IT had been rumoured that all those who disagreed with the official line during the pandemic were being monitored.
Thanks to a report from Big Brother Watch, we now know that was true.
The so-called Covid Disinformation Unit (CDU), originally set up to monitor fake news, expanded its remit to include anyone who dared to express a contrary view.
The social media posts of academics, scientists, journalists and MPs, who doubted the predicted death rates, vaccine rollouts and passports, school closures or successive lockdowns, were flagged up as ‘disinformation’.
The Telegraph has this week alleged that the CDU was in ‘hourly contact’ with social media firms, urging them to remove such posts, including legitimate opinions that did not necessarily breach guidelines.
The result, as Professor Carl Heneghan, director of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence Based Medicine has said, is the public was fed ‘a narrative of fear based on untruths’.
Such state censorship is positively sinister, worthy of the Stasi.
Even under emergency regulations, we have a duty to protect lawful free speech and the individuals involved.
These new revelations have led the Information Commissioner’s Office this week to reinvestigate the extent to which people’s personal data is being used.
This is the second time the data protection watchdog has scrutinised the CDU, despite its insistence that it ‘does not monitor individuals’.
There are calls for a parliamentary enquiry and the immediate suspension of the unit.
They cannot come soon enough.
Meanwhile, the covid inquiry, which started taking public evidence this week, is already exposing the inadequacies of our pandemic preparedness.
Not that any other country did notably better.
Only Sweden, if you remember, avoided lockdown.
A sobering lesson for all of us should we ever face another pandemic.