued:
Papers show the outfits were tasked with countering ‘disinformation’ and ‘harmful narratives… from purported experts’, with civil servants and artificial intelligence deployed to ‘scrape’ social media for keywords such as ‘ventilators’ that would have been of interest.
The information was then used to orchestrate Government responses to criticisms of policies such as the stay-at-home order, when police were given power to issue fines and break up gatherings.
In their own words, the Army whistleblower stated: ‘It is quite obvious that our activities resulted in the monitoring of the UK population… monitoring the social media posts of ordinary, scared people. These posts did not contain information that was untrue or co-ordinated – it was simply fear.’
They went on to describe their personal takeaway from the operation. “I developed the impression the Government were more interested in protecting the success of their policies than uncovering any potential foreign interference, and I regret that I was a part of it. Frankly, the work I was doing should never have happened,” they said.
“It was about domestic perception, not national security,” the whistleblower wrote. “Frankly, the work I was doing should never have happened. This domestic monitoring of citizens seemed not to be driven by a desire to address the public’s concerns, but to identify levers for compliance with controversial Government policies.”
Left unsaid is the activity of the American government during the same time period. It hardly seems a stretch to imagine that the same cabal of intelligence operations, whether it be the United Kingdom’s or our own, would have participated in the same egregious violations of privacy that perhaps led to the suppression of speech.
As this information comes out from overseas, the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government convened for the first time. While a lot of public discourse has centered on the involvement of the U.S. government and Big Tech companies, the committee has also declared its intentions to investigate the actions and policies of federal agencies predating the Biden administration and pandemic as well.
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