Critics of the contentious, and some would say at times unlawful, work of UK’s Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) are expectedly unimpressed by it getting a “rebrand” – that is, a new name.
It remains to be seen if the National Security Online Information Team (NSOIT – née CDU), will continue with activities of the kind that highly likely got the image of the CDU so tarnished that it needed a “rebrand.”
But government officials continue at the same time to deny there was any wrongdoing on the part of CDU to begin with – or that there will be any done by NSOIT.
The controversy over CDU goes back to the “heyday” of the pandemic and censorship of Covid-related content. The accusation – that continues to be rejected by the government – is that individuals, including senior figures from across the UK’s political spectrum, were targeted.
And, their online activity was first surveilled by CDU, which would then flag some posts for removal merely for criticizing the government, rather than “spreading disinformation.”
But, responding to questions about all this in the British Parliament’s House of Lords earlier in the week, an official from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology – NSOIT’s parent agency, said there was no merit to such claims, or fears, going forward.
“I can confirm not only that it is not the role of NSOIT or the CDU to go after any individuals, regardless of their political belief, but that it never has been,” junior minister Jonathan Berry told the lords, adding that the unit supposedly only looks for “threats from foreign states” – while the form of domestic political persecution it was accused of is something that is “categorically false.”
However, Liberal Democrat Paul Strasburger continues to press the matter, specifically seeking answers as to how NSOIT will be controlled in the future, particularly given what he says was CDU’s “worrying overreach.”
And – why the government “refuses to allow the Intelligence and Security Committee” to do that oversight.
Berry’s response essentially amounted to revealing that NSOIT will – oversee itself.
“As part of the civil service, NSOIT would have robust internal measures to verify and check its own work, and indeed it reports regularly across government and to ministers,” the junior minister is quoted as stating.
Other than that, Berry could offer “reassurances” to the House of Lords regarding the unit’s role, and he at the same time would not speak about either how NSOIT is staffed, nor how many people it employs, referring to it as “a national security institution.”