TRIGGERnometry - EXPOSED： Secret Government Surveillance Program

00:00:00.480 We've uncovered a number of secretive government units that claim to be fighting misinformation

00:00:06.800 and disinformation. Actually they're monitoring and recording people that are criticising the

00:00:12.480 government and government policies. The 77th Brigade had these kind of conspiracy theories

00:00:17.040 around it like, are they watching us online controlling what we say? I don't think anyone

00:00:21.120 really took it seriously. We weren't even actually looking into the unit until a whistleblower came

00:00:26.080 forward to us what the whistleblower told us is that there were absolutely no safeguards or

00:00:32.480 controls in place whatsoever to prevent this monitoring affecting people in Britain and that

00:00:39.180 and that it was affecting people in Britain they were doing general searches on social media in

00:00:44.980 English language on topics that Johnson government was interested in we were being surveilled by our

00:00:52.760 own military. We are in the process of winning a campaign against GPS ankle tags for innocent

00:01:01.600 campaigners, you know, people that haven't even broken the law. If they're deemed disruptive,

00:01:06.700 you could be fitted with a GPS ankle tag to monitor where you go and make sure that you

00:01:12.540 don't go to other protests. Well, you haven't broken the law and they're going to track your

00:01:15.700 movement. Yeah. If even the Russians or the Chinese, I say, we're going to ankle tag our 1.00

00:01:21.280 protesters you'd be like wow they've really gone for it now you know like this is really extreme

00:01:25.820 and this is happening in in britain

00:01:28.480 hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin kitchen and this is a

00:01:44.320 show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people our brilliant guest today

00:01:49.820 is a friend of the show who brings us troubling news.

00:01:52.440 She's the director of Big Brother Watch here in the UK,

00:01:54.860 which has just produced this report, Ministry of Truth,

00:01:57.680 which talks quite a bit about the government surveillance

00:02:00.300 of people who have wrong opinions.

00:02:01.940 Silky Carla, welcome back. 0.74

00:02:03.220 Thank you very much for having me.

00:02:04.780 So everyone can go back and watch our first interview

00:02:07.300 if they want a backstory on you and whatever,

00:02:09.720 but you're the director of Big Brother Watch,

00:02:11.200 which is a civil liberties organisation here in the UK.

00:02:13.880 you've just released a report that is really really worrying tell us about it yeah so we've

00:02:22.260 uncovered a number of secretive government units that claim to be fighting misinformation and

00:02:28.400 disinformation and they've been very resistant to transparency so over a long time we've been

00:02:35.060 investigating them and we found that actually they're monitoring and recording people that

00:02:40.760 are criticising the government and government policies. And we found that this was particularly

00:02:45.880 active during the pandemic, but that we think that they're active on other topics. And it's

00:02:52.320 particularly affecting members of parliament, journalists, academics, experts, and campaigners.

00:03:01.800 So, you know, not the kind of boogeyman, Russian disinformation, bot farms, or whatever it is that

00:03:08.040 government would have us believe that these units are working on. You're off the hook, Mike.

00:03:13.140 Well, probably not, actually. I mean, one of the things you mentioned to us is we could see if we

00:03:17.460 are included in that. I imagine we would be, actually, given that the people that you were

00:03:22.620 talking about, quite a lot of them we've had on the show, you know, Toby Young, Julie Hartley Brewer,

00:03:27.480 and others, right? Yeah. They're people who have big followings on social media in particular.

00:03:33.140 That's what the government seemed to be interested in. They're also interested in alternative platforms. So, for example, one of the documents we have describes Parler as a threat. And that was when it had just launched. And the government were interested in senior politicians who had gone onto that platform. And they're recording the fact they've gone onto that platform.

00:03:54.500 um so yeah when they are collecting um posts that people have put online they're also looking at

00:04:04.180 engagement so that's why you know a show like this and people like your guests are quite likely to be

00:04:10.800 um you know in the crosshairs really because they're looking at people who are talking about

00:04:15.380 controversial topics and looking at then the engagement rates so they're literally recording

00:04:21.380 numbers of retweets and this sort of thing.

00:04:24.000 And what are they doing with this information?

00:04:25.580 Because one of the things that people might say is, well, the government, I mean, anyone

00:04:30.540 can monitor anything.

00:04:31.660 You know, what's wrong with noticing who's tweeted what and how many likes they got?

00:04:37.300 It's so two things.

00:04:39.460 In essence, it is censorship and propaganda.

00:04:44.180 The units in question claim to work with the tech companies to flag things that might breach their terms of service or that are inappropriate.

00:04:56.620 And we've even had ministers say this in the House of Commons.

00:04:59.200 But the problem is that people have just assumed that it's all this nasty stuff in question.

00:05:04.480 And so everyone's kind of congratulated it. Now we know it's basically dissent.

00:05:09.360 So taking stuff down or pressuring social media companies to take stuff down.

00:05:14.540 And the other part of it is, I think, understanding the public conversation so that the government can respond.

00:05:20.060 And that could be through trying to work with their SEO to get their search results up higher in search engines on key topics,

00:05:30.100 especially around the pandemic, or issuing rebuttals to newspapers or social media users.

00:05:36.320 basically to amplify their point of view in response. And I mean, that's the element of it

00:05:43.920 that you can say is reasonable, whether it's proportionate to be keeping records and tabs

00:05:48.880 on dissidents, I would say is probably not. But the element of this kind of collusion of

00:05:55.680 state and big tech power to silence people for lawful opinions should really make everyone

00:06:02.500 shudder. I completely agree with you. And how long has this been going on for, Silky?

00:06:08.280 All of the units but one that we've identified were started during the Conservative government,

00:06:15.360 but most of them have been in really recent years since around 2018. But the pandemic was

00:06:21.260 absolutely the catalyst for it really taking off. So the central unit that is responsible for most

00:06:27.820 of this is the counter disinformation unit that's what it's called although we haven't seen much of

00:06:33.060 them uh them doing much around disinformation um it sits within the department for digital

00:06:40.020 culture media and sports um so it's like a policy unit you know they're not spooks um but they're

00:06:47.640 acting in that way um they had started this unit actually um in 2019 i think it was during elections

00:06:56.980 and then it was stood down and then during the pandemic it was stood up again and now it's

00:07:03.360 permanent and it's folding in other kind of disinformation specialists from across government

00:07:09.160 to feed into this central unit. The other thing that happened you know and I think important to

00:07:15.380 bear in mind that the pandemic was you know it was the blank check for a massive extension of

00:07:22.280 powers across the peace, really, in government. And so the birth of some of the activity that we

00:07:30.040 saw during the pandemic was actually in this secretive army unit called the 77th Brigade.

00:07:37.100 The 77th Brigade had these kind of conspiracy theories around it, like, are they watching us

00:07:41.300 online, controlling what we say? And I don't think anyone really took it seriously. We weren't even

00:07:46.700 actually looking into the unit until a whistleblower came forward to us and told us what

00:07:52.880 was really going on during the pandemic within that unit. The public statements from the

00:07:59.300 army were that the 77th Brigade stood up during the beginning of March 2020 and that

00:08:06.960 they were dealing with foreign disinformation. And in response to questions about would you

00:08:11.960 ever do anything domestically, of course not. All of our operations are directed overseas.

00:08:16.700 What the whistleblower told us is that there were absolutely no safeguards or controls in place whatsoever to prevent this monitoring affecting people in Britain and that it was affecting people in Britain.

00:08:32.140 They were doing general searches on social media in English language on topics that Johnson government was interested in.

00:08:42.800 So, you know, basically trying to gauge public opinion, see what people were thinking about different elements of COVID and the policies.

00:08:51.080 And then they were collating these reports, including of individuals.

00:08:54.960 We saw even a university student, you know, someone that doesn't have a big following.

00:09:00.400 They're just collating these records of what people were saying and thinking and then sending those up to central government.

00:09:07.940 Silky, why did it explode over the pandemic?

00:09:10.460 Was it because more and more people were online so there was an opportunity to do that?

00:09:15.140 This was going to be the moment?

00:09:16.780 Was it because they were genuinely worried about misinformation being spread during the pandemic and as a result, people potentially dying?

00:09:24.400 I think all of these things can be true at the same time.

00:09:27.340 Of course, people were worried about public health during the pandemic.

00:09:32.400 Of course, people were. But, you know, does recording what a university student is worried about, you know, about the virus, that's not saving lives, is it?

00:09:46.180 And, you know, I think actually an interesting thing that the whistleblower said was that there had been a desire for the army to demonstrate this information ops capability.

00:10:01.180 And the 77th Brigade describes itself as involved in non-lethal engagement for modern warfare against adversaries.

00:10:08.680 adversaries. And so, you know, you think of these kind of sophisticated overseas operations,

00:10:14.340 but they were interested in demonstrating to government that we can do these kind of elite

00:10:20.060 information ops. And so it was an attractive thing to say, we can deal with the dangerous

00:10:26.060 misinformation and disinformation, which I think we now have to be honest, and especially in light

00:10:29.820 of our report, there is a moral panic about it. And it's overblown. And now we need to have a

00:10:35.120 sober conversation about what we really mean when we're talking about misinformation and

00:10:39.040 disinformation. Because what the army got away with in this instance was an accumulation of

00:10:43.680 resources to do basically nothing, nothing worthwhile. But that does have a serious impact

00:10:49.540 on Brits and meant that we were being surveilled by our own military, you know, with military power.

00:10:56.720 It's extraordinary, really. And so I think that a few things, and this happened after 9-11 as well,

00:11:04.180 didn't it? You know, the desire for certain elements within the military-industrial complex

00:11:09.940 and business and government to show that they can, with more resources, they can provide these

00:11:18.020 new services and do these new things with civil liberties put really to the side. So that was

00:11:25.940 going on. And of course, I think the overriding thing, the fundamental thing that I hope we're

00:11:31.340 now thinking about more clearly is that governments will always try to accumulate power. And having

00:11:36.340 power over information is the most extraordinary power you can have. If you can strongly influence

00:11:43.640 and even control what people are able to say to each other, what people are able to see and hear

00:11:50.260 and read, especially when it comes to criticism of your own policies, you know, for a government

00:11:57.940 really, for an authoritarian government, that's the dream. And that's really the territory that

00:12:03.980 we're now on the precipice of. And the disturbing thing is that so many people in the liberal

00:12:10.980 establishment are actually calling for this. They want the misinformation units to do more,

00:12:19.360 be more active, be more present, and to scrub the internet of wrong ideas.

00:12:23.840 Broadway's smash hit

00:12:26.100 The Neil Diamond Musical

00:12:27.400 A Beautiful Noise

00:12:28.760 is coming to Toronto

00:12:30.240 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn

00:12:32.340 destined for something more

00:12:33.880 featuring all the songs you love

00:12:35.660 including America

00:12:36.760 Forever in Blue Jeans

00:12:38.100 and Sweet Caroline

00:12:39.300 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful

00:12:41.360 the next musical mega hit is here

00:12:43.660 The Neil Diamond Musical

00:12:45.160 A Beautiful Noise

00:12:46.520 April 28th through June 7th, 2026

00:12:49.520 The Princess of Wales Theatre

00:12:51.140 Get tickets at Mirvish.com

00:12:53.440 And if people think you're exaggerating, I had a fascinating experience being on Question

00:12:59.360 Time last week because they have this question that they do before that isn't broadcast.

00:13:04.600 And it was about whether Donald Trump should have been allowed back on Facebook and Instagram.

00:13:08.820 And I don't have the words to describe to you how people think.

00:13:15.920 I think some people have got themselves into a position where they don't, they've forgotten

00:13:20.000 that old there's no solutions only trade-offs thing and they don't think that there are trade-offs

00:13:26.140 to pursuing maximum safety online and so there was this the labor woman next to me for example 0.72

00:13:32.360 she was like i think this country should be leading the world in what we control in terms

00:13:38.000 of people saying online and because it wasn't on camera i didn't say anything but it's like

00:13:43.460 do we want to compete with china and north korea is that is that what and a lot of people

00:13:48.040 in that audience as well that's how people think now safety i want safety and they think that

00:13:55.620 safety doesn't have a cost how do we how do we communicate about this it's it's actually

00:14:02.660 terrifying and it's terrifying it's happened so quickly um both that people have become

00:14:08.160 complacent about their liberty in that way you know when you're saying that you want to shut

00:14:14.080 someone else up for lawful speech, I'm not talking about Trump in particular, but this whole kind of

00:14:19.420 culture that you're referring to, you're also saying you're happy to be shut up for things that

00:14:26.460 you might say that are lawful and that your friends can, your communities can. The death of

00:14:32.600 speech is the death of ideas. If you have a society without dissent and without free speech,

00:14:38.560 your it's a graveyard it's a graveyard of dying ideas where we will never progress we will never

00:14:45.040 move forward and i do think there is like a intellectual poverty in all of this as well

00:14:50.040 because when people are resorting to silencing others they're saying that they don't have the

00:14:56.680 capacity to reason with them and they don't believe in the strength of ideas and conversation

00:15:02.320 and debate and discussion to reach truths you know truths are now things that are dictated from

00:15:09.040 an elite you know back to we're back to kind of priesthood and you've got like the likes of

00:15:14.800 mariana spring at the bbc the disinformation reporters and so on who are like the priests

00:15:19.900 and the priestesses of truth it's so bizarre um in my view but in also just the kind of post

00:15:28.000 enlightenment view of free speech you just have the most open forum possible is the way that you

00:15:35.420 achieve um rationality and truth and discovery and progress you're arguing but this is kind of

00:15:43.180 the point that we've come to where i don't think people a lot of people think about it that way

00:15:48.480 at all free speech has become a thing that people who don't want progress apparently use right so

00:15:55.680 if you if you say i'm pro free speech that means you don't want progress how has that happened

00:16:00.800 i don't know i don't know to really work on the branding of free speech because

00:16:06.120 yeah exactly free speech is is about um it's about progress it's about movement it's the thing that

00:16:14.400 led to gay rights to women's rights to all the rights that we have you know are achieved through

00:16:20.500 being able to speak truth to power. And I think the pandemic was really killer for this because

00:16:27.620 the idea was perpetuated that, you know, just for now, actually, free speech and these dangerous

00:16:35.300 ideas can kill people, you know, and we need to save lives. So shut up, basically. And that's 0.76

00:16:43.580 what's reflected, I think, in the work that these units were doing, these disinformation units.

00:16:47.980 um blank check no oversight politicians didn't even have curiosity about what they were doing

00:16:54.440 no one was asking the questions and we've had to dig dig and dig to find what i'm afraid was

00:17:01.120 probably inevitable that when you allow you know resources to accumulate in the shadows

00:17:07.180 um then they will be serving the interests of the powerful not of the public that just seems

00:17:12.680 obvious, but obviously, you know, that is what we've now found. And something needs to be done

00:17:18.020 about it. I mean, actually, these units need to be shut down. You can't have senior politicians

00:17:23.700 being spied on by their own government for wrong think.

00:17:28.460 Look, when I was reading through the report, I couldn't quite believe it. But then I thought,

00:17:33.280 of course, I can believe it. And the particular thing that I found very believable was the

00:17:37.420 collusion between government and big tech, because we've seen it with the Twitter files,

00:17:41.380 which Elon Musk released. And you start to really, really worry where you think like

00:17:47.940 anything that I say online could be reported back. And not only could it mean that somebody

00:17:53.220 could lose their job, it means that the government is then tracking them. That's like something out

00:17:58.880 of Soviet Russia. Yeah, it is. And there's been quite a lot of like pinch myself moments during

00:18:07.260 this. I think particularly when, you know, so to give some examples of the people affected,

00:18:13.260 David Davis, MP, who has been a member of parliament for decades, very well known civil

00:18:19.240 libertarian, a senior within the Conservative Party, who of course, in government, an ex-minister.

00:18:27.400 And he, his position during the pandemic was, he praised the vaccine rollout, he spoke a lot about

00:18:33.740 vaccines, but he was very critical of

00:18:37.820 mandatory domestic vaccine passports, as of course we were.

00:18:41.900 We did a massive campaign on it. As we were. As you were.

00:18:45.140 As all the sensible people were. We were probably all on the list.

00:18:48.720 And the fact that he did, you know, is really quite

00:18:52.960 extraordinary. Actually, this was a mainstream political opinion.

00:18:58.100 The parliamentary rebellion against vaccine

00:19:01.000 passports was the biggest rebellion since the vote on the Iraq war in Parliament. This was a big,

00:19:07.340 big deal politically. Why should he be being recorded by disinformation units for actually

00:19:15.960 giving fact-based criticisms of the vaccine passport scheme? And let's not forget, who were

00:19:21.700 the purveyors of disinformation during this period? Because a lot of people were saying vaccine

00:19:26.660 passports were going to save lives. They were absolutely critical. We can't go out without them

00:19:31.080 and all the rest of it. We found out in our legal challenge that we did too against the

00:19:38.100 Welsh government and the UK government on vaccine passports that they had no evidence

00:19:44.540 that they were going to have any measurable impact on public health. And we have that in writing.

00:19:51.180 and yet we were told such a different story.

00:19:55.800 So, you know, it's these kinds of things where you think,

00:19:58.280 yeah, this is getting a bit, you know,

00:20:02.060 democracy is really falling apart here.

00:20:05.080 Another example, it was Carl Hennigan,

00:20:08.920 Professor Carl Hennigan from Oxford University,

00:20:12.320 Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine.

00:20:15.940 This is someone that surely we want to be listening to

00:20:18.680 during a pandemic.

00:20:19.540 Well, they were.

00:20:20.120 Yeah, they were.

00:20:21.180 That's true, a bit too much. But to put him in a disinformation report, he's an expert.

00:20:28.920 He was taken off Twitter for a period. His studies were marked as false by Facebook.

00:20:35.300 But again, by these people that could not compete with Fresco Hennigan in terms of his expertise, it's absolutely absurd.

00:20:43.320 And the fact that both of these people are in these government reports and that we know also they were being censored.

00:20:51.820 David Davis had a video taken off YouTube.

00:20:54.860 The speech that he gave against vaccine passports that we put on our channel, on Big Brother Watch's channel, was taken off YouTube until we complained and got it put back on.

00:21:04.340 We weren't able to get the correspondence between these units and social media companies.

00:21:11.040 They also won't tell us how many times they flagged stuff, no information whatsoever.

00:21:16.420 So something very useful that Elon Musk could do would be disclose all of the communications

00:21:21.680 between the British government and Twitter during the pandemic.

00:21:26.320 And let's get to the bottom of this.

00:21:28.040 Do you not have a certain sympathy, I can't believe I'm saying these words, for the social

00:21:31.560 media companies when you think, I remember at the beginning of the pandemic, we had David

00:21:36.420 Ike, getting millions of views for things that were palpable nonsense. And then moving

00:21:44.420 forward, then you have the government pressing down on them. You have people saying that

00:21:48.620 they're platforming misinformation. Weren't they, in many ways, between a rock and a hard

00:21:53.140 place as well?

00:21:54.400 Yeah, they're totally not prepared for... They weren't prepared for that kind of a challenge.

00:21:59.160 um but in my view the easiest thing for them to do would be to follow the laws of the country

00:22:07.080 that they operate in and then choose what countries they operate in so you know it's not

00:22:12.920 against the law to spout nonsense um and it's really easy to deal with um and i do worry as

00:22:20.740 well that if for example you've got people that are uh say spreading conspiracy theories about

00:22:26.740 5G masks or this kind of thing. If you just silence those people, what do the people who

00:22:33.540 are interested in the ideas do and where do they go and what do they then think? But you had to

00:22:37.640 silence it. Is it that dangerous? Are these ideas? So you'll either think, yeah, it's dangerous

00:22:44.760 because it's wrong, or you'll think it's dangerous because you don't want me to know it for some

00:22:48.960 reason. I think the best way of challenging nonsense or falsehoods of any type, and I mean

00:22:56.180 from fringe people all the way up to the stuff, some of the stuff that gets printed in the

00:23:00.200 mainstream press, is more speech. And to just suppress it and silence it means that it will

00:23:06.380 just grow and cultivate in another part of society or the internet where there's probably

00:23:14.220 a less rational discussion. Silky, are you concerned that you've just uncovered the tip

00:23:21.020 of the iceberg here, because I would imagine if I was a powerful person in government and

00:23:27.380 I've identified a Toby Young or a Julia Hartley Brewer or a Professor Carl Hennigan or a David

00:23:32.740 Davis, who's annoying me and not allowing me to do the things that I'm doing for public

00:23:37.720 health, quote unquote, I'd quite want to know what they're sending to each other on their

00:23:42.260 Telegram groups and their WhatsApp chats and their text messages and what they're saying

00:23:46.560 on their voicemails and on their phone calls.

00:23:48.680 Is there any suggestion that that was going on?

00:23:51.020 We have absolutely no idea. But I think the fact that we are finding such extreme activity so low down the scale within government policy units makes you think, well, what was going on in GCHQ, what was going on in MI5.

00:24:15.640 um we they have extraordinary powers to do uh exactly what you're talking about you know to

00:24:23.600 hack phones and to intercept calls and messages and all the rest of it uh we spoke last time i

00:24:28.780 was here about those powers um at length um and you know public health is in law one of the reasons

00:24:38.180 that, you know, governments can sometimes intrude on your privacy or intrude on your

00:24:45.860 right to freedom of expression, but it's about proportionality. And so who knows? We need

00:24:53.100 probably more whistleblowers. It's an interesting aspect of the work of the 77th Brigade in my view

00:25:01.580 and based on some people that I've spoken to is that, yes, it's really concerning what they were

00:25:09.540 doing. I mean, just searching all of the internet, clearly impacting people at home, clearly with

00:25:15.480 policy direction from Number 10 to look at things that Number 10 was interested in. But it was also

00:25:22.000 a bit of a distraction and meant that people were, especially before we found out what we've just

00:25:28.740 found out, some people were, I guess, building conspiracy theories around what the 77th Brigade

00:25:37.540 were doing. And the name is kind of spooky, isn't it? The 77th Brigade, you know, what they're up to.

00:25:43.020 But then people weren't talking about where the power really lies. And actually,

00:25:47.980 an interesting aspect of what the whistleblower tells us is that their resources were crap. 0.98

00:25:53.100 They had nothing. They wouldn't have been able to find disinformation if they'd been desperate to. 0.96

00:25:58.740 because they didn't have the resources. They didn't have the skills even. And the whistleblower

00:26:04.900 suspects that there was foreign disinformation being spread at the time, some of which other

00:26:11.260 people have written about, perhaps stuff coming from China, for instance, and that they would

00:26:15.800 have had absolutely no chance of finding it. So where does the power really lie to be doing some

00:26:22.460 of this stuff? And that would be in GCHQ and MI5. And based on what we know about their

00:26:28.460 activities over the years and their interest in politics. You know, a lot of this report and our

00:26:37.020 investigation has strong echoes of Reds Under the Bed that we saw in the 80s where UK intelligence

00:26:44.240 agencies were really interested in, you know, political surveillance, what union activists

00:26:49.540 were up to and what leftists were up to more broadly, as you had McCarthyism in the US for

00:26:54.900 the same kind of thing. So the intelligence agencies have formed for this. And wouldn't

00:27:01.340 it be the fact that during a pandemic, you know, this kind of sense of crisis, that they

00:27:11.520 would be highly active during that period if policy units were? Yeah, I think so.

00:27:16.200 Silky, isn't part of the problem that we're here talking and we're talking about the government

00:27:20.560 And I'm thinking, ah, there's a general election in a couple of years. 1.00

00:27:24.060 We're going to vote these bastards out. 1.00

00:27:26.120 It's going to be fine. 1.00

00:27:26.960 And then I remember that then it's Labour coming in 0.53

00:27:29.020 and they're even more insane about this.

00:27:31.700 Yeah, well, yeah, the conversation around misinformation

00:27:38.660 and disinformation I think to some degree hasn't happened yet

00:27:41.360 and around free speech generally has been really poor.

00:27:44.820 On the online safety bill, for instance, you know,

00:27:47.080 we've got this regulation coming through at the moment

00:27:48.880 which is about precisely what, you know, the person you were sitting next to at question time is talking about controlling speech on the Internet, lawful speech.

00:27:58.540 So and it's both Tory and Labour. I mean, the Tory guy was like, you know, we've been too slow to catch up with a wave of hate online.

00:28:07.880 That's how they frame it. Yeah. And look, I think we should acknowledge that the Internet and the ability to communicate in that scale

00:28:17.140 poses new challenges.

00:28:19.340 There is no question about that

00:28:20.660 because I think the example you gave me

00:28:22.920 was actually a really good one.

00:28:24.100 David Eich at the beginning of the pandemic,

00:28:26.040 you know, if you get to a point

00:28:27.960 where somebody can go on a YouTube show

00:28:29.880 or even on a private platform of some kind

00:28:32.560 and say stuff,

00:28:33.720 and then an hour later,

00:28:35.520 people are burning down 5G masks,

00:28:37.920 I can see why a government would feel the need

00:28:40.460 to do something about that.

00:28:43.460 And you have stories of kids

00:28:45.180 who see suicide material

00:28:46.600 and end up, you know, like there's bad outcomes.

00:28:49.360 So you can see why that would be an issue.

00:28:53.060 But it's just, it seems to me that a lot of people

00:28:57.280 don't realise that there are trade-offs here

00:28:59.320 that have to be really carefully watched.

00:29:01.380 And the online harms bill did get watered down

00:29:04.520 a little bit, didn't it?

00:29:05.980 Yeah, can I just come back on that?

00:29:07.460 There are trade-offs on a lot of what happened

00:29:11.560 during the pandemic.

00:29:12.900 people were made to be by the government to be scared for their you know really really scared

00:29:23.920 yes not leaving that people still have mental health problems from this i was at a dinner with

00:29:28.720 someone recently who said that their wife hadn't left their loft for months so you know because

00:29:34.120 they were isolating and scared to come out of the house you know there are a lot of people that have

00:29:41.140 been badly affected by this. And look, we still don't know, by the way, whether lockdown saved

00:29:46.220 lives or not. They may have, over a period of time, ended up costing more lives than they saved. So I

00:29:50.880 agree with you. There's still a big fallout. Of course, you've got Sweden to look, you know,

00:29:54.420 we'll just look at Sweden on that maybe. But yeah, I mean, big, big questions that are still

00:29:58.740 clearly being answered. And so, you know, yes, of course, you know, with some extreme fringe

00:30:07.380 speech there can be things there can be outcomes we can link to it but actually we just lived

00:30:12.280 through an extraordinary government propaganda period that also had terrible terrible impacts

00:30:18.820 on a lot of people whilst by the way they were having piss-ups in 10 downing street you know so

00:30:24.620 the behaviors of the people that were behind this were totally contradicting the way that other

00:30:31.220 people were made to feel. And so trust is disintegrating. And one of the reasons that this

00:30:39.400 matters so much and that we can't put down all these social ills to just like people spreading

00:30:44.420 disinformation and misinformation online, someone's gone out and attacked a 5G mask because they read

00:30:48.680 a tweet. I think it's more complicated than that. I think trust and authority is totally

00:30:53.680 disintegrating. And people don't really trust in the mainstream press in the same way. They don't

00:30:58.280 trust their governments. COVID didn't help, did it, looking at how the government behaved during

00:31:03.280 those years. So, you know, a lot's gone really wrong. And what we've exposed in this report

00:31:10.060 will confirm a lot of people's fears as well about the kinds of excesses

00:31:15.080 that government might seek during this period. Now, with extra laws coming through,

00:31:20.260 like the online safety bill

00:31:23.980 and also several anti-protest

00:31:26.180 laws, there's just more 0.69

00:31:28.040 and more and more of it

00:31:29.180 so the online safety bill

00:31:32.000 has been watered down to some

00:31:33.960 degree, I think in no small part because of

00:31:36.060 Big Brother Watch's campaign, working with

00:31:37.980 parliamentarians and other

00:31:39.820 free speech groups

00:31:41.700 so

00:31:43.480 now this whole concept that was going to

00:31:45.980 be introduced into law of legal

00:31:48.120 but harmful speech

00:31:50.140 which, you know, it always sort of gives chills, really,

00:31:54.160 the idea that there are things that you are lawful to say, but...

00:31:58.520 But you can't say them.

00:32:00.060 Say them, exactly.

00:32:02.900 Which is, yeah, a legal mess.

00:32:05.540 But actually what's come into its place is that social media companies'

00:32:10.900 terms and conditions are now a legal duty.

00:32:14.900 So they will be legally bound, not just as in a contract between...

00:32:20.140 the person using it and the company, but actually with the government,

00:32:23.980 they are legally bound to observe those terms and conditions,

00:32:28.000 which given some of the terms and conditions we've seen over the years

00:32:31.400 is quite strange.

00:32:34.280 So let's say if a platform says that you can't misgender anyone, 0.60

00:32:42.540 looking at the case that's being discussed at the moment of the Scottish

00:32:45.720 trans 0.99

00:32:46.860 woman who is a rapist 1.00

00:32:50.100 I love the calculation

00:32:52.260 I genuinely haven't read loads about the case

00:32:54.260 but I'm just thinking about it, okay, so a Scottish

00:32:56.140 trans woman who is a 1.00

00:32:58.160 repeated rapist 1.00

00:32:59.900 Isla Graham 0.97

00:33:01.320 Right, you know, would

00:33:04.080 it then, would British law

00:33:06.080 then, if a platform said you can't misgender

00:33:07.940 anyone, would

00:33:09.800 then this new

00:33:12.340 construction mean that you

00:33:13.940 can't use the wrong pronouns for this person on a social media platform according to the government

00:33:20.700 because the government is making these terms and conditions a legal duty do you see what i mean

00:33:24.920 yes so you know when youtube has crazy rules or you know twitter may less so now i don't know but

00:33:31.800 um yeah it's strange well or like you know musk not wanting his private jets to be tracked or

00:33:37.120 whatever if that becomes twitter law you know that kind of becomes the law because the government is

00:33:42.540 saying it's now a legal duty that you always impose these laws so that's a nonsense but

00:33:47.920 unfortunately no one's talking about it. Silky do you think the only way that people really wake up

00:33:54.660 is when something happens or an event happens that is so powerful or it just strikes the people as

00:34:03.260 something that is completely wrong so for instance the one time when we actually changed football

00:34:10.000 stadiums in this country was after the Hillsborough disaster because it was such an awful, awful

00:34:14.920 event. And if you look at the pandemic, the moment people woke up when they started to think about,

00:34:22.060 you know, the right to congregate and the right to protest is the police's actions during the

00:34:26.880 Sarah Everard vigil. Do you think we just need something to happen? Like, I don't know what it

00:34:33.260 is where people just collectively come to their senses. Maybe, but by then it will be too late.

00:34:40.000 So my message would be, please don't wait. Please don't be complacent.

00:34:44.960 If you can remember what that feeling was like when we were all told by the government to stay in your home,

00:34:50.960 weren't sure if we were going to be able to travel again, didn't know when we'd be able to be out,

00:34:54.580 didn't know if normal life was coming back.

00:34:57.040 And of course, you know, a lot of us fought tooth and nail to make sure that it did and that all of these laws were repealed.

00:35:03.360 But there was a sense then, like, is it too late?

00:35:06.580 And I think a lot of people, that obviously has, you know, made a lot of people a lot more alive to how precious their liberty is. And I also think if anyone hasn't kind of got it during these couple of years, then you might never. But, you know, please don't be complacent and don't wait, because, yeah, you know, we can lose these freedoms, we can lose these liberties really, really quickly.

00:35:27.800 but also the culture shifting you know so already the fact that you can sit in an audience of people

00:35:33.300 and they have these really you know almost disdain actually for free speech not even an indifference

00:35:40.560 to it but actually to it's been recast as a threat to democracy rather than the foundation of it

00:35:46.960 then you know something's going really really wrong how do we come back from that and i think

00:35:52.700 that's why conversations like these and platforms like these are important because um this is as

00:35:58.060 much about you know culture and ideas as it is about anything people have to really realize now

00:36:04.440 how important these these liberties are that's why i always say to americans because they're like well

00:36:10.160 how come you know like there are certain issues in terms of the cultural stuff that we often talk

00:36:14.400 about in the show we're actually in the uk we're doing much better than than they are in america

00:36:18.400 but on speech we're doing far worse and they always go well is it because of the first amendment

00:36:23.960 and i don't think it's because of the first amendment i think it's because they have a

00:36:27.640 culture a first amendment culture which is at the end of the day like anyone can say what they want

00:36:34.380 unless they're inciting violence we don't have that we don't have that and the pandemic was

00:36:39.240 almost like i almost i don't know maybe i'm wrong but i think francis and i were both very

00:36:43.940 disappointed in this country, actually, and in many people in this country, because maybe we

00:36:49.560 were projecting our own views and values onto it. But I certainly didn't think that the polling

00:36:55.740 numbers and people's behavior during the pandemic showed that we live in a society that values

00:37:01.020 freedom of expression. Yeah, but it's all relative. I mean, how the UK did compared to the rest of

00:37:08.760 Europe, you know, we did a lot better than a lot of European countries. We got rid of the

00:37:14.980 restrictions quicker than anyone else. We didn't have, you know, the EU now has a EU-wide super

00:37:21.480 state COVID pass system. They're introducing biometric borders, you know. So, you know,

00:37:27.660 they've got millions of people enrolled in databases with IDs, digital IDs and passes.

00:37:32.680 And, you know, we're not there. And I think there is something about perhaps the parliamentary system and, you know, our culture. But I think where the vacuum really was, was in the opposition and on the left, to be honest.

00:37:57.940 And I'm saying that as a non-partisan, you know, we're a non-partisan organisation.

00:38:01.940 I say it's from a totally non-partisan point of view.

00:38:04.480 And I should say as well for people, like you genuinely are. 0.96

00:38:07.220 That's not a thing that you say because you're a right-wing evil bigot.

00:38:11.280 You're not party political, you just care about these issues.

00:38:14.460 Yeah, that's true.

00:38:15.480 And always have done.

00:38:16.020 Yes, yeah, exactly.

00:38:17.600 Which makes you right-wing.

00:38:19.180 Yeah, obviously it makes me a right-wing bigot.

00:38:21.100 Yeah.

00:38:23.560 I'll come full circle.

00:38:25.200 um but yeah and i think that's why you know when we're thinking about the next government

00:38:29.540 and um you know where the currents are going on these issues um you know yeah it is really

00:38:37.080 worrying so the things like the investigation and and the campaign that we're running now to

00:38:42.500 shut down the ministry of truth it's an opportunity it well it's an appeal really we're we're trying

00:38:48.860 to create disruption in this current and to try to turn the tide back.

00:38:56.320 So what can people do, Silky? Because this is one of my biggest frustrations with doing this.

00:39:01.780 And I'm very proud of what we've built here. But quite often we have a conversation. And look,

00:39:06.140 Francis made a great point. Like, OK, we've got a general election coming up. OK, the Tories are

00:39:11.020 probably going to get kicked out. Now what? Like what if I'm watching this, what am I supposed to

00:39:15.860 do? How am I going to change this? Go to minitruth.co.uk, which is our campaign page to shut

00:39:24.300 down the Ministry of Truth. We've got a petition that people can sign. Please sign it. Sign up to

00:39:30.180 our emails for updates about the campaign because we won't let this go. You know, all we will ask

00:39:35.640 people to do is sign a petition or join us, get the Ministry of Truth t-shirt, you know, and just

00:39:42.420 be involved in the campaign. But, you know, really talk about it. Share the information

00:39:50.580 with people. Share this with people. Share the information with people. I think so much

00:39:58.960 is happening because politicians think that people just don't care. And particularly on

00:40:06.740 free speech, you know, these disinformation units, misinformation units have popped up because of the

00:40:12.860 moral panic that's been drummed up really about people saying the wrong things online. And I think

00:40:19.700 we need to see at least a similar force back saying free speech really matters. And actually,

00:40:25.420 even where you are talking about the misinformation online, the best way of dealing with it is with

00:40:31.280 more information, with more speech. So I think there are things that people can do, definitely.

00:40:38.200 I mean, certainly through campaign groups like ours. And I think the benefit of us doing

00:40:44.100 investigations in-house is for precisely that reason that we follow up everything with action

00:40:52.020 and we won't drop it until there has been change.

00:40:56.600 Because it's not only online that we've seen the laws being changed, it's also the right to

00:41:00.840 protest. The government have completely changed the laws. Can you just explain that a little bit?

00:41:06.660 Yes. We've been campaigning on a couple of the anti-protest bills that have been coming through

00:41:11.660 Parliament lately because of, of course, we've all seen the scenes of people gluing themselves

00:41:15.880 to roads and throwing things on paintings and all the rest of it. But police already have powers to

00:41:23.620 deal with those things. But under the pretense of dealing with these people, we're just getting

00:41:30.620 more and more extreme anti-protest powers introduced.

00:41:34.660 In fact, we are in the process of winning a campaign

00:41:39.160 against GPS ankle tags that the government wants to introduce

00:41:43.300 for innocent campaigners, you know,

00:41:46.160 people that haven't even broken the law.

00:41:48.040 If they're deemed disruptive, you could be fitted

00:41:51.180 with a GPS ankle tag to monitor where you go

00:41:54.880 and make sure that you don't go to other protests.

00:41:57.120 Well, you haven't broken the law

00:41:58.220 and they're going to track your movement.

00:42:00.620 Yes. And monitor what you do on the internet and control what you do on the internet to make sure you're not doing protest-related activities on there either. So basically, if you're an effective campaigner, you will be disruptive in some sense. And this word disruptive is being used to usher in these extraordinary curbs on your right to protest.

00:42:22.780 And this really is the kind of power where I think, you know, if even the Russians or the Chinese say we're going to ankle tag our protesters, you'd be like, wow, they've really gone for it now. 0.50

00:42:35.140 You know, this is really extreme. And this is happening in Britain.

00:42:39.840 I mean, that is just, that's beyond belief that they're going to ankle tag people who they claim to be disruptive and who are not guilty of a crime.

00:42:48.820 Yeah, it really is. But I think we're winning this campaign.

00:42:51.860 I think that we I think I think that we are. The government has said that they're going to maintain some of these powers, but that it seems like they're willing to drop the ankle tags finally.

00:43:03.360 But it's not confirmed right just now. How do they. How do you.

00:43:11.820 That's wrong thing. That's a tag for you. It would just be me walking around my flat.

00:43:17.360 but it's how do you and coming here that's about all i do nowadays but how do you how how do they

00:43:23.700 sit in government and come up with these ideas like have they not read all well like does it

00:43:29.240 not occur they've read all well they're following the script very closely yeah it seems like it

00:43:34.720 doesn't it yeah but just with the benefits of technology you know this is like a high-tech

00:43:40.040 dystopia um which is you know the blueprint is china you look at how closely you can be

00:43:46.760 followed and tracked, let alone through an ankle tag, you know, things like facial recognition,

00:43:51.860 surveillance, which the police are using more and more now. But yeah, I mean, again, and this

00:43:57.120 stuff can only happen in an environment where people are not protecting their rights closely

00:44:04.240 enough, where people have lost sight of how important it is to be able to protest against

00:44:09.660 your government. And also, you know, if the other people who are in Parliament in opposition are not

00:44:16.160 speaking up loudly enough about these things. The reason that they won't is because the press

00:44:23.100 is so anti-protest at the moment. And so this really safe line is being followed of just kind

00:44:29.760 of allowing the government to self-implode. I am anti-extinction rebellion,

00:44:37.380 gluing themselves and blocking ambulances. But as you said, there are laws in place for the police

00:44:42.400 to deal with protests that are actually

00:44:44.160 endangering lives or damaging property

00:44:46.400 and whatever. And I'm perfectly

00:44:48.300 happy for those laws to be applied, but I don't want those

00:44:50.280 people ankle-tagged if they haven't broken the

00:44:52.400 law. I'd quite like the existing

00:44:54.560 laws to be enforced, though, which we don't do

00:44:56.400 any of that on protests

00:44:58.360 and anything else, by the way, but instead

00:45:00.400 we just make up new laws

00:45:01.780 to deal with other things. It was like

00:45:03.860 the David Ames murder last

00:45:06.320 year, where

00:45:07.360 the guy, tragically,

00:45:10.560 is stabbed to death by an Islamist and then they're all banging on about online hate speech

00:45:16.580 and you're going these things aren't connected but we seem to just go you know whatever the

00:45:20.960 problem is let's take some people some of people's rights away from them. Yeah it's really lazy isn't

00:45:25.720 it and also I think particularly around policing we're overlooking the fact that the police

00:45:32.280 particularly in London are totally dysfunctional you know they cannot they're committing more

00:45:38.340 crimes than they're solving. I mean, they just cannot deal with even these most basic public

00:45:45.700 order issues or even serious crime or really anything. And so the easiest thing for government

00:45:50.760 to do is to just whack through a bunch of new extraordinary powers and then say, we've been

00:45:56.480 really tough. But the same things will happen because where powers already exist, they're not

00:46:01.820 being used. And why is that happening? Why aren't the police using the powers?

00:46:07.920 Because they're totally dysfunctional.

00:46:10.100 And why are they dysfunctional?

00:46:11.420 Under-resourced.

00:46:12.080 I mean, this is like a big conundrum at the moment, isn't it?

00:46:15.940 How do you deal, especially with the Metropolitan Police,

00:46:18.300 like how is it so fatally broken policing in London

00:46:23.020 that we have really high crime, terrible sexual violence as well,

00:46:29.540 and literally thousands of police officers under investigation as well

00:46:33.940 for some of these crimes?

00:46:35.720 I mean, something really, really has gone wrong there. And probably a lack of political leadership as well. And that that's been allowed to happen and that what's being thrown at the problem is more police powers. That just doesn't make sense. And I fear the problem will get worse before it gets better until you have proper political leadership on it.

00:46:58.540 I was going to say there was one more thing that the government brought in during the pandemic that made my blood run cold, which was they wanted to implement some powers against journalists.

00:47:12.980 Do you remember what this was, what actually happened with that?

00:47:17.600 So much has happened. I mean, I know that a lot of journalists were arrested and manhandled by police during this time.

00:47:28.540 And actually, coming back to these anti-protest laws, one of the new anti-protest bills that has come into force has already been used.

00:47:39.220 There was an LBC journalist that was arrested for covering Extinction Rebellion.

00:47:44.740 Yeah, for I think it was conspiracy to cause a public nuisance, which they were basing on the fact that she may have known that the protest was going to take place. 0.98

00:47:54.520 So now journalists are kind of seen as like proxy spies for the police, you know, which goes to show, I think, the risks of introducing extreme powers.

00:48:04.840 You can't just say, well, they probably won't be used like all the other ones.

00:48:07.260 So they will be sometimes in the worst circumstances.

00:48:10.640 So, you know, these anti-freedom laws will affect journalists and the whole kind of civil society that's supposed to prop up democracy.

00:48:21.780 silky thank you so much for coming on the show have i cheered you up yes you have massively he 0.56

00:48:28.400 loves a bit of depressiveness yeah i'm like doom and gloom it's all shit have it confirmed fabulous 0.64

00:48:33.620 but no thank you so much for coming it was an absolutely brilliant interview if people wanted 0.72

00:48:37.840 to find out about your amazing work online what is the best way to do that how can they join um

00:48:43.900 the struggle yes well this is the good part that we're doing something about it so um bigbrotherwatch.org.uk

00:48:50.400 we're on Twitter as well

00:48:52.100 at Big Brother Watch

00:48:53.140 we're on YouTube

00:48:54.640 at Big Brother Watch HQ

00:48:56.240 and this particular campaign page

00:48:59.740 is at minitruth.co.uk

00:49:02.160 in true Orwellian style

00:49:03.780 and Silky keep up the good work

00:49:05.920 because you are

00:49:06.580 it's very important

00:49:07.720 and this investigation you've done

00:49:09.260 by the time this goes out

00:49:10.660 I'm hopeful it's exploded everywhere

00:49:14.500 you've got a

00:49:15.520 it's coming out in the mail on Sunday

00:49:17.740 and you've got a bunch of interviews coming up

00:49:19.840 and I hope this contributes to it.

00:49:21.100 So thanks for coming back.

00:49:22.320 Well done on what you're doing.

00:49:24.140 And thank you guys for watching and listening.

00:49:25.860 If you want to see a couple of bonus questions

00:49:28.340 that our supporters have already submitted

00:49:30.580 and hear the answers to them,

00:49:32.080 join our locals.

00:49:32.880 We will see you there.

00:49:34.260 And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go,

00:49:36.900 always remember that it's available as a podcast.

00:49:39.540 Take care and see you soon, guys.

00:49:43.100 People in tech, myself included,

00:49:45.200 tend to always make the false assumption

00:49:46.960 that all progress will only be used for good.

00:49:50.400 Do you think politicians have the necessary grasp of technology?

00:49:53.400 I mean, we know the answer to that.

00:49:54.500 And its potential negative implications for privacy,

00:49:58.140 or are they too often blinded by positivity from tech companies?

00:50:19.840 and for something more featuring all the songs you love including america forever in blue jeans

00:50:25.220 and sweet caroline like jersey boys and beautiful the next musical mega hit is here the neil diamond

00:50:31.740 musical a beautiful noise april 28th through june 7th 2026 the princess of wales theater

00:50:38.280 get tickets at mirvish.com

TRIGGERnometry - February 02, 2023

EXPOSED： Secret Government Surveillance Program

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript