UK Government Body Kept Files on People Criticizing Prevent Program

ninalanyon

Is anyone surprised?

ktallett

Well I am on the list as are millions. The prevent program was and only ever will be a citizen tracking program in disguise. Won't somebody think of the children or think of the what the "terrorists" may do. (Terrorists being anyone who disagrees with us).

mike_hearn

The Yookay Government has become an atrocious far left dystopia over the past ten years so a lot of people no longer trust anything they say, but this particular thing seems to be a non-event. The complaints were being collected by a department that is supposed to be supervising Prevent, and they came from public internet comments with no apparent attempt to de-anonymize them. OK - how is the supervisor supposed to know what people think of Prevent or why they hate it if they aren't going out there and collecting feedback? Did the people criticizing it online not want the government to take notice of their complaints, and maybe even act on them? The ReclaimTheNet article relies heavily on blurring the lines between Prevent and the "Prevent Standards and Compliance Unit". Now, cynical people might argue that there can't be any real difference between these two parts of the government and the whole civil service marches to one agenda. And sure, there's plenty of evidence for that point of view. But if there was to be a difference, and there were people in the civil service who knew Prevent needed to be reigned in, then collecting evidence for that point of view would make a lot of sense. For this to be a sign of the times would require them to be going to X and Reddit saying give us the IP addresses of these complaints. But there's no evidence they did that.

DicIfTEx

There is a sibling comment that makes some valid points, which are unfortunately undermined by the commenter's decision to wrap them in bizarre far-right dogwhistles. I am as critical of the British government as anyone, and think Prevent is a civil rights-assaulting boondoggle that does a rather poor job of preventing anything.[0] At the same time, this article is clearly some pretty thin gruel. The contention is that the body responsible for handling complaints about the programme also took it upon itself to consider 'open source' complaints, which were published openly either online or in print. The only real complaint here seems to be that this amounts to the government putting critics on 'a list'. Yes, it does, but those same critics (along with everybody else) are also on government lists for taxation, healthcare, etc.; this RSI group will now be on a list of FoI requests. The issue is not the presence of a name inside a data structure (without which no function of government would be possible), but what the government does with those names. There is no indication that private complaints were monitored, or even that those who complained publicly were contacted, surveilled or pursued in any way. Absent any additional evidence of misdeeds, this seems like an organ of state self-scrutiny performing its task in an admirably proactive way. [0]: https://bylinetimes.com/2026/09/11/from-9-11-to-southport-th...

znpy

the uk is a walking dead of a nation, and it's sad. once the beacon of freedom, now an orwellian nation. so sad, so so sad.

elmer2

Is this any surprise from a government that arrests people over non-threatening social media posts?