Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
A shady government outfit in the UK that was previously tasked with identifying and monitoring COVID lockdown dissenters has been repurposed to spy on critics of mass migration and so called ‘asylum’ hotels, the Telegraph reports.
The body, now known as the National Security and Online Information Team (NSOIT) has been lobbying social media companies such as TikTok to take action against users who post what it describes as “concerning narratives” about immigration and ‘two tier policing’.
The unit operates within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and was previously known as the ‘Counter Disinformation Unit’ during the pandemic.
Wow. “Labour’s plot to silence migrant hotel critics. Emails reveal Whitehall ‘spy’ unit complaining to tech firms about content mentioning asylum seekers & two-tier policing”
This is WILD https://t.co/wDvNVhWVEJ
— Matt Goodwin (@GoodwinMJ) July 31, 2025
During the COVID lockdowns, the unit was tasked with pressuring social media companies to target and censor those critical of the stay at home orders and those questioning the mass vaccination of children. Discussions opposing vaccine passports were also flagged.
🚨EXCLUSIVE: A secretive government unit worked with social media companies in an attempt to curtail discussion of controversial lockdown policies.
Read the full article here: https://t.co/kWlMk735rW pic.twitter.com/XsbL3jDvAP
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) June 2, 2023
The rebranded outfit has now been flagging videos it sees as “exacerbating tensions” in Britain, particularly in August last year during the unrest stemming from the murder of three children by a second generation migrant in Southport.
The report contains examples of emails sent by government workers asking for the unit to investigate posts that are critical of migration, such as the one below to TikTok that expresses an ‘urgent’ need to monitor a post that highlighted a rejected Freedom of Information request about the location of asylum hotels, and a reference to asylum seekers as “undocumented fighting-age males”.
Another email shows that government officials warned TikTok that users were posting about “two-tier” policing at Southport rallies, amid accusations that white protesters had been treated more harshly by the police than ethnic minorities.
The government officials demanded that TikTok explain “any measures you have taken in response…as soon as you are able to”.
The Telegraph report adds:
A third example of “concerning content” flagged by the team was a video of Pakistani men celebrating on a street, posted on Aug 5 and captioned: “Looks like Islamabad but it’s Manchester”. The team claimed it had been shared “in order to incite fear of the Muslim community”.
The emails did not ask for the content to be removed, but requested that TikTok explained how it was dealing with it.
The report further notes that the emails came to light in materials obtained by 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”.
The US under the Trump administration has expressed concern that the British government is censoring social media, and cracking down on users who post content it deems as harmful.
US ‘greatly concerned’ about free speech in Britain as secretive Whitehall unit ‘spying’ on critics of migrant hotelshttps://t.co/IJhXYMeixj
— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 2, 2025
These fears have only been heightened with the introduction of the so called Online Safety Act, which appears to be already being used as a tool for further censorship.
As we highlighted last week, X users in Britain are reporting that footage of rapidly growing anti-mass migration protests in the country is being blocked under the new law.
British users of X shared screenshots of messages that popped up while they attempted to view footage from the protests, which started in Epping after a migrant sexually assaulted a teenage girl and have since spread around the country.
News also broke of an “elite” police squad of officers tasked with monitoring spicy tweets about migration.
But they won’t stop burglars and thieves. Backwards. pic.twitter.com/Bas7F4MXb7
— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) July 27, 2025
The Telegraph report states:
An elite team of police officers is to monitor social media for anti-migrant sentiment amid fears of summer riots.
Detectives will be drawn from forces across the country to take part in a new investigations unit that will flag up early signs of potential civil unrest.
The division, assembled by the Home Office, will aim to “maximise social media intelligence” gathering after police forces were criticised over their response to last year’s riots.
Elon Musk’s X has accused the UK of enacting “censorship” under the new law, noting “The Act’s laudable intentions are at risk of being overshadowed by the breadth of its regulatory reach. Without a more balanced, collaborative approach, free speech will suffer,”
Elon Musk’s X warns free speech under threat due to UK’s new Online Safety Acthttps://t.co/8n2f5Eojfh
— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 1, 2025
A spokesman for the Big Brother Watch anti-censorship group has called for an immediate investigation into the British government’s National Security and Online Information Team, warning that an “unaccountable and secretive Government unit is spying on speech that is critical of the police and Government policies”.
“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,” they added.
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