Secretive Whitehall 'spy' unit used by Government to target social media posts criticising asylum seekers
Emails revealed a 'spy' unit within Whitehall was used to complain to tech firms about content mentioning asylum seekers and two-tier policing.
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Officials working for Technology Secretary Peter Kyle flagged videos with "concerning narratives" to social media giants including TikTok - warning that the content was "exacerbating tensions" on the streets, The Telegraph reported.
Emails recovered by a US congressional committee detail that civil servants have complained to tech companies about content mentioning asylum seekers, two-tier policing and immigration.
It comes as ministers tackle claims that the UK is censoring social media with the Online Safety Act - including from US President Donald Trump.
The discovery reveals that members of the Government’s National Security and Online Information Team (NSOIT) complained about a series of posts that were critical of mass migration and asylum hotels in August last year during the Southport riots, The Telegraph reported.
Read more: 'We'll fight together': Americans planning to sue Ofcom over the Online Safety Act
The NSOIT team were formerly known as the Counter Disinformation Unit and was deployed during the Covid pandemic to monitor anti-lockdown campaigners.
The exchanges are likely to spark claims that Labour is seeking to silence criticism over its continued use of asylum hotels.
Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to end the use of migrant hotels by 2029 as concerns rise that they are costing taxpayers £4m a day and creating problems in communities.
One post raised by the government unit with "urgency" included a photograph of a rejected Freedom of Information request about the location of asylum hotels and a reference to asylum seekers as "undocumented fighting-age males", The Telegraph reported.
An unnamed civil servant warned there were "significant risks" of protests at migrant hotels becoming violent because of the posts and there was a "definite sense of urgency" about them in Whitehall.
The emails were sent on August 3 and 4 last year, which marked the worst weekend of the riots when protesters attacked asylum hotels across the UK.
Chaos descended when false claims circulated online that the perpetrator of the Southport attack was a Muslim asylum seeker.
The Government's private exchange with TikTok came days before Elon Musk slammed "two-tier Keir" - a phrase repeated by Nigel Farage, who warned that police had created "a sense of injustice".
Officials also warned TikTok that users were posting about "two-tier" policing at Southport rallies amid allegations that white protesters had been mistreated by the police, The Telegraph reported.
It said: “I am sure you will not be surprised at the significant volumes of anti-immigrant content directed at Muslim and Jewish communities as well as concerning narratives about the police and a ‘two-tier’ system we are seeing across the online environment.”
The emails did not ask for the content to be removed but asked for information about how TikTok was dealing with such content.
However, critics slam the emails as Government censorship of free speech online.
The emails were discovered by Jim Jordan, chairman of the US House of Representatives’ judiciary committee, which issued a subpoena to TikTok to hand over messages "regarding the company's compliance with foreign censorship laws".
He said: “In recent years, UK citizens have become increasingly fed up with the double standard in the UK. Mean tweets get you a longer prison sentence than many violent offences.”
A spokesperson for the Big Brother Watch campaign group called for an immediate investigation into the team and said: “Legitimate concerns about racism and violence must not become a blank cheque for the monitoring and censorship of controversial speech, absent of any oversight or scrutiny."