A Whitehall “disinformation” unit used tools created to hunt for jihadists to find critics of asylum hotels, The Telegraph can reveal.
The secretive team was this week revealed to have flagged “concerning” narratives about migrants to tech platforms during the Southport riots.
The disclosure prompted the Trump administration and US congressmen to warn of a free speech crackdown in Britain.
The Telegraph can now reveal that some of the tools used by the National Security and Online Information Team (NSOIT) were originally developed to hunt terrorists.
In 2017, ministers commissioned Faculty, an AI firm, to help search for recruitment videos posted by Isil.
At the time, use of the technology was strictly limited to stopping British social media users from encountering grisly beheading videos and calls to commit acts of terrorism.
The firm developed tools that could automatically spot Islamic State content spreading online, so it could be flagged to tech companies by the Government.
‘Counter disinformation data platform’
The same firm has since been awarded a £2.3m contract to develop a “counter disinformation data platform” to look for posts that pose a “national security and public safety risk”.The Telegraph has established that the platform is a direct descendant of the tool used by the UK Government to hunt for terrorists in 2017, although it has since been improved and updated.
A video released by Faculty shows Matt Collins, the current UK deputy National Security Adviser, explaining that the tool was required to prevent the spread of terrorist ideology.
“We had a concerted effort to basically encourage social media companies to do more to remove content which was radicalising individuals to either travel to Syria or to conduct terrorist attacks,” he said.
Faculty is understood to have sold the software to the Government to monitor foreign interference in elections, but has no power to stop it from being used for domestic purposes.
A second firm enlisted to monitor online trends was Global Strategy Network, an intelligence outfit established by Richard Barrett, the former MI6 head of global counter-terrorism.
The company has been used to look for content that could pose a risk to public safety, which includes posts about migrant hotels during the riots.
On Thursday, The Telegraph revealed emails between the NSOIT and TikTok, which showed officials in August last year raising concerns about posts that could incite violence.
They included posts about asylum hotels and reference to “two-tier” policing of protest, which later became a damaging political critique of Sir Keir Starmer’s government.
The revelation that the team was using terrorist-hunting software to monitor posts about immigration policy will raise further concerns about “censorship” of the internet by Labour.
Mr Trump’s State Department said on Friday it was concerned about free speech in Britain, and would “closely monitor” the situation to ensure American companies were not censored.
A delegation of US congressmen met Peter Kyle, the Technology Secretary, this week to make their fears of online censorship known.
Sir Keir is also facing significant backlash to new rules under the Online Safety Act, which require social media companies to verify the age of users to access adult content.
The threat of huge fines for breaching the rules has led to companies censoring harmless material out of an abundance of caution.
Free speech warnings
On Friday X became the first platform to criticise the new rules, warning that “free speech will suffer” if they are not changed.A spokesman for Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties campaign group, criticised the use of anti-terror software to find opponents of government policy on asylum.
They said: “It is alarming that the Government is aiming social media surveillance technology at law-abiding British citizens.
“The Government should abandon its intrusive and unaccountable monitoring of legal online content and urgently commission an independent review of its so-called ‘disinformation’ units.”
A Government spokesman said: “National security is not only our top priority but also our foremost duty. We will not compromise public safety by letting harmful narratives fester and multiply online, leading to real world harm as we saw in the wake of the horrific Southport attack.
“Put simply, these are widely used analysis tools and we do not use them to track individuals. They monitor trends safely, legally and transparently.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politic...anti-migrant-protesters-with-terrorist-track/ (Archive)
