‘Shocking’ scale of UK government’s secret files on critics revealed
www.theguardian.com
Dossiers were compiled by 15 departments after scouring social media activity to vet people invited to speak at official events

Fifteen government departments have been monitoring the social media activity of potential critics and compiling “secret files” in order to block them from speaking at public events, the Observer can reveal.

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”.

The guidelines are designed to prevent anyone who has criticised the government in the previous three to five years from speaking at government-organised conferences and other events.

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.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Fifteen government departments have been monitoring the social media activity of potential critics and compiling “secret files” in order to block them from speaking at public events, the Observer can reveal.

    The revelations will be hugely embarrassing for a Conservative party that regularly claims to champion free speech and has slammed universities for allowing students to “no platform” experts with whom they disagree.

    Tessa Gregory, partner at Leigh Day, who is pursuing legal action against the government on behalf of at least two experts, said: “This is likely to have impacted large numbers of individuals, many of whom won’t know civil servants hold secret files on them.

    Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert, was disinvited in April from giving a keynote speech at a UK defence conference after officials found social media posts criticising Tory ministers and government immigration policy.

    But in response to an FoI request from the campaign group Privacy International last year, the DfE said three times that it “does not conduct monitoring, investigations or intelligence gathering on members of the public”.

    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.”

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