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Silkie Carlo Profile picture
Silkie Carlo
@silkiecarlo
Director @BigBrotherWatch. Fighting for a free future for all. Working on human rights + tech. Vegangelist 🌱Buddhist 🌞 Views = my own✌️
3 subscribers
Sep 24 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Our response to Starmer’s bank spying plans in “Fraud, Error and Debt Bill” in full:

I also want to give context & explain why this is *exactly the same* so far as the Tory Govt’s benefits bank spying powers Labour criticised & we defeated just 3m ago🧵bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/bankspying/big… Labour’s bank spying plan, published today, is set out here:

Everyone wants fraud to be dealt with, and the government already has strong powers to investigate the bank statements of suspects. BUTgov.uk/government/new…
Aug 8 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
🚨 Government has rebooted the Counter Disinformation Unit to monitor lawful online speech.

Isn’t it curious how almost every problem this country faces seems to have a ready-made solution rooted in digital authoritarianism?

I’m ✍️ in @Telegraph today:

telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/0…
Image If the history of chaos that threatens democracy teaches us anything, it is to protect our democratic rights with more vigour, not less, when they are under threat.

Criminal activity and inciting violence online should be prosecuted.

But lawful speech should be out of bounds.
Dec 11, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
💥We have new docs showing multiple arms of British military have monitored *domestic* social media under the banner of countering “mis/disinformation”

They even factored the “presentational risk” of “spying” & doing “PSYOPS” in UK - but thought it “unlikely” they’d be found out Image For the 1st time, docs show it didn’t only involve the information warfare army unit 77 Brigade, but the RAF!

And that they weren’t only spying for the Cabinet Office but also for DCMS (now @SciTechgovuk) Counter Disinformation Unit - & checking for terms of service violations🙄
Nov 26, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
💥HUGE NEWS

We’ve got documentary evidence that UK MoD 77th Brigade monitored British politicians inc @CarolineLucas & press inc @BBCPolitics under the guise of “countering disinformation” - if they (I kid you not) “questioned government decision making”

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1… It’s also evidence of a cover up.

Because the British Army previously claimed that the 77th Brigade “do not, and have never, conducted any kind of action against British citizens” and that “all work is internationally focused.”

That was a lie.
Apr 28, 2023 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
The UK’s becoming the data dumpster of Europe where our sensitive data can be harvested like nowhere else.

Facial recognition surveillance is soon to be routinely used by police + increasingly in shops.

Only China/Russia routinely use face rec like this

StopFacialRecognition.org This is in no small part due to weak, ineffective regulators.

We made a 45pg complaint to @ICOnews with all the ways facial recognition company Facewatch is breaking the law. A year later, they sent a 1pg reply that didn’t address the facts + said they’d take no further action.
Feb 7, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
🚨NEWS: UK Govnt announce steps towards potentially introducing a CBDC - centralised bank digital currency.

Resharing my opinion piece from last year on the civil liberties risks of an increasingly cashless society…

Use it or lose it! 💷

telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/0… The consultation starts Tuesday.

Parliament’s Economics Affairs Committee analysed CBDCs last year and concluded there was *no case* for a UK CBDC - but serious risks of state surveillance and a “centralised point of failure”.

CBDCs also go in hand with digital IDs.
Feb 5, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
It has been 1 week since we published the #MinistryOfTruth - it had a spread, column + leader in the UK’s most read paper; 1.4mil people saw the Twitter thread(!); hundreds of thousands are watching reporting/discussion about it online.

Unfortunately, the BBC hasn’t covered it. Despite teams of “disinformation specialists”.

Even if they think UK govt depts hosting McCarthyite enclaves of truth admins who collate reports on MPs & academics is A ok, don’t they think there’s a public interest in military power being deployed at our own population online?
Jan 31, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Whilst we welcome this probe, and that the Defence Secretary is clearly concerned by the #MinistryOfTruth exposé… he seems to admit the role of 77th Brigade in domestic monitoring?! Which they had *always* denied.

“It uses (…) social media to assess UK disinformation trends” This is a significant departure (as found in our investigation) from claims in previous statements - eg Gen. Nick Carter in 2020:

“The 77th Brigade are not currently supporting in the Cabinet Office with any projects that would involve interactions with British Citizens” and
Jan 30, 2023 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
“I haven’t read the #MinistryOfTruth report but it’s nonsense” says MP @JamesSunderl

It took huge courage from the whistleblower, who is a patriot, and a huge amount of work by my team and the Mail on Sunday to publish this important information. I’ll post key passages for you. This is the whistleblower’s testimony.

Everyone agrees the army had more important things to do. That’s not why the truth is “nonsense”, it’s why it’s a scandal.

77x was poorly resourced and badly directed. The outcome was undemocratic.

Full report: bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/wp-content/upl… ImageImageImage
Jan 29, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Today we released a complex investigation - I want to clarify something that some have misunderstood.

The prolific monitoring/reporting of critics was government’s Counter Disinformation Unit in the Culture Department. Attention must be focused there - it needs to be shut down The 77th Brigade did schoolboy key word Twitter searches & effectively sentiment analysis. They didn’t have clearance to repeatedly view individual accounts & they had very poor resources. Please read the whistleblower’s testimony carefully in our report bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/wp-content/upl…
Mar 26, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Take it from someone who works day in day out to defend free speech *and* privacy - this is dangerous, headline-chasing nonsense from @DominicRaab that will in fact emaciate the greatest constitutional protections for citizens’ liberties in Britain - rights Churchill fought for. If you’re worried about “cancel culture”, as I am, you’ll be worried about a) Dominic Raab trying to cancel our human rights and b) the Online Safety Bill he presides over, which poses one of the greatest threats to free speech of any law in living memory - a censor’s charter.
Mar 10, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
An unexpected visitor to the Met police deployment of facial recognition today, Commissioner Cressida Dick. And we left her with nothing to say..! #StopFacialRecognition Transcript:

Me: (..) 95% of the flags are misidentifications

CD: I’m sorry, we’re not going to agree on this

Me: No we won’t because these are the facts

CD: Nobody’s privacy was intruded on was it? (smiles 🥴)

Me: Absolutely it was
Feb 13, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
SOLIDARITY with Freedom Convoys against vaccine mandates, against the wave of anti-working class authoritarianism, from Canada to France to New Zealand ✌️

“Fears it may affect the Super Bowl” 🤪 you can’t make this stuff up… give your head a wobble @Newsweek
Jan 19, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
The end of Covid passes in England is a MONUMENTAL victory for civil liberties & equality 🎉

What separates us from much of the covid-ID-managed West is the principled courage of every Brit who stood up when it mattered, against the odds, & our uniquely strong civil society 👊 Not many countries have had active + impactful civil liberties organisations during the pandemic, & it shows.

Here’s a run down of just *some* of the work we’ve done, thanks to incredible public support, to push back on covid IDs over the past 20 months!

crowdfunder.co.uk/p/join-the-cha…
Jan 17, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Buckle up 😬

This afternoon, the government’s anti-democracy agenda dominates parliament, with Bills being progressed to criminalise just about any protest, entrench pandemic anti-protest laws that banned the Clapham vigil, and impose mandatory voter ID - a leap to national ID. This is despite the fact we already have *extensive* laws to deal with protest actions like road blocking, and there are vanishingly few cases of ballot box fraud.

Yet millions stand to be silenced and disenfranchised after this power grab.
Oct 30, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Watch @joerogan and @BretWeinstein saying what perhaps the likes of the ACLU should be saying about the unjustified and dangerous dehumanisation of unvaccinated people, who people are now comfortably calling “plague rats”. Vaccines are mandatory for state workers in New York from Monday.

Officials are panicking about shortages, as 35% fire + 25% police are unvaccinated (but have high levels of natural immunity).

Where’s the left whilst frontline workers are being dehumanised & made destitute?!😬
Sep 16, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Two bits of news make it now seem certain that the NHS App (NHS Covid Pass) is soon to become a vaccine ID, regardless of whether it's mandated for domestic events.

1. Travel lists are to be replaced with vaccine-based rules

2. Care workers must show vaccine pass to keep jobs So, soon, it seems test and antibody status are to be removed from the NHS Covid Pass.

Government said it would do this to implement the vaccine passport scheme - but looking at these other policy areas, it's clear, it's happening anyway. Soon.
Sep 4, 2021 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Q: When did Ivermectin go from being a cheap, safe, widely used drug “commonly used to treat parasitic infections” in humans & animals globally, to being “the horse deworming drug”?

A: July 2021

[Disclaimer: I’m not really interested in ivermectin, but am in the spin]

BBC.. The Oxford PRINCIPLE study, which is trialling Ivermectin with Covid patients, describes it quite unlike the BBC as “a safe, broad spectrum antiparasitic drug which is in wide use” that (for Covid) “has shown promising results as a potential treatment in small studies in humans”
Jul 12, 2021 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill has second reading in the Commons today. And something strange has happened on the Labour front bench… 🧵 There are problems with this Bill. In practice, it could either make no material change (there are existing legal duties to protect free speech in education) or create more authoritative or political interference with what speech is deemed acceptable or not.
Jun 10, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Maya’s case was hard for her & many women, esp @jk_rowling, who defended the right to hold the basic belief that sex should not be conflated w gender identity.

Today’s judgment is a victory for free expression & the women who fought for it ✊@MForstater @anyabike @jodieginsberg The judgment is rightly mindful of the risks trans people can face at work and the difference between beliefs, expression and harassment.
May 25, 2021 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
Today's Grand Chamber judgment on UK mass interception definitively vindicates @Snowden's courageous whilstleblowing. The UK's surveillance was unlawful and breached millions of citizens' rights.

But in some ways this is just the end of the beginning of a longer journey... Together, Snowden, journalists, lawyers, rights groups and supporters enabled this challenge + ensured much needed accountability. Safeguards will improve for millions of people.

But the Court missed an opportunity for a definitive judgment on the principle of mass interception.