RAF intelligence officers joined in ‘spying’ on Covid lockdown critics

RAF intelligence officers joined a shadowy Whitehall operation accused of spying on members of the general public who criticised Covid lockdown insurance policies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Official army paperwork obtained by this newspaper present that analysts from RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire helped to scour social media posts by the general public.

The MoS revealed in January how the Army’s secretive ‘info warfare brigade’ was tasked with scrutinising on-line posts – an exercise the Ministry of Defence, in public, repeatedly denied doing.

Now this newspaper can present that the army’s help to Government cells, such because the Counter Disinformation Unit, primarily based within the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and Rapid Response Unit within the Cabinet Office was way more intensive than beforehand thought.

These Whitehall outfits have been tasked with tackling ‘disinformation’ and ‘dangerous narratives’ through the pandemic. Their actions have confronted fierce criticism after it emerged in addition they collected authentic social media posts questioning Government lockdown insurance policies.

Dossiers have been compiled on public figures together with Tory ex-Minister David Davis, who questioned the modelling behind alarming Covid loss of life toll predictions, and The MoS’s Peter Hitchens.

The paperwork reveal defence chiefs privately conceded the army’s work for the Government may pose a ‘potential presentational threat of Defence ‘spying’ or conducting ‘Psyops’ on the UK’. But the MoD feared that if the Armed Forces didn’t assist the Government’s on-line monitoring, then ‘dangerous misinformation and disinformation’ may unfold.

Jake Hurfurt, of the marketing campaign group Big Brother Watch, final night time branded Whitehall’s use of army personnel as ‘an assault on freedom of speech’ and ‘behaviour befitting an authoritarian state’. He added: ‘The revelations that the RAF in addition to the Army spied on the British individuals through the pandemic is but extra proof that the MoD misled the general public in regards to the position of its psyops troops in 2020.’

‘These paperwork show that Whitehall officers knew deploying the army to watch social media posts from politicians, journalists and the press would appear like spying – however they carried on anyway.’

The RAF and Army’s help to Whitehall is detailed in paperwork outlining official requests often known as ‘Military Aid to the Civil Authorities’ (MACA). These are usually utilized by the Government when army assist is required to reply to pure disasters.

The papers additionally present how in 2020 the Government was contemplating a dramatic enlargement of the Counter Disinformation Unit by ordering monitoring of on-line chatter about Brexit and the NHS.

Mr Hurfurt final night time demanded that the Covid Inquiry additionally examine how the Government ‘monitored the British individuals’.

Peter Hitchens was monitored after sharing an article, primarily based on leaked NHS papers, which claimed information used to publicly justify the lockdown was incomplete.

An inside Rapid Response Unit e-mail mentioned Mr Hitchens wished to ‘additional [an] anti-lockdown agenda and affect the Commons vote’.

The Government mentioned: ‘Online disinformation is a critical risk, which is why within the pandemic we introduced collectively experience from throughout authorities to watch disinformation about Covid.

‘The models used publicly out there information, together with materials on social media. They didn’t goal people or take motion that might influence the power to debate points freely.’