British ‘Disinformation’ Unit Shared Speech-Monitoring Techniques with U.S. Officials, Docs Show

A British government unit devoted to fighting online “disinformation” gave high-ranking U.S. officials a detailed presentation on their efforts to pressure social-media platforms into censoring speech, newly disclosed documents show.

The U.K.’s “counter-disinformation unit” (CDU) met with U.S. officials from a variety of intelligence agencies in 2021 and delivered a presentation on its strategies for flagging content deemed “misinformation” to social-media companies to ensure the content would be suppressed, according to a slide deck revealed Friday by America First Legal, a conservative legal activist group. America First Legal obtained the documents through ongoing litigation against the Centers for Disease Control.

The slide deck features two slides on the CDU’s “coordination structure” displaying how the agency works with other government bodies, officials, and outside partners to gather information and to flag “disinformation.” British cabinet ministers and intelligence agencies are involved with the information sharing process that the CDU oversees.

Around election time, the CDU creates a “central election cell” to further its efforts to counter “misinformation” and “disinformation” across a variety of domains such as public health and national security. The “misinformation” flagged by CDU falls into several categories, including content touching on democratic processes, public safety, and national security. It’s unclear what kind of information specifically falls into those far-reaching categories.

In responding to “harmful” speech online, the CDU acts operationally to flag specific content and to evaluate the effectiveness of a platform’s policies and enforcement for combatting misinformation, one slide indicates.

The British government works with international partners in Europe and North America to prioritize the fight against “disinformation,” training governments and NGOs on how identify and curtail the allegedly harmful content.

Additionally, the presentation has slides on British legislation empowering companies to strictly enforce content moderation and empowering the government to take action against companies that fail to comply with the government’s online speech regulations.

The presentation provides an inside look at how various governments are working together to influence online discourse and exposes the British government’s perception of its mandate to suppress speech online, an objective shared by American intelligence agencies and the Democratic Party. Although its mission is the same, the British government rebranded the CDU as the National Security and Online Information Team last year.

“The Biden-Harris Administration’s desire to silence speech and control what information Americans are able to obtain is so extreme, so pervasive, and so over-the-top that they are willing to listen to foreign governments explain ways to better violate core constitutional rights of the American people,” said America First Legal executive director Gene Hamilton. National Review has reached out to the White House for comment.

Proponents of restricting “disinformation” often claim they are simply concerned about the spread of foreign election interference and the possibility that false information could lead to violent attacks like the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

The Justice Department earlier this month announced criminal proceedings against multiple alleged Russian agents accused of funneling $10 million into an online media company to spread Russian propaganda through unwitting social-media influencers.

Notoriously, the FBI’s warnings ahead of the 2020 presidential election influenced Facebook and Twitter to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, a decision Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted was a mistake in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee. Zuckerberg also said that pressure from Biden administration officials influenced Facebook’s decision to restrict Covid-19 related speech, a central aspect of the Missouri v. Biden censorship case that the Supreme Court threw out due to the plaintiffs lack of standing.

The House Judiciary Committee’s investigative pursuits have further illuminated how government agencies such as the FBI, State Department and Department of Homeland Security worked with nonprofits and social-media platforms to restrict speech leading up to the 2020 election and have continued to do so since then. Former DHS disinformation czar Nina Jankowicz was one of many partisan analysts in the field who spread false claims that the Hunter Biden laptop story resembled a Russian disinformation operation.

Recently, British authorities were tracking down citizens accused of spreading offensive and bigoted information about illegal immigrants after a British-born Rwandan teenager fatally stabbed multiple children, sparking riots from native Brits and migrant gang activity in response. The suspected assailant is facing murder charges for killing three children and attempted murder charges for wounding eight other children and two adults in a northwestern English town.