The Conservatives have demanded an official investigation into a Whitehall “spying” unit that tracked social media posts during the Southport riots.
Julia Lopez, the shadow technology secretary, has written to Peter Kyle to call for the National Security Online Information Team (NSOIT) to be referred to a committee for scrutiny.
Last week, The Telegraph revealed that the unit had been used to flag content about asylum hotels and “two-tier” justice to social media companies at the height of the riots.
In early August last year, the team wrote to TikTok to suggest that some of the content was against the platform’s terms of service and was spreading “concerning narratives” about policing in the UK.
Big Brother Watch, a campaign group, described it as an “unaccountable and secretive government unit [that] is spying on speech that is critical of the police and government policies”.
