TRIGGERnometry - EXPOSED: Secret Government Surveillance Program

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

Silkie Carlo is  the director of Big Brother Watch, a non-party British civil liberties and privacy campaigning organisation. Watch our first interview with Silkie here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUZHmPrbex4 For more information on the campaign go to: www.minitruth.co.uk Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ | Channel ID: UCo_8zzSxKeL3arKWVuP8wdQ Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 Intro  02:13 The Secret Government Units Spying on Us 04:22 What’s Wrong with the Government Monitoring Certain Platforms? 06:02 How Long has the Prevention of Disinformation Been Going on? 12:22 The Call to Fight Against the Attack on Free Speech 20:56 Are Social Media Companies between a Rock & a Hard Place? 22:44 Are Private Interactions Being Monitored? 33:18 How to Wake People Up 38:23 Sponsor Message: Easy DNS  39:27 How to Defend Against Restrictions on Truth 41:26 The Right to Protest 46:35 Consequences of Dysfunctional Police 48:53 What’s the One Thing We’re Not Talking About? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've uncovered a number of secretive government units that claim to be fighting misinformation and disinformation. Actually, they're monitoring and recording people that are criticising the government and government policies. The 77 Brigade had these kind of conspiracy theories around it. Like, are they watching us online, controlling what we say? I don't think anyone really took it seriously. We weren't even actually looking into the unit until a whistleblower came forward to us. What the whistleblower told us is that they're... 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. They were doing general searches on social media in English language on topics that Johnson government was interested in. We were being surveilled by our own military. We are in the process of winning a campaign against GPS ankle tags for, innocent campaigners, you know, people that haven't even broken the law. If they're deemed disruptive, you could be fitted with a GPS ankle tag to monitor where you go and make sure that you don't go to other protests. You haven't broken the law and they're going to track your movement. Yeah.

If even the Russians or the Chinese, I say, we're going to ankle tag our protesters, you'd be like, wow, they've really gone for it now, you know, like this is really extreme. And this is happening in Britain. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisham. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a friend of the show who brings us troubling news.

She's the director of Big Brother Watch here in the UK, which has just produced this report, Ministry of Truth, which talks quite a bit about the government surveillance of people who have wrong opinions. Silky Carla, welcome back. Thank you very much for having me. So everyone can go back and watch our first interview. if they want a backstory on you and whatever, but you're the director of Big Brother Watch,

which is a civil liberties organization here in the UK. You've just released a report that is really, really worrying. Tell us about it. Yeah, so we've uncovered a number of secretive government units that claim to be fighting misinformation and disinformation. And they've been very resistant to transparency. So over a long time, we've been investigating them, And we found that actually they're monitoring and recording people that are criticizing the government and government policies.

And we found that this was particularly active during the pandemic, but that we think that they're active on other topics. And it's particularly affecting members of parliament, journalists, academics, experts and campaigners. So, you know, not the kind of boogeyman, Russian disinformation, bot farms or whatever it is that the government would have us believe that these units are working on. You're off the hook, Mike. Well, probably not, actually. I mean, one of the things you mentioned to us is we could see if we are included in that. I imagine we would be, actually, given that the people that you were talking about, quite a lot of them we've had on the show. You know, Toby Young, Julie Hartley Brewer and others, right?

Yeah. there are people who have big followings on social media in particular. 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 Parlor 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.

So, yeah, when they are collecting. posts that people have put online, they're also looking at engagement. So that's why, you know, a show like this and people like your guests are quite likely to be, you know, in the crosshairs, really, because they're looking at people who are talking about controversial topics and looking at then the engagement rates. So they're literally recording numbers of retweets and this sort of thing. And what are they doing with this information? Because one of the things that people might say is, well,

Well, anyone can monitor anything. You know, what's wrong with noticing who's tweeted what and how many likes they got? So two things. In essence, it is censorship and propaganda. 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. And we've even had ministers say this in the House of Commons, but the problem is that people have just assumed that it's all this nasty stuff in question. And so everyone's kind of congratulated it. Now we know it's basically dissent.

So taking stuff down or pressuring social media companies to take stuff down. And the other part of it is, I think, understanding the public conversation so that the government can respond. And that could be through trying to work with their SEO to get their search results up higher in search engines on key topics, especially around the pandemic, or issuing rebuttals to newspapers or social media users, basically to amplify their point of view in response. And I mean, that's the element of it that you can say is reasonable, whether it's proportionate to be keeping records and tabs on dissidents. would say is probably not. But the element of this kind of collusion of state and big tech power to silence people for lawful opinions should really make everyone shudder. Completely agree with you. And how long has this been going on for, Silki? All of the units but one that we've identified were started during the Conservative government.

But most of them have been in really recent years since around 2018. But the pandemic was absolutely the catalyst for it really taking off. So the central unit that is responsible for most of this is the counter disinformation unit. That's what it's called, although we haven't seen much of them doing much around disinformation. It sits within the Department for Digital Culture, Media and Sport. So it's like a policy unit, you know, they're not spooks, but they're acting in that way. They had started this unit actually in 2019, I think it was, during elections. And then it was stood down.

And then during the pandemic, it was stood up again. And now it's permanent. And it's folding in other kind of disinformation specialists from across government to feed into this central unit. The other thing that happened, you know, and I think important to bear in mind that the pandemic was, you know, It was the blank check for a massive extension of powers across the peace, really, in government. And so the birth of some of the activity that we saw during the pandemic was actually in this secretive army unit called the 77th Brigade. The 77th Brigade had these kind of conspiracy theories around it. Like, are they watching us online controlling what we say?

And I don't think anyone really took it seriously. We weren't even actually looking into the unit. until a whistleblower came forward to us and told us what was really going on during the pandemic within that unit. The public statements from the army were that the 77th Brigade were stood up during, you know, at the beginning of March 2020 and that they were dealing with foreign disinformation. And in response to questions about would you ever do anything domestically, of course not. All of our operations are directed overseas. 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. They were doing general searches on social media in English language on topics that Johnson government was interested in. So, you know, basically trying to gauge public opinions, see what people were thinking about different elements of COVID and the policies. And then they were collating these reports, including of individuals. We saw even a university student, you know, someone that doesn't have a big following. They're just collating these records of what people were saying and thinking and then sending those up to central government. Silkie, why did it explode over the pandemic? Was it because more and more people were online, so there was an opportunity to do that?

This was going to be the moment. Was it because they were genuinely worried about misinformation being spread during the pandemic and as a result people potentially dying? I think all of these things can be true at the same time. Of course people were worried about public health, obviously during the pandemic. 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?

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. And the 77th Brigade describes itself as involved in non-lethal engagement for modern warfare against adversaries. And so, you know, you think of these kind of sophisticated overseas operations, but they were interested in demonstrating to government that we can do these kind of elite information ops. And so it was an attractive thing to say

we can deal with the dangerous misinformation and disinformation, which I think we now have to be honest, and especially in light of our report, there is a moral panic about it. And it's overblown. And now we need to have a sober conversation about what we really mean when we're talking about misinformation and disinformation because what the army got away with in this instance was an accumulation of resources

to do basically nothing, nothing worthwhile, but that does have a serious impact on Brits and meant that we were being surveilled by our own military, you know, with military power. It's extraordinary really. And so I think that a few things. And this happened after 9-11 as well, didn't it? you know, the desire for certain elements within the military industrial complex and business and government to show that they can, with more resources, they can provide these new services

and do these new things with civil liberties put really to the side. So that was going on. And of course, I think the overriding thing, the fundamental thing that I hope we're now thinking about more clearly is that governments will always. try to accumulate power and having power over information is the most extraordinary power you can have. If you can strongly influence and even control what people are able to say to each other, what people are able to see and hear and read, especially when it comes to criticism of your own policies, you know, for a government, really, for an authoritarian government, that's the dream.

And that's really the territory that we're now on the precipice of. And the disturbing thing is that so many people in the liberal establishment are actually calling for this. They want the misinformation units to do more, be more active, be more present and to scrub the internet of wrong ideas. And if people think you're exaggerating, I had a fascinating experience being on question time last week because they have this question that they do before that isn't broadcast. And it was about whether Donald Trump should have been allowed back on Facebook and Instagram. And I don't have the words to describe to you how people think.

I think some people have got themselves into a position where they've forgotten that old, there's no solutions, only trade-offs thing. And they don't think that there are trade-offs to pursuing maximum safety online. And so there was this, the labor woman next to me, for example, she was like, I think this country should be leading the world in what we control in terms of people saying online. And because it wasn't on camera, I didn't say anything. But it's like, do we want to compete with China and North Korea?

Is that what? And a lot of people, in that audience as well, that's how people think now, safety. I want safety. And they think that safety doesn't have a cost. How do we communicate about this? It's actually terrifying and it's terrifying It's happened so quickly Both that people have become complacent

About their liberty in that way You know when you're saying that you want to shut someone else up For lawful speech I'm not talking about Trump in particular But this whole kind of culture that you're referring to You're also saying you're happy to be shut up For things that you might say that are lawful And that your friends can communities can.

The death of speech is the death of ideas. If you have a society without dissent and without free speech, it's a graveyard. It's a graveyard of dying ideas where we will never progress. We will never move forward. And I do think there is like an intellectual poverty in all of this as well. Because when people are resorting to silencing others, they're saying that they don't have the capacity to reason with them. And they don't believe in the strength of ideas and conversation and debate and discussion to reach truths.

You know, truths are now things that are dictated from an elite, you know, back to, we're back to kind of priesthood. And you've got like the likes of Mariana Spring at the BBC, the disinformation reporters and so on who are like the priests and the priestesses of truth. It's so bizarre. In my view, but in also just the kind of post-enlightenment view or free speech, you just have, the most open forum possible is the way that you achieve rationality and truth and discovery. And progress, you're arguing. But this is kind of the point that we've come to where I don't think people, a lot of people think about it that way at all. free speech has become a thing that people who don't want progress apparently use, right? So if you say I'm pro free speech, that means you don't want progress.

How has that happened? I don't know. I don't know. It's really work on the branding of free speech because, yeah, exactly. Free speech is about progress. It's about movement. It's the thing that led to gay rights, to women's rights, to all the rights that we have, you know, or achieved through being able to speak truth to power.

And I think the pandemic was really killer for this because it was, the idea was perpetuated that, you know, just for now, actually free speech and these dangerous ideas can, can kill people, you know, and it's, and we need to save lives. So shut up, basically. And that's what's reflected, I think, in the work that these units were doing, these disinformation units, blank check, no oversight. Politicians didn't even have curiosity about what they were doing. No one was asking the questions. And we've had to dig, dig and dig to find what I'm afraid was probably inevitable that when you allow, you know, resources to accumulate in the shadows, then they will be serving the interests of the powerful, not of the public. That just seems

obvious, but obviously, you know, that is what we've now found. And, uh, something needs to be done about it. I mean, actually, these units need to be shut down. You can't have senior politicians being spied on by their own government for wrong think. Look, when I was reading through the report, I couldn't quite believe it, but then I thought, of course I can believe it. And the particular thing that I found very believable was the collusion between government and big tech, because we've seen it with the Twitter files, which Elon Musk released.

And you start to really, really worry. where you think, like, anything that I say online could be reported back. And not only could it mean that somebody could lose their job, it means that the government is then tracking them. That's like something out of Soviet Russia. Yeah, it is. And there's been quite a lot of, like, pinch myself moments during this. I think particularly when, you know, so to give some examples of the people affected,

David Davis MP, who has been a member of parliament for decades, very well-known civil libertarian, a senior within the Conservative Party, who are of course in government, an ex-minister. And his position during the pandemic was he praised the vaccine rollout. He spoke a lot about vaccines, but he was very critical of mandatory domestic vaccine passports, as of course we were.

we did a massive campaign on it. As you were. All the sensible people were. We were probably all on the list. Yeah. And the fact that he did, you know, is really quite extraordinary. Actually, this was a mainstream political opinion. The parliamentary rebellion against vaccine passports was the biggest rebellion since the vote on the Iraq war in parliament.

And this was a big, big deal politically. Why should he be being recognized? recorded by disinformation units for actually giving fact-based criticisms of the vaccine passport scheme. And let's not forget, who were the purveyors of disinformation during this period? Because a lot of people were saying vaccine passports were going to save lives. They were absolutely critical. We can't go out without them. And all the rest of it, we found out in our legal challenge that we did, we did too, against the Welsh government and the UK government on vaccine passports that they had no evidence that they were going to have any measurable impact

on public health. And we have that in writing. And yet we were told such a different story. So, you know, it's these kinds of things where you think, yeah, this is getting a bit, you know, what democracy is really falling apart here. Another example, it was Carl Hennigan, Professor Carl Hennigan from Oxford University, Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, this is someone that surely we want to be listening to during a pandemic. They were. They were. That's true, a bit too much.

But to put him in a disinformation report, he's an expert. He was taken off Twitter for a period. His studies were marked as false by Facebook, but again, by these, you know, like people that could not compete with Frescal Hennigan in terms of his expertise. It's absolutely absurd. The fact that both of these people are in these government reports and that we know also they were being censored. David Davis had a video taken off YouTube.

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. we weren't able to get the correspondence between these units and the social media companies. They also won't tell us how many times they flagged stuff, no information whatsoever. So something very useful that Elon Musk could do would be disclose all of the communications between the British government and Twitter during the pandemic. And let's get to the bottom of this.

Do you not have a certain sympathy? I can't believe I'm saying these words for the social media companies when you think, I remember at the beginning of the pandemic where you had David Ike getting millions of views for things that were palpable nonsense. And then moving forward, then you have the government pressing down on them, you have people saying that they're platforming misinformation. Weren't they, in many ways, between a rock and a hard place as well? Yeah, they're totally not prepared for, they weren't prepared for that kind of a challenge.

but in my view the easiest thing for them to do would be to follow the laws of the country that they operate in and then choose what countries they operate in so you know it's not against the law to spout nonsense and it's really easy to deal with

and I do worry as well that if for example you've got people that are say spreading conspiracy theories about 5G masks or this kind of thing if you just silence those people, what do the people who are interested in the ideas do and where do they go and what do they then think? But you had to silence it. Is it that dangerous?

You know, these ideas. So, you know, you'll either think, yeah, it's dangerous because it's wrong or you'll think it's dangerous because you don't want me to know it for some reason. I think the best way of challenging nonsense or falsehoods of any type. And I mean from fringe people all the way up to the stuff. some of the stuff that gets printed in the mainstream press is more speech. And to just suppress it and silence it means that it will just grow and cultivate in another part of society or the internet where there's probably a less rational discussion.

Soki, are you concerned that you've just uncovered a tip of the iceberg here? Because I would imagine, if I was a powerful person in government, and I've identified a Toby Young or a Julia Hartley Brewer or a Professor Carl Henninggan or a David Davis who's annoying me and not allowing me to do the things that I'm doing for public health, quote, unquote. I'd quite want to know what they're sending to each other on their telegram groups and their WhatsApp chats

and their text messages and what they're saying on their voicemails and on their phone calls. Is there any suggestion that that was going on? 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, they have extraordinary powers to do exactly what you're talking about, you know, to hack. phones and intercept calls and messages and all the rest of it. We spoke last time I was here about those powers at length. And, you know, public health is in law one of the reasons that, you know,

governments can sometimes intrude on your privacy or intrude on your right to freedom of expression. But it's about proportionality. And so who knows? We need probably more whistleblowers. It's an interesting aspect of the work of the 77th brigade in my view and based on some people that I've spoken to is that yes, it's really concerning what they were doing. I mean, just searching all of the internet, clearly impacting people at home, clearly with policy direction from number 10 to look at things that number 10 was interested in. But it was also a bit of a distraction and meant that people were, especially before we found out what we've just found out, some people were, I guess, building conspiracy theories around what the 77th

brigade were doing. And the name is kind of spooky, isn't it? The 77 brigade, you know, what they're up to. But then people weren't talking about where the power really lies. And actually an interesting aspect of what the whistleblower tells us is that they had their resources. were crap, they had nothing. They wouldn't have been able to find disinformation if they'd been desperate to because they didn't have the resources, they didn't have the skills even. And the whistleblower suspects that there was foreign disinformation being spread at the time, some of which other people have written about, perhaps stuff coming from China, for instance,

and that they would have had absolutely no chance of finding it. So where does the power really lie to be doing some of this stuff? And, you know, that would be in GCHQ and MI5. And based on what we know about their activities over the years and their interest in politics, you know, a lot of this rapport and our investigation has strong echoes of Reds under the bed that we saw in the 80s where UK intelligence agencies were really interested in, you know, political. surveillance, what union activists were up to and what leftists were up to more broadly, as you had McCarthyism in the US for the same kind of thing. So the intelligence agencies have formed for this. And wouldn't it be the fact that during a pandemic, you know, this kind of sense of

crisis that they would be highly active during that period if policy units were? Yeah, I think so. Silkie isn't part of the problem that we're here talking and we're talking about the government and I'm thinking, ah, there's a general election in a couple of years, we're going to, we're going to vote these bastards out, it's going to be fine. And then I remember that then it's a labour coming in and they're even more insane about this. Yeah, well, yeah, the conversation around misinformation and disinformation, I think to some degree hasn't happened yet and around free speech generally, it has been really poor.

on the online safety bill, for instance. You know, we've got this regulation coming through at the moment, which is about precisely what, you know, the person you were sitting next to at question time was talking about controlling speech on the internet, lawful speech. 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. 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 poses new challenges. There is no question about that because I think the example you gave me was actually a really good one. David Dyke at the beginning of the pandemic, you know, if you get to a point where somebody

can go on a YouTube show or even on a private platform of some kind and say stuff and then an hour later people are burning down 5G masks, I can see why a government would feel the need to do something about that. You have stories of kids who see suicide material and end up, you know, like there's bad outcomes. So you can see why that would be an issue. But it's just, it seems to me that a lot of people don't realize that there are tradeoffs here that have to be really carefully watched. And the online harms bill did get watered down a little bit, didn't it? Yeah, can I just come back on that?

Yeah, yeah, sure. There are tradeoffs on a lot of what happened during the pandemic. people were made to be by the government to be scared for their you know really really scared not leaving out people still have mental health problems from this I was at a dinner with someone recently who said that their wife hadn't left their loft for months so you know because they were isolating and scared to come out of the house you know there are a lot of people that have been badly affected by this. And look, we still don't know, by the way,

whether lockdown saved lives or not. They may have over a period of time and they're costing more lives than they saved. So I agree with you. There's still a big fallout. Of course, you've got Sweden to look, you know, we just look at Sweden on that maybe. But yeah, I mean, big, big questions

that are still clearly being answered. And so, you know, yes, of course, you know, with some extreme fringe speech, there can be outcomes we can live. to it, but actually we just lived through an extraordinary government propaganda period that also had terrible, terrible impacts on a lot of people, whilst, by the way, they were having piss-ups in Ten Downing Street. You know, so the behaviours of the people that were behind this were totally contradicting the way that other people were made to feel. And so trust

is disintegrating. And part, you know, one of the reasons that this matters so much, much and that we can't put down all these social ills to just like people spreading disinformation and misinformation and misinformation online, someone's gone out and attacked a 5G mask because they read a tweet. I think it's more complicated than that. I think trust in authority is totally disintegrating and people don't really trust in the mainstream press in the same way. They don't trust their governments. COVID didn't help, did it, looking at how the government behaved during those years. So, you know, a lot's gone really wrong. And what we've exposed in this report, will confirm a lot of people's fears as well about the kinds of excesses

that government might seek during this period. Now with extra laws coming through, like the online safety bill and also several anti-protest laws, there's just more and more and more of it. So the online safety bill has been watered down to some degree. I think in no small part because of Big Brother Watch's campaign, working with parliamentarians and other, speech groups.

So now this whole concept that was going to be introduced into law of legal but harmful speech, which, you know, it always sort of gives chills, really, the idea that there are things that you are lawful to say, but... You can't say them. Say them anymore, exactly. Which is, yeah, a legal mess. But actually, what's come into its place is that social media companies, terms and conditions are now a legal duty. So they will be legally bound, not just as in a contract

between the person using it and the company, but actually with the government, they are legally bound to observe those terms and conditions, which given some of the terms and conditions we've seen over the years, is quite strange. You know, so let's say if a platform says that you can't misgender anyone, you know, looking at the case that's being discussed at the moment of the Scottish trans woman who is a rapist. Sorry. I haven't read loads about the case, but I'm just thinking about it. Okay, so Scottish trans woman who is a repeated rapist. Okay. Isler Graham. Right. You know, would it then, would British law then say, if a platform said you can't misgender anyone, would then this new construction mean that you can't use the wrong pronouns for this person on a social media platform according to the government

because the government is making these terms and conditions a legal duty. Do you see what I mean? Yes. So, you know, when YouTube has crazy rules or, you know, Twitter may less so now, I don't know, but yeah, it's strange. Or like, you know, Musk not wanting his private jets to be tracked or whatever. If that becomes Twitter law, you know, that kind of becomes the law because the government is saying it's now a legal duty that you always impose these laws. So that's a nonsense. But unfortunately, no one's talking about it.

Silkie, do you think the only way that people really wake up is when something happens or an event happens that is so powerful or it just strikes the people as something that is completely wrong? So, for instance, the one time when we actually changed football stadiums in this country was after the Hillsborough disaster, because it was such an awful, awful event. And if you look at the pandemic, the moment people woke up when they started to think about, you know, the right to congregate and the right to protest is the police's actions during the Serra Everard vigil. Do you think we just need something to happen? Like, I don't know what it is where people just collectively come to their senses. Maybe, but by then it will be too late. So my message would be, please don't wait. Please don't be complacent.

If you can remember what that feeling was like when we were all told by the government to stay in your home, weren't sure if we were going to be able to travel again, didn't know when we'd be able to be out, didn't know if normal life was coming back. And of course, you know, a lot of us have fought tooth and nail to make sure that it did and that all of these laws were repealed. But there was a sense then, like, is it too late? 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 someone 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, but also the culture is shifting. You know, so already the fact that you can sit in an audience of people and they have these really, you know, almost disdain actually for free speech, not even an indifference to it, but actually it's been recast as a threat to democracy rather than the foundation of it, then, you know, something's going really, really wrong. How do we come back from that?

And I think that's why conversations like these and platforms like these are important because this is as much about, you know, culture and ideas as it is about anything. People have to really realize now how important these liberties are. This is why I always say to Americans because they're like, well, how come, you know, like there are certain issues in terms of the cultural stuff that we often talk about in the show. We're actually in the UK, we're doing much better than they are in America. But on speech, we're doing far worse. And they always go, well, is it because of the First Amendment?

And I don't think it's because of the First Amendment. I think it's because they have a culture, a First Amendment culture, which is at the end of the day, like anyone can say what they want unless they're inciting violence. We don't have that. We don't have that. And the pandemic was almost like, I almost, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I think Francis and I were both very disappointed in this country, actually,

and in many people in this country, because maybe we were projecting our own views and values onto it, But I certainly didn't think that the polling numbers and people's behavior during the pandemic showed that we live in a society that values freedom of expression. Yeah, but it's all relative. I mean, how the UK did compared to the rest of Europe, you know, we did a lot better than a lot of European countries. We got rid of the restrictions quicker than anyone else. We didn't have, you know, the EU now has a EU-wide super state COVID-COVID.

pass system. They're introducing biometric borders, you know, so, you know, they've got millions of people enrolled in databases with IDs, digital IDs and passes. 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. And I'm saying that as a non-partisan, you know, we're a non-partisan organization. I say it's from a totally non-partisan point of view. And I should say as well for people, like you genuinely are. Like, that's not a thing that you say because you're right-wing evil bigot.

You're actually, you're not party political. You just care about these issues. Yeah, that's true. always have done. Yes, yeah, exactly. Which makes you right wing. Yeah, it makes me a right wing bit. Oh, come full circle. But yeah, and I think that's why, you know, when we're thinking about next government and, you know, where the currents are going on these issues, you know, yeah, it is really worrying. So things like the investigation and the campaign that we're running now to shut down the Ministry of Truth, it's an opportunity.

it's an appeal really. We're trying to create disruption in this current and to try to turn the tide back. So what can people do, Silkie? Because this is one of my biggest frustrations with doing this, and I'm very proud of what we've built here. But quite often we have a conversation, and look, Francis made a great point.

Like, okay, we've got a general election coming up. Okay, the Tories are probably going to get kicked out. Now what? Like, if I'm watching this, what am I supposed to do? How am I going to change this? Go to mini-truth.co.uk, which is our campaign page to shut down the Ministry of Truth. We've got a petition that people can sign. Please sign up to our emails for updates about the campaign because we won't let this go.

You know, all we will ask people to do is sign a petition or join us. Get the Ministry of Truth T-shirt. You know, and just be involved in the campaign. But, you know, really talk about it. Share the information with it. Share this with people. Share the information with people. I think so much is happening because politicians think that people just don't care.

And particularly on free speech, you know, these disinformation units, misinformation units have popped up because of the moral panic that's been, drummed up really about people saying the wrong things online. And I think we need to see at least a similar forceback saying free speech really matters. And actually even where you are talking about the misinformation online, the best way of dealing with it is with more information, with more speech. So I think there are things that people can do, definitely. I mean, certainly through campaign groups like ours.

And I think the benefit of us doing investigating, in-house is for precisely that reason that, you know, we follow up everything with action and we won't drop it until, you know, there has been changed. Because it's not only online that we've seen the laws being changed, it's also the right to protest. The government have completely changed the laws. Can you just explain that a little bit? Yes.

We've been campaigning on a couple of the anti-protest bills that have been coming through Parliament lately because of of course we've all seen the scenes of people gluing themselves to rows and throwing things on paintings and all the rest of it but police already have powers to deal with those things but under the pretense of dealing with these people we're just getting more and more extreme anti-protest powers introduced in fact we are in the process of winning a campaign against GPS ankle tags that the government want to introduce for innocent campaigners. You know, people that haven't even broken the law.

If they're deemed disruptive, you can be fitted with a GPS ankle tag to monitor where you go and make sure that you don't go to other protests. Well, you haven't broken the law and they're going to track your movement. Yeah. Yes. And monitor what you do on the internet and control what you do on the internet. So make sure you're not doing protest related activities on their ideas. 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. And this really is the kind of power where I think, you know, if even the Russians or the Chinese, I say, we're going to ankle tag our protesters, you'd be like, wow, they've really gone for it now. You know, like this is really extreme. And this is happening in Britain. 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 have not guilty of a crime. Yeah, it really is. But I think we're winning this campaign.

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, but it's not confirmed right just now. How do you think, how do you say, That's wrong thing. That's a tag for you, you know, Constantine. It would just be me walking around my flat.

But how do you, and coming here, that's about all I do nowadays. But how do you, how do they sit in government and come up with these ideas? Like, have they not read Orwell? Like, does it not occur to them? They've read all well. They're following the script very closely. Yeah. It seems like it, doesn't it?

Yeah, but just with the benefits of technology, you know, so this is like a high-tech dystopia. which is, you know, the blueprint is China. You look at how closely you can be followed and tracked, let alone through an ankle tag, you know, things like facial recognition, surveillance, which the police are using more and more now. But, yeah, I mean, again, and this stuff can only happen in an environment where people are not protecting their rights closely enough,

where people have lost sight of how important it is to be able to protest against your government. And also, you know, if the other people who are in Parliament in opposition are not speaking up loudly enough about these things, the reason that they won't is because the press is so anti-protest at the moment. And so this really safe line is being followed of just kind of allowing the government to self-implode. I am anti-extinction rebellion, gluing themselves and blocking ambulances. But as you said, there are laws in place for the police to deal with protests that are actually endangering lives or damaging property and whatever. And I'm perfectly happy for those laws to be applied. But I don't want those people ankle-tagged that they haven't broken the law.

Yeah. But quite like the existing laws to be enforced so, which we don't do any of that on protests and anything else, by the way. But instead we just make up new laws to deal with other things. It was like the David Ames murder last year where the guy. tragically is stabbed to death by an Islamist. And then they're all banging on about online hate speech. And you're going, these things aren't connected, but we seem to just go, you know,

whatever the problem is, let's take some of people's rights away from them. Yeah, it's really lazy, isn't it? And also, I think particularly around policing, we're overlooking the fact that the police, particularly in London, are totally dysfunctional. You know, they cannot, they're committing more crimes than they're solving.

I mean, they just cannot deal with, you know, even these most basic public order issues or even serious crime or really anything. And so the easiest thing for government to do is to just whack through a bunch of new extraordinary powers and then say, we've been really tough. But the same things will happen because where powers already exist, they're not being used. And why is that happening? Why aren't the police using the powers of the head? Because they're totally dysfunctional.

And what are they dysfunctional? I mean, this is like a big conundrum at the moment, isn't it? How do you deal, especially with the Metropolitan Police, like, how is it so fatally broken policing in London that we have really high crime, terrible sexual violence as well, and literally thousands of police officers under investigation as well for some of these crimes? 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. 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. Do you remember what this was,

what actually happened with that? So much has happened. I don't know. I mean, I know that a lot of journalists were arrested and manhandled by police during this time. 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. There was an LBC journalist that was arrested for covering Extinction Rebellion.

Yeah, for, I think it was a 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. So now journalists are kind of seen as proxy spies for the police, which goes to show, I think, the risks of, introducing extreme powers, you can't just say, well, they probably won't be used like all the other ones. So they will be sometimes in the worst circumstances. So, you know, these anti-freedom laws will affect journalists and the whole kind of civil society that's supposed to prop up democracy.

Tilkey, thank you so much for coming on the show. Have I cheered you up? Yes, massively. He loves a bit of depressiveness. Yeah, I'm like, doom and gloom, it's all shit. Have it confirmed fabulous. But no, thank you so much for coming. It was an absolutely brilliant interview.

If people wanted to find out about your amazing work online, what is the best way to do that? How can they join the struggle? Yes, well, this is the good part that we're doing something about it. So bigbrotherwatch.org.com. We're on Twitter as well at Big Brother Watch. We're on YouTube. We're Brother Watch HQ.

And this particular campaign page is at mini-truth.com. in true Orwellian style. And Silki, keep up the good work because you are, it's very important. And this investigation you've done by the time this goes out, I'm hopeful it's exploded everywhere. You've got a, it's coming out in the mail on Sunday, and you've got a bunch of interviews coming up, and I hope this contributes to it. So thanks for coming back.

Well done on what you're doing. And thank you guys for watching and listening. If you want to see a couple of bonus questions, our supporters have already submitted and hear the answers to them. our locals, we will see you there. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, always remember that it's available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. People in tech, myself included, tend to always make the false assumption that all progress will only be used for good. Do you think politicians have the necessary grasp of technology? I mean, we know the answer to that,

and it's potential negative implications for privacy, or are they too often blinded by positivity from tech companies?