In January 2021, the UK government said that members of its infamous “77th Brigade do not, and have never, conducted any kind of action against British citizens.”
But it did. And thus it lied.
In 2022, the NGO I work for, Big Brother Watch, began investigating the UK government’s efforts to monitor social media posts and demand their censorship by the platforms. Over the next few months, we filed dozens of Freedom of Information requests, including for information on the 77th Brigade.
In other words, we discovered that the UK government had, in the name of fighting misinformation, spread disinformation.
The Army unit was not just involved in “countering misinformation,” it led the effort. The 77th Brigade monitored social media platforms throughout 2020 and worked alongside soldiers from the Royal Air Force (RAF).
The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) did not respond to requests to comment for this piece.
MoD created the 77th Brigade in 2015 to serve as its “information warfare” or “psychological operations” unit. The 77th Brigade would consist of “a new generation of ‘Facebook warriors’ who will wage complex and covert information and subversion campaigns,” reported the Financial Times in 2015.
When the Army created the 77th Brigade, its leaders told British Members of Parliament (MPs) that its job was to “build stability overseas,” not spy on citizens at home.
How did the UK military evade the ban on spying on UK citizens? A whistleblower from the 77th Brigade, who spoke to Big Brother Watch on condition of anonymity, said it did so by pretending that the British citizens who UK soldiers were spying upon could, perhaps, be foreigners
Hellbound and Down 