Corbyn slams 'surveillance state' after UK universities pay firm to spy on pro-Palestine students
Twelve British universities have been criticised for paying a private firm run by former military intelligence officials to spy on student protesters and academics.
Horus Security Consultancy Limited, which calls itself a "leading intelligence" firm, has been paid at least £440,000 ($594,000) by universities since 2022 for going through through the social media feeds of students looking for expressions of solidarity with Palestine, and making counter-terror threat assessments.
An investigation by Al Jazeera English and Liberty Investigates revealed this week that the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, University College London, King’s College London, the University of Sheffield, the University of Leicester, the University of Nottingham, and Cardiff Metropolitan University have paid Horus to monitor students and academics.
"Britain is becoming a surveillance state," Your Party leader and MP Jeremy Corbyn told Middle East Eye.
"This is yet another disturbing example of an increasingly draconian crackdown on Palestinian solidarity," he said.
"Universities are meant to encourage students to learn, not intimidate them into silence."
Al Jazeera reported that a 70-year-old Palestinian academic, Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, who was invited in 2023 to lecture at Manchester Metropolitan University was monitored by Horus, as was a pro-Palestinian PhD student at the London School of Economics.
Abdulhadi said: "You’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty… but they actually made an assumption of guilt and started investigating me because of my scholarship."
She added: "What am I supposed to study and teach about to avoid this unwarranted, unfair and unjust scrutiny and surveillance?"
'Deport' protesters
Horus was set up in 2006 as a project within the University of Oxford's security team. Gina Romero, the UN special rapporteur for freedom of peaceful assembly and association, said the use of AI to harvest and analyse student data by companies raised "profound legal concerns" and was creating a "state of terror" among student activists.
Orlaith Roe, the public affairs and communications officer at the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), a UK-based legal group, said: "It is deeply frightening that some of the UK’s most respected universities have paid a private firm run by former military intelligence officials to surveil their own students and academics, particularly those in the pro-Palestine movement.
"The UN special rapporteur’s warning that this amounts to a ‘state of terror’ should sound alarm bells for anyone who values freedom of speech and assembly in this country.
"This is not an isolated incident, but part of a troubling pattern of targeted monitoring of dissent in the UK – and without urgent scrutiny, it will not be the last."
The director of Horus' parent company since 2020, Colonel Tim Collins, has called for non-British protesters "who misbehave" to be deported and has blamed pro-Palestine demonstrations on a "Russian/Iranian orchestrated media campaign".
Horus and several of the universities mentioned in the Al Jazeera report did not respond to requests for comment.
On its website Horus says it adheres to "the strongest ethics in whatever we do, and are fully transparent and legally compliant in whatever territory we operate in."
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
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