Musk criticises government unit that kept tabs on lockdown dissent
Twitter chief brands tactic ‘terrible’ amid calls for an official inquiry into ‘shocking abuse of power’
‘War on misinformation has become a blank cheque to monitor and control narratives online’
ELON MUSK has criticised as “terrible” a secret government unit which curtailed criticism of lockdown policies, after its existence was revealed in The
Telegraph.
The Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU), set up by ministers during the pandemic, collaborated with social media companies to monitor prominent lockdown critics and those who questioned the mass vaccination of children.
Mr Musk, the billionaire Twitter owner, yesterday posted on his own platform to condemn the tactic with just one word: “Terrible”.
There are calls for the CDU, which has been described by freedom of speech campaigners as a “shocking abuse of power”, to be investigated.
Some lockdown critics had their posts removed from Facebook and Twitter during the pandemic, with suspicion is growing that the CDU flagged them to social media firms.
The Government also used an artificial intelligence firm to comb social media sites and alert them to discussions opposing vaccine passports.
Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, said: “The Counter-Disinformation Unit should be suspended and subject to a full investigation.
“The war on misinformation has become a blank cheque for the Government to monitor and control narratives online in a shocking abuse of power.
Andrew Dudfield, of Full Fact, an independent fact-checking organisation, said: “Bad information ruins lives. We saw that throughout the pandemic. But there are better ways to tackle it than censorship through internet companies. The Counter-Disinformation Unit needs open transparent democratic oversight.”
It comes as Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former Cabinet minister, called for the Covid Inquiry to investigate “oppressive” government disinformation units.
“The inquiry clearly ought to investigate the oppressive methods used to override dissent,” he said, adding that the apparent use of “underhand methods” should not be happening.
Prof Carl Henegan, the Oxford epidemiologist who has advised Boris Johnson, and Molly Kingsley, who campaigned to keep schools open in the pandemic, were among those targeted.
Ms Kingsley agreed that the revelations were “shocking”. She said: “The positions we’ve advocated – including saying no to school closures; only evidenced-based interventions; no to mass medical interventions for healthy kids without long-term safety data – would all have been reasonable positions to take pre-2020; indeed, to argue against them would have been branded extreme,” she said yesterday. The BBC also attended secretive meetings of a government policy forum to address the so-called disinformation, The Daily Telegraph revealed.
A government spokesman said: “The unit’s purpose is to track narratives and trends using publicly available information online to protect public health and national security. It has never tracked the activity of individuals and has a blanket ban on referring journalists and MPs to social media platforms.
“None of the people named in this report was referred to social media platforms by the Government and any claim otherwise is objectively false. The Rapid Response Unit [in the Cabinet Office], which closed in July 2022, tracked government policies and important issues – not individuals.”
A BBC spokesman said it attended the Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum in an observer-only capacity.