Surprise surprise, government can mobilise police/army to protect their citizens. Who would have thought.
Come on, no one knew if it was a new black death or just a harmless virus. The hysteria about government taking valid steps in an unclear situation is childish.
Now all we need to do is police the dissent caused by the speech restrictions; and counteract it by having media voices repeat loudly and often that such concerns are based on (mis|dis|mal)information; and everything is fixed and everyone happy, right?
The Netherlands had a similar unit; I’d imagine other countries had as well.
In The Netherlands it’s mostly a secret which people were part of the unit, though a couple have been discovered and perhaps there will be more to come.
> no one knew if it was a new black death or just a harmless virus
When did "no one know"?
There was already data in early May 2020 showing risk by age group
This is from The Telegraph so you’ll find many truthful things that are twisted or presented in a way to push their narrative.
See the Twitter Files coverage for another example etc.
From the article: “This is not what ought to happen in a free country.”
What do you expect from a country that's been a police state for the last 23 years or so.
With the introduction of the RIP Act in 2000, which compels those with encrypted data to divulge the keys, under penalty of imprisonment. From that, I could tell something had gone very wrong with our government, even back then.
The RIP Act opened the door to government policing of what information we are reading. Because you could no longer encrypt your data to hide it from the state's prying eyes. It was a watershed moment. And that point was where I could say the UK is no longer a free country anymore.
The UK is an absolute mess in regards to this stuff ... from anti monarchy protestors being arrested, to journalists questioning the Ukraine narrative being arrested (https://thegrayzone.com/2023/05/30/journalist-kit-klarenberg...)
It might be concerning, but this isn't some great exclusive. The establishment was reported in March 2020.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/09/cross-whitehal...
Governements are in a weird place on those fronts. Either they don't try to interfere with what happens on social media, and they are criticized for not protecting people, and also have to deal with the consequences (I'd argue that misinformation about a disease will have health consequences. Maybe they're overedtimated, though ?)
Alternatively, they have to try and "police" social media, which can not look like anything but policing free speech, which, especially in times of uncertainty, is bound to backfire.
I wonder if people would be concerned too if the social media platforms were, in the end, ruled by juges rather than governments?
It would still be a "them", but at least it would not be the same "them". Or would the social networks start to revolt against judges ?
(Yes, I know, it will look a lot like separation of powers ((c) Montesquieu), and like we're going to reinvent "judges" and "the laws of free press from the late 1800s" any time soon.)
It's really quite amusing to see The Telegraph trying to claim the moral high ground over government interference and disinformation.
For those who don't know, The Telegraph is an extreme right media outlet which regularly publishes absolutely batshit denialist nonsense about Covid, climate change, immigration, and all the usual hits.
It's a Q drop for the UK's upper class.
Not coincidentally it used to employ Boris Johnson, and while PM he allegedly said that it was his real boss.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/boris-johnson-refers-telegraph-re...
So here we are with more than 200,000 dead and more than 2 million with Long Covid.
Good job, Telegraph writers. I hope you're all proud of your "journalism."
I can't read the article because it's paywalled (and I'm unwilling to give the Barclay family any cash) but I'm very sceptical about the accuracy of the article given the Telegraph's history of printing lies and nonsense about the pandemic.
See for example: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-55676037
Does HN have any guidelines about paywalled articles? I assume a large proportion of people commenting here won't have read the article.
>Many of the issues being raised were valid at the time and have since been proven to be well-founded.
No, they were not.
More evidence of the Fox-ification of the Telegraph, a once respectable source of news...
I'm not surprised at all. A few months back it was revealed that the Army's information warfare unit was involved in monitoring lockdown critics.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/29/armys-informatio...
https://archive.is/WkAqc