The British state is compiling a list of people who criticise its own counter-terror programme. Ordinary X and Reddit users who questioned Prevent training, flagged a one-sided focus on the “far Right,” or simply criticised it have had their posts logged, stored and “investigated” by a Home Office-linked unit most of them have never heard of.
Officials spent more than a year trying to keep that database secret. They only released it after an appeal to the Information Commissioner’s Office. The public was never told their feeds were being trawled.
The Standards and Compliance Unit, or StaCU, was set up in February 2024 as an “opaque” body to handle complaints about Prevent, the safeguarding scheme sold as a way to stop people becoming terrorists. Documents obtained by The Metro and released by Rights & Security International show StaCU did more than wait for formal complaints.
Between March 2024 and February 2025 it made 77 “observations” of critical online comments, most of them from X, with others from Reddit and even articles in the Guardian and the Telegraph.
Jacob Smith, Freedom of Expression and Belief Team Leader at Rights & Security International, fought for a year to force the Home Office to publish the material.
“It is shocking that the government has been trawling X and Reddit to find out who has been critiquing Prevent – and then storing that information,” he said. “You should be allowed to criticise government policy without being put on a list.”
He added: “People should be able to express their views on social media without that being catalogued in government databases.”
Many of those logged, he said, had posted without thinking “that the government might be looking at their feed and taking that data. It is in an almost private setting.”
His conclusion was blunt: “It’s a stark reminder that, in the government’s eyes, anything you share online is fair game and could go into a file forever.”
A large share of the logged posts accused Prevent training of treating the “far Right” as the main threat while skating over Islamist extremism.
One X user was recorded after calling the training “complete bullshit.” They wrote: “Anyone’s who done the prevent training knows it only talks about the far Right. Islam extremism isn’t even mentioned.”
