By Cam Wakefield
The National Internet Intelligence Investigations team flagged 106 social media posts, half of them in June alone.
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They called it elite. An elite squad of detectives, drawn from forces across England and Wales and convened at the National Police Coordination Centre for a mission of national weight, spying on people’s social media posts.
The National Internet Intelligence Investigations team – four capital letters before you reach a noun that does any work – was stood up after the Southport riots to watch social media for “protest-related activity.” Protest being, last anyone checked, completely lawful.
It was born of catastrophe. In 2024 three girls were murdered at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport, and online the lie went round that the killer was an asylum seeker. He was not. He was Axel Rudakubana, born in Britain, his parents from Rwanda. The riots came, and from the wreckage the state produced its answer: a desk to watch for anti-migrant posts and the first signs of the next riot, the internet being the thing the rioters had reached for.
Dame Diana Johnson, then the policing minister, announced it last summer in the register such things are always announced in, promising “a national capability to monitor social media intelligence” and “a dedicated function at a national level for exploiting internet intelligence.” Exploiting. Her word, not mine.
Then nothing, for a while. The squad began operating in February, and by the time a newspaper thought to ask, under freedom of information law, it had flagged 106 posts to local forces. Referred them onward, to be exact. The unit watches and points; it does not itself knock on any door. What the forces did after that is not in the record, or not held by anyone willing to say.