Big Brother Watch – Army SPIED on UK public during lockdown, whistleblower reveals

British Army spied on the British public so that criticism of the Government could be monitored. This is very sinister and authoritarian. 77 brigade sentiment analysis, twitter

Odysee 2023 Jan 29 Big Brother Watch Army SPIED on UK public during lockdown, whistleblower reveals [1]

Links

[1] Odysee 2023 Jan 29 Big Brother Watch Army SPIED on UK public during lockdown, whistleblower reveals https://odysee.com/@FoxesAmazingChannel:8/Army-SPIED-on-UK-public-during-lockdown,-whistleblower-reveals-tNIcapT2dfI:d

[2] You tube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNIcapT2dfI

Transcript

Anything that was negative really to Boris Johnson, you’d take a note of it,

0:04put it on the on the slide deck, and then send that on.

0:07The way the way we were working, it would be impossible

0:10not to also pick up British citizens.

0:12I know that

0:12some of the more lusty members of the team would go on to their personal profile,

0:16look into the person and see what their history was about.

0:19For the first time an insider from the Army’s controversial Information Warfare Unit,

0:24the 77th Brigade, has spoken out,

0:26giving an exclusive interview to Big Brother Watch, lifting the lid

0:28on how social media was monitored during the pandemic.

0:32At the time, military leaders promised us

0:34that the 77th Brigade was not being deployed against the British people.

0:37But in this exclusive interview, the former soldier tells how British

0:40people’s social media posts were collated and passed to the Cabinet Office

0:44by the PSYOPS unit as a part of sentiment analysis about the government.

0:4877th Brigade worked with the Rapid Response Unit,

0:51one of the anti-misinformation units sitting at the heart of government.

0:54We’ve been investigating them for months and our report exposes

0:58how political surveillance masqueraded as anti-disinformation work.

1:02Welcome to the 21st century Ministry of Truth.

1:25Could you tell us a bit about

1:27what the 77th Brigade is and a bit about what you did with it?

1:32The 77th Brigade is a relatively new unit and it’s formed

1:36within a number of different organisations that existed before

1:40but were subordinated under a different hierarchy.

1:44One of the sub units, if you like, is the outreach

1:47group and they’re focused mostly on

1:50working with other nations and building capacity

1:52and that sort of thing.

1:57Literally outreach to foreign countries, developing countries.

1:57That was something

1:58that I was more allied to before it subordinated under the 77th Brigade.

2:02But then also within the 77th Brigade, there’s a unit

2:06which is a more focused on information operations, and that’s

2:10the unit that I was seconded to at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

2:14As it turns out, the commander of the 77th Brigade at the time was very keen

2:18to make sure that he could provide manpower towards the COVID-19 response.

2:22So as a result, he offered up to the Cabinet Office,

2:26his unit,

2:27and sold them a capacity really that never really existed under the 77th

2:32Brigade before, although it was one that they really wanted to get into.

2:36So, the Cabinet Office were very keen to take him up on that

2:40and so they said, “yeah, go ahead” and really

2:42there was a kind of general panic where they were looking around for people

2:46who could live up to that promise, if you like and that’s where I came in.

2:50So what capabilities was it that the 77th were pitching in to the Cabinet Office?

2:55So, my understanding of it is — and I wasn’t present at the time,

2:59but it’s subsequently been told to me that, really,

3:02they were offering up a way

3:05of monitoring hostile foreign state misinformation online.

3:09So, they would look at social media and they would establish sock puppet

3:13accounts that were perhaps working for foreign governments

3:16with the aim of inspiring panic in the population

3:18or essentially doing down the efforts of the government.

3:22Very quickly, this mutated and for various reasons,

3:25mostly to do with the capability of — it was a very fledgling

3:29capability, no one had real expertise on it.

3:33It got focused entirely on Twitter because

3:37there’s no front door.

3:38Basically, you can just go onto Twitter to see everyone’s tweets.

3:41It’s not like Facebook

3:42where you have to follow someone and they have to follow you back.

3:45However, that works.

3:46But as a result of that, it became very much,

3:49a kind of monitoring sentiment of the British public

3:53and how they perceived the conservative

3:55administration doing a COVID-19 response.

3:59So, this was between the Cabinet Office and the 77th.

4:02What was the relationship

4:04that, sort of, I know you said the 77th approached the Cabinet Office.

4:08Then, in terms of working, who was leading,

4:10who was defining what was going to be done?

4:13So, I know that when I first arrived

4:15at the unit, there were liaison

4:18officers and advisers who were all over the governmental departments.

4:22So we had representatives within the Cabinet Office.

4:25But the way I’m led to believe it happened was that the commander of the 77th

4:28Brigade went directly to the Cabinet Office and offered up the capability.

4:33Now, whether that was…you are understanding, it’s

4:36such a hierarchical organisation — whether that was because

4:40somebody above him had said, “you’ve got that capability, haven’t you?

4:45Offer it up” or whether he went direct?

4:48I don’t know. All I know is, I was told, monitoring foreign misinformation online

4:52because we need to go in and operate as part of this team.

4:56So what kind of tools and capabilities were you deploying to monitor this?

5:00What you were told

5:01as foreign disinformation may have become more domestic surveillance, but

5:05what were the tools, what was the capability,

5:06what were the methods you were using?

5:07So in terms of tools and capabilities, one of the main things is

5:12there is a specialist laptop, which is a kind of anonymised laptop

5:17that only runs through a kind of like the Onion Network.

5:21So, it doesn’t have a physical location, which is broadcastable.

5:24It operates at arm’s length, and it’s quite deniable and anonymised.

5:29So we had these specialised laptops that do exist within defence,

5:33they’re called Opus Terminals, which then require a level

5:37of training and specialisation which was done in-house.

5:40I say it was done in-house…the

5:43trainers were external and they were all from different information units.

5:47They were brought into the 77th brigade to do the training

5:50of all the different teams of which

5:53there are about five teams, three of whom were remote and…we didn’t,

5:56we never used sock puppets for any of our accounts.

6:01It was all just logging in as a guest to Twitter

6:04and doing like, what we would call a ‘sift’.

6:08So, just inputting a search term, whether it be “COVID-19”,

6:12“ventilators”, “Tory lies”, whatever.

6:15Whatever the search term

6:16was, you’d run the search term and you’d look at the top tweets.

6:20It was, there was no real training on how to do that.

6:24The only training really was around how to run Google searches,

6:28look for videos in foreign languages

6:31from just through YouTube, for instance, and just going on YouTube Russia

6:35rather than YouTube UK and it was very much feeling our way

6:39because it hadn’t been done before, which, I suppose in some respects is reassuring

6:44because the last thing I would want to do is feel like I’m

6:47participating in quite a common government activity.

6:51But yeah, there was very little specialist training.

6:54So you weren’t using things like Brandwatch,

6:56TweetDeck, sort of more advanced sifting tools?

6:58Initially TweetDeck was something we were told about

7:02and something that we could use.

7:04As the task developed, we found out that really

7:07what we were doing was getting passed down from the higher organisation,

7:11getting passed down the search terms we were going to use.

7:14All they wanted to see was how many times the search times were used, accounts

7:18that were, that were retweeting the same thing regularly

7:23and really just

7:23putting those together onto a PowerPoint presentation and sending them on.

7:26So, you said about search terms being used.

7:29Can you tell us a bit about the

7:31instructions you got, sort of, whether they were from the Cabinet Office

7:34or from your own superiors, what instructions did you receive

7:38and what was the output after your work of the day?

7:42So, there would be two different ways of doing it.

7:45So, one thing you would do is, and initially there was there was no

7:49there was no guidance, so it was just find foreign misinformation online

7:53and so we just had to generate our own search times

7:57and we would just be searching “COVID-19”, “death rate”, or whatever.

8:03You just type in the search terms, see what came up

8:06and anything

8:07that was essentially reflecting poorly on the Government or anything

8:11that was negative really to Boris Johnson, the administration or anyone like that.

8:16You’d take a note of it, put it on the on the slide deck,

8:19if you like, and then send that on.

8:23So then if the higher authority then saw

8:26there was an interesting thread in there that they wanted to pull at,

8:30so if there were any hashtags within that snapshot of someone’s profile

8:30that they might want to explore, they would then be sent back to the teams.

8:39Also, there was stuff that was generated

8:43that may have

8:43been generated by the other teams and sent back down to us.

8:46But there was stuff that was sent down to us from up from above as well.

8:50So, one of the first things that was sent down to us very early

8:53on was ventilators, because that was…you remember?

8:57when it was all about ventilation back in the day?

9:06That was handed down to us

9:06and we were expected to look into that and report any incidences.

9:08It was a bit of you identifying things of interest

9:11and some of it came from, top down?

9:13That’s right.

9:14You mentioned sort of it being about, Conservatives and Boris Johnson.

9:18Was there any guidance or kind of official instruction

9:22that anything reflects badly on the government should be included,

9:24or was it more

9:25a wink and a nudge and informal like…this is what you should be doing?

9:29Yeah, nothing is…there was no direction and there was no overt…this

9:34is…“*wink, wink*, we don’t want to know anything about Boris Johnson.”

9:38It wasn’t even that overt.

9:40But it, very quickly you would, if you sent up something about,

9:45you know, Tory lies, then that might come back down to you

9:48the next day and it’s like, “yeah, yeah, focus, focus on that”

9:53and very quickly you’d have big thematic headings

9:57which you were expected to look into and that…very soon…If

10:00you’re constantly being told “that’s good, that’s good” on a certain line,

10:05then you tend

10:05to send more of that stuff up because you want to be told “that’s good”

10:09rather than “you’re wasting your time” and it very quickly became apparent that

10:13it was more to do with sentiment analysis about the current administration.

10:17So you basically found that they you said they were responding

10:21well when you flagged stuff that was critical of the government,

10:24of the Conservatives and that was returned back to you for further investigation.

10:28Right, and when it

10:31seemed like the Government were doing better in vaccination

10:34or when it seemed like the Government were doing better in getting ventilators,

10:39they were very keen on seeing what the public response to that was.

10:42So all of a sudden it became apparent that Russia or China

10:46aren’t going to be saying, “well done for, for the respirators”,

10:49sorry, for the ventilators. They’re going to be doing negative.

10:53So, when you’re looking for

10:53positive messages, you know that you’re no longer looking at foreign states

10:57misinformation, you’re looking at the public.

11:00Yeah.

11:00So, this was a big thing when the 77th’s involvement with the

11:02Cabinet Office came out in The Times, the Ministry of Defence

11:06said, “we are not directing this capability at British citizens.”

11:10Was that a true statement?

11:11I couldn’t say…I mean, I don’t know.

11:15I really don’t know what they’re thinking

11:19or who said it, but from my perspective, I think they could justifiably say

11:24that they weren’t directing it because they weren’t telling us, you know,

11:27specifically, “yeah, we, we want to know what people think of the Government”.

11:30But, when you’re getting a positive, when you’re getting positive feedback

11:35and all you’re doing is looking from my perspective, what I thought I was

11:40doing was looking at the British public and reporting back sentiment analysis.

11:45Then you can kind of direct it without directing it. If you see what I mean.

11:47So, you think a lot of your work was surveilling the British public?

11:52On a personal level, very early on, I would always say to the fellow team

11:56members, whatever happens, whatever happens during this,

11:59you have to act in line with your own conscience.

12:02Because, if we’re doing stuff that is illegal, it’s only going to be

12:06you that’s going to be judged on that and I mean, literally judged, do you know?

12:11In a court of law, potentially.

12:15So, you can’t rely on saying, “well,

12:17I was directed to.” So, I was very cautious

12:22that I acted in line with my morals

12:24and if I thought what I was doing was really reporting on a scared lady

12:28in Solihull who was worried about, justifiably worried ‘cause she’d

12:32been worried by the press and the Government.

12:34So what safeguards were there to stop you or colleagues who perhaps, were

12:39less bothered about their conscience surveilling the British public?

12:42Were there safeguards in place?

12:43Were you told that there was a legal line between who you could surveil

12:47and who you couldn’t?

12:48And then how effective were the safeguards?

12:51So, we were given training on the legal side of things and

12:55we were told very much what we could do

12:58and what we could couldn’t do when we were looking at people online.

13:00So, one of the things we were told

13:02was you can’t really run a developed search on somebody.

13:05So, you can run a generic sift, you know, along a search term.

13:10But…so if you can’t really click into someone’s profile more than, say,

13:15you couldn’t go back and start looking at all of their all of their tweets,

13:17because then that’s really you’re targeting them and you’re developing it.

13:22You then can’t the next day search for that person specifically

13:25by Twitter handle or by name, because then that is specifically a targeted search.

13:30So, I don’t doubt that we, that what we did was legal

13:34and right in that respect but, I know that

13:37some of the more lusty members of the team who are very keen to to see the project

13:42succeed, would then subsequently, if they were on Twitter,

13:46when they went back home that evening, would go on their own personal profile,

13:50look into that person and see what their history was about, that sort of thing.

13:54Yeah, and were there any red lines you were sort of made clear

13:57that this person is so obviously British, we can’t kind of look at them

14:01even in a sift or, was it pretty much fair game in the sense that anyone could be

14:06in there and be put a slide deck and passed on?

14:09Anyone.

14:10Anyone, yeah, and there were times when I said, but,

14:15I would just reiterate to people I was on shift with, where

14:18I would say to them, “are we all sure that what we are doing is…”

14:23or maybe I would say, “I think what you need to do is make sure

14:26from your perspective that we aren’t just reporting on, you know,

14:30that scared person in Solihull, rather than misinformation”

14:34and there wasn’t really any…later as the task developed, we got a couple

14:40we got

14:40a couple of people who came onto the team because the team was constantly changing,

14:44because it was quite intense and quite long shifts you know?

14:47We’ve got people who actually thought, “do you know what?

14:50there’s probably a better way of finding foreign misinformation online

14:53rather than just doing these sifts which seem to throw up,

14:57you know, scared people.” and there were times when I saw people

15:00putting people onto slideshows and it was like, you know, that profile

15:04was maybe LabourChic03, you know,

15:08#FuckBorisJohnson or something, you know?

15:11and I thought, you know, that’s not much, that’s not a very good sock puppet if it,

15:16because it’s, you know, like it could be a bit more anonymous

15:19and there were times when I thought it just doesn’t add up, you know?

15:23and so, undoubtedly some

15:26got through, I think.

15:28Are you able to find any examples of kind of

15:31specific terms you passed down to look at?

15:33Or would that be too revealing?

15:35Some of the reasons I said “ventilators” is because I remember that that was a hot

15:40button topic at the time and that was passed down to us.

15:43Now, where that came from, I don’t know.

15:46I suspect it might have come up from one of the teams then back down to us.

15:51But I would say the majority of the stuff that came down to us

15:54was threads that we had sent up,

15:58and then they said, you know,

16:01pull on that bit a bit more.

16:01So, I say most of the stuff was actually came up from the from the teams and, but

16:07the ventilators one definitely did come back down to us.

16:11Definitely did, and that was very much of interest

16:15because that that was seen as a really good news story that, you know,

16:19that it seemed to come from the public.

16:21The demand seemed to come from the public, obviously stoked by the newspapers,

16:26and they really wanted to get

16:27that in the newspapers that we were doing great things with the procurement.

16:31Can you briefly describe what sentiment analysis is for, so,

16:37people generally understand what it is?

16:41Measurement of affect is far harder to do.

16:44One of the things we do is, we do sentiments analysis, which is,

16:48what are your perceptions and a very basic way of doing that

16:53on social media is what we were doing with the 77th Brigade,

16:57which is literally just reporting back what people are saying about “X”,

17:01Boris Johnson, the Government, ventilators, you know?

17:05and that that is a very, and this shows really

17:09the lack of sophistication of the 77th Brigade and our response to

17:15the COVID-19 response, which was,

17:18we were doing very labour-intensive measurements of affect.

17:22We could have done things far more efficiently

17:24by using the tools at our disposal, but no one knew how to use them.

17:28So you were pretty much just saying, this is a positive tweet,

17:31this is a negative tweet.

17:31You weren’t using some of the tools that are out there

17:33that use AI to say this is anger or disgust or joy,

17:37it’s pretty much positive, negative, sorted by yourself and others?

17:41That’s right.

17:42Yeah, and you know, as you say, as you know,

17:46there are civilian products that are open source

17:49and available where you can analyse sentiment,

17:51but these weren’t used and it was very much from your perspective

17:54as an intelligence analyst, what is this person saying about X?

17:59Then maybe

18:01do as

18:01many as you could fit onto a slideshow presentation,

18:05which might take ten, twelve, and then you’d send that off

18:08and it would get collated at a high level and then sent on to the

18:13Cabinet Office. As you said,

18:15these slides would be sent to the Cabinet Office, potentially sent back

18:18for further sort of intelligence gathering on certain topics.

18:22Do you know what the Cabinet Office ended up,

18:23or if you have any idea what the Cabinet Office did with it,

18:25what they ended up doing with these kind of slides, or were you not told that?

18:29No, and very much it was at arm’s length within the military, you know,

18:33you don’t really step out of your lane and if you do, you know,

18:38you’re told in no uncertain terms to stay in your lane.

18:41People build these Chinese walls so you’re not supposed to go into the other

18:49pond.

18:49You know, there’s a big fish in that pond who will gobble

18:51you up, so very much, you know, there was no communication

18:55between our sub-units and the Cabinet Office.

18:58That was very much held at an arm’s length and some would own that relationship

19:05with the Cabinet Office and you would have to specifically—

19:08not that we ever did— but you would have to specifically

19:12request authority to liaise directly.

19:15There’s this clunky term, but they call it ‘DIRLAUTH’.

19:19It’s an abbreviation.

19:20But, you would request that, they would get denied and they say “no,

19:27use the chain of command” and that’s like classic army stuff.

19:32So, anything that we sent on went directly to

19:34the team leader.

19:35The team leader would send that directly to the kind of capability leader

19:40and the capability leader would send that on to the

19:43not even to the Cabinet Office, to the liaison officer

19:46within the Cabinet Office for them to show that to the Cabinet Office.

19:50Yeah, so, in the really great piece you’ve written for our report that’s

19:53coming out soon, you say that, basically,

19:56unless someone had a real name and “I am British” in their

20:01bio, they were essentially fair game.

20:04Do you think, sort of that kind of willingness to work in the grey

20:09was concerning that led to a lot of domestic surveillance?

20:13It’s concerning from a personal point of view.

20:17But, from a professional point of view,

20:19you would have to expect someone operating a sock puppet account

20:23to at least make an effort to appear to be British.

20:27So, you would, you could say that’s kind of spy craft,

20:32you know, that they would try and blend in in that respect.

20:36So, I find it hard to be critical of

20:40our failure to kind of filter those people out

20:44because you would expect to be working with people

20:46who are at least maintaining the presence of being British.

20:49So, with everything you said,

20:51is it fair to say there is no way that with sifting Twitter

20:54you could effectively not screen British citizens as part of that work?

21:02Yeah, I would say that’s impossible.

21:04The way that we were working, it would be impossible not to also

21:08to pick up British citizens at the same time as almost accidentally,

21:12if you like, picking up the occasional bot or sock puppet.

21:16But the way of working, which we set up was so accidental that I think

21:21necessarily it was very difficult for us to pick up those foreign misinformation

21:27sock puppets or misinformation

21:30bot farms or, I think it would be very difficult

21:33to pick up those, but very easy to pick up sentiments analysis.

English (United Kingdom)