A specialist British police unit created to track online sentiment has referred more than 100 social media posts to local forces for potential arrest, according to data obtained through Freedom of Information requests and reported by The Times of London.
The National Internet Intelligence Investigations unit notified local police about 106 posts, with 50 of those flagged in June alone, in the aftermath of disclosures surrounding the murder of teenager Henry Nowak.
Nowak was stabbed to death by Vikrum Digwa, and his pleas for help were reportedly ignored by officers who doubted the dying student after his killer claimed to be a victim of racism.
Footage of Nowak’s final moments spread widely online and triggered protests and riots in Southampton, fueling accusations of two-tier policing among critics who argued Nowak was treated differently from his killer because he was white.
The task force traces its origins to the Southport riots, which broke out after Axel Rudakubana, a teenager of Rwandan heritage, murdered three young girls and wounded 10 others in a mass stabbing at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event.
Rather than reckon with the role immigration policy played in the tragedy, the Labour government under then-Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer labeled the public backlash “far-right” and launched a sweeping crackdown, arresting more than 1,876 people, including some individuals whose only offense was a social media post.
Police chiefs declined to detail the specific posts flagged by the unit, saying disclosure could jeopardize ongoing investigations.
They nonetheless acknowledged the initiative remains “still in the early stages of being established,” a signal that the volume of flagged posts is likely to grow.
Britain already ranks among the most aggressive Western nations in policing online speech.
The Times of London has estimated that police made 33 arrests per day in 2023 over allegedly offensive online content, totaling 12,183 arrests for the year, all before this new task force reached full operation.
The National Police Coordination Centre, the same body that oversaw Britain’s policing response during COVID-19 lockdowns, defended the unit’s mission, saying it “supports policing’s understanding of protest-related activity in the online environment by developing a broader picture of emerging, potential risks.”
The centre added: “Looking across force boundaries enables the identification of issues that may not be evident from information held within individual force areas alone.”
The online monitoring effort follows a pattern set during the pandemic, when the British government deployed the Army’s 77 Brigade, a specialist “information warfare” unit, to track and influence public opinion, including monitoring journalists and politicians critical of lockdown policy.