If you are a British citizen and you criticize a government program online, that criticism can be collected and stored by a government-linked body.
At least that seems to be the upshot of the actions of the Prevent Standards and Compliance Unit (StaCU), “a body linked to the Home Office,” that has been keeping “observations” of those who speak against the government’s Prevent counter-extremism program on the internet.
The group has now revealed that in the year from March 2024 to February 2025, StaCU made 77 “observations” of people who were critical of the program online – and that most of these “observations” came from X, with some from Reddit. Mainstream media articles were also included, as were posts from or about several organizations, including Hope Not Hate, Maslaha, and the Open Rights Group.
The “observations” are filed as “open-source complaints” and stored internally by StaCU. RSI is unsure what happens to this data next, and who the government may be sharing it with. What is known is that the process involves “attempting to independently verify claims.”
As RSI’s Freedom of Expression and Belief Team Leader Jacob Smith put it, “You should be able to criticize government policy without getting put on a list.”
Smith also noted that the fact that the government “has been trawling X and Reddit to find out who has been critiquing Prevent” should serve as “a stark reminder that, in the government’s eyes, anything you share online is fair game and could go into a file forever.”
The Home Office tried to keep this secret and refused to hand over the documents at first, but RSI won an appeal to the Information Commissioner’s Office, and the documents were released.
As RSI noted, it is unclear if any automated tools were used to find the posts, and if not, how the unit “found” them, or what it does with the data it collects.
Tracy Beth Høeg, M.D., Ph.D., an epidemiologist and sports physician, said her decision to follow the data during the COVID-19 pandemic came at a steep professional price.
Høeg said her experience exposed the unwillingness of universities, media and public health institutions to adapt when research conflicted with their accepted narratives.
In an interview this week with investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker on The DisInformation Chronicle, Høeg said institutions too often treated the accepted narrative as settled and then dismissed or attacked people who questioned it.
That approach did more than distort the public discussion about COVID-19, Høeg said. It also created a scientific and institutional culture that could affect how other medical questions are handled long after the pandemic.
For Høeg, the solution is simple: Scientists should follow the evidence wherever it leads.
“It’s a core belief of mine that you have to be objective when you’re doing scientific studies,” she said. “Otherwise, you just shouldn’t do them. It’s pointless if you’re not willing to be objective.”
‘I … didn’t realize the jeopardy that I was putting myself in’
During the pandemic, Høeg published 30 to 40 papers on COVID-19 transmission, masking, youth sports, vaccine risk-benefit, pregnancy, long COVID, visitor restrictions and testing.
Some of her research challenged widely accepted claims.
One study found little evidence of COVID-19 transmission among children in Wisconsin schools, which was consistent with data from Europe. Another examined myocarditis risk in boys after their second Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine dose and found the risks outweighed the benefits in boys who didn’t have underlying health conditions.
Høeg said she didn’t initially understand the professional risks she was taking by challenging the prevailing narrative.
“There was sort of a hesitancy to do this sort of research because I think people were afraid for their careers,” she said. “I actually was blessed with having recently moved from Denmark and didn’t realize the jeopardy that I was putting myself in by doing these sorts of studies.”
At the time, Høeg was conducting research at the University of California, Davis.
She said the university received calls, including from Naturemagazine, complaining about her studies on pandemic policies. Eventually, the university asked her not to use her affiliation with the school.
Høeg said the university refused to renew her voluntary position in 2022, after the European Journal of Clinical Investigation published her study on myocarditis risks in boys who received the COVID-19 vaccine.
NPR also dropped an interview with Høeg for “All Things Considered” after she raised concerns about masking children during outdoor sports.
In a pre-interview discussion with NPR, she told the outlet, “We don’t have evidence that these masks work to prevent transmission. … Bottom line is, we shouldn’t be doing these unproven things to children that are harmful.”
Soon after, NPR told Høeg she was no longer needed for the interview.
“It does say a lot about our universities and institutions because it’s like they had been brainwashed to an extent to believe what the media was saying rather than actually look at the data,” Høeg said.
‘They repeated the same wording … even when the data didn’t back it up’
In 2022, Høeg and her colleagues conducted a follow-up analysis of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study on school mask mandates.
Høeg said their analysis used a larger dataset and a longer time period and reached the opposite conclusion about the relationship between mask mandates and COVID-19 transmission among children.
The team’s submission to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) was rejected. Høeg said reviewers described the submission as “rife with polemics.”
“Well, maybe it’s polarizing if you disagree with it,” Høeg said.
The rejection unearthed an underlying problem at the CDC, according to Høeg.
“They have a scientific agenda,” she said. “And so as soon as you have a scientific agenda, science has been thrown out the window. Science doesn’t have an agenda other than to find the truth.”
A 2024 analysis by Høeg and colleagues examined 77 mask studies published in the MMWR beginning in 2020. According to Høeg, 75% of the studies said masks were effective, while only 14% reported statistically significant results and none were randomized studies.
One finding especially stood out to her: She said 5% of the studies found masks were connected to higher infection rates, yet “they still concluded that masks worked.”
“They repeated the same wording over and over again in each of the studies, that ‘masks are necessary to decrease the spread’ and ‘masks are critical in controlling the case rates of COVID-19,’” she said. “They use the same sort of wording even when the data didn’t back it up at all.”
‘Why are we demonizing people for looking into this?’
A leaked memo from then-FDA official Dr. Vinay Prasad said career staff had linked at least 10 child deaths to the COVID-19 vaccine between 2021 and 2024.
Høeg said she reviewed the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports and found that investigations involving medical records and autopsies had already been conducted.
“My question at the time was … why are these not being made public?” Høeg told Thacker.
Høeg said news leaked that she would present information about the deaths and their possible association with COVID-19 vaccines. She said the media response focused on portraying her as an “anti-vaxxer” rather than asking why the deaths had been investigated but not publicly disclosed.
“If we have these sorts of deaths happening in children due to medical products of any kind, why are we sitting on them for years?” she asked. “That’s the take-home I want people to have from this.”
She also questioned why people who investigate potential safety problems are attacked for trying to expose the dangers.
“Why are we demonizing people for looking into this? … Isn’t that what the public wants?” she asked.
‘The deep state really is a thing’
In May, just days after FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned, Høeg said she arrived at work to find media reports claiming she had resigned — something she said she knew nothing about.
FDA lawyers later asked her to resign, but she refused to sign the letter. She was subsequently locked out of the agency’s systems and escorted from the building.
Høeg said she never received a performance-based explanation for her termination. She also said the person identified as the author of her termination memo later denied writing or seeing it.
According to Høeg, agency lawyers told her the order came from “way above their pay grade.”
The experience changed how she viewed other departures from the agency. “It opened my eyes to the fact that maybe a number of the people who I thought had resigned really had not resigned,” she said.
“The deep state really is a thing,” she added.
‘Women who want to get pregnant … should be told about these risks’
For Høeg, the concerns she encountered during the COVID-19 era are not limited to COVID-19.
In 2025, she helped organize an FDA panel examining potential risks associated with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, during pregnancy.
The American Psychiatric Association criticized the panel for what it called “misinterpretation and unbalanced viewpoints.” Høeg said the media also portrayed any discussion of potential risks as “misinformation about SSRI use” and a signal that depression wasn’t being taken seriously.
According to Høeg, the panel discussed risks already addressed in FDA labeling and scientific research, including miscarriage, premature birth, postpartum hemorrhage, congenital heart defects and neonatal adaptation syndrome.
“This should not be controversial that women who want to get pregnant and who are pregnant should be told about these risks,” she said.
She also warned about the lack of ongoing monitoring of drug safety.
“The FDA is not actively investigating the safety of these products in pregnancy or at all after the initial trials are done,” she said.
Høeg said the discussion should not be interpreted as an argument against treating depression. “I don’t think that any of this should be synonymous with not taking depression seriously,” she said. “That’s just nonsense.”
‘There’s just no reporting on this. … People have died taking this drug’
Høeg also discussed Tavneos, the Amgen-manufactured brand name for avacopan, a drug approved to treat a type of blood-vessel inflammation.
While at CDER, Høeg said she raised concerns that the pivotal clinical trial used to approve the drug had included manipulated data.
According to Høeg, at least eight deaths had been attributed to the drug because of liver injury.
“There’s just no reporting on this,” Høeg said. “People have died taking this drug. … We asked for them to withdraw it from the market, and the media is just totally silent.”
Thacker: ‘There was no real learning in the end. … If anything, we became dumber’
Høeg said it is troubling that some of the most disputed COVID-19 policies are still treated as settled questions.
“How is this still part of our collective conversation that people … are still saying school closures were necessary and mask mandates were necessary?” she asked.
Thacker said the failure to learn from those policies could have consequences during the next pandemic. People who developed a “false sense of safety from masks” during COVID-19 could mistakenly assume masks will protect them from a more dangerous virus in the future, he said.
Thacker also questioned whether the country understands anything about the COVID-19 vaccines. “There was no real learning in the end. … If anything, we became dumber,” he said.
Høeg said the problem stems from the widespread failure to reconsider policies when the evidence changed.
“Once the government decided this is what we have to do, they just kept digging in, even though the data didn’t support it,” she said.
“This is why I keep doing these interviews, because it’s important for people to know the truth.”
Watch Høeg on ‘The DisInformation Chronicle’ podcast here:
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has rewarded her personal communications adviser with a permanent job in the commission’s media department, in a move that reveals how the EU bureaucracy really works, and how von der Leyen has created a royal court in Brussels.
Von der Leyen’s College of Commissioners – the 27 unelected bureaucrats who run the EU’s executive branch – met on Wednesday and signed off on the appointment of Jens Flosdorff as the bloc’s new ‘Director for Citizens Communication’.
Flosdorff was given the role after a “merit based and very highly competitive selection procedure,” the commission said in a statement. According to the EU-focused Rapporteur news site, however, Flosdorff was parachuted into the role by von der Leyen, whom he served for more than two decades as ‘personal communications adviser’.
Flosdorff’s new position will net him a largely tax-free salary of €216,000 ($245,279) per year, plus expenses and benefits.
Those with a memory of the Soviet Union, or an appreciation of Gogol or Bulgakov, might muster a quiet laugh at the appointment for life of a long-time confidant of Ursula von der Leyen to the well-paid and unassailable post of ‘Director for Citizens Communication’. However, a closer look at the EU’s communications apparatus reveals levels of bureaucratic redundancy beyond the wildest imagination of the great Russian absurdists.
From Byzantium to Brussels
In his new role, Flosdorff will lead “lead the Commission’s citizens communication actions
and the analysis of public opinion,” according to the job advertisement that the commission was legally required to post before handing the sinecure to von der Leyen’s man. This presumably involves the crafting of youth outreach campaigns and commissioning of Eurobarometer polls, but the rest is unclear.
Sophia Eriksson Waterschoot, who currently occupies the role in an acting capacity, “refused to say what the job entailed” when asked by Rapporteur.
An excerpt from the European Commission’s ‘Director for Citizens Communication’ job advert
Waterschoot stepped in when previous Director for Citizens Communication Stefan de Keersmaecker was named ‘Director for Political Communication’ late last year. The differences between these two roles are blurred, with both responsible for social media campaigns, both analyzing media and public opinion, and both pushing the commission’s message (one as a ‘rapid response’ outfit, and the other organizing longer-term campaigns).
Both directors lead separate departments within the commission’s ‘Directorate-General for Communication’ (DG-COMM), and together employ around 500 people. DG-COMM has a yearly budget – excluding salaries – of €116 million, and it’s not the only communications department on the commission’s books: most of the commission’s 41 directorates-general have their own in-house spin offices too, which sometimes collaborate with the ‘citizens’ and ‘political’ bureaus of DG-COMM.
If that wasn’t complicated enough, none of these departments write von der Leyen’s speeches. That task falls to her personal speechwriter, Lorenzo Biondi, who announced his retirement on Wednesday.
Biondi is leaving the commission for a job at the Institute of International Affairs, an Italian think tank. But it’s not a straightforward move from the public to the private sector. The Institute of International Affairs’ Europe-focused work is funded almost entirely by the European Commission. There is now just an extra middleman between him and his former employer.
Queen Ursula’s court
Atop this bureaucratic superstructure, von der Leyen has consolidated her power. Her efforts go beyond appointing her loyalists to lucrative lifetime gigs: von der Leyen began the year by appointing 26 commissioners without running the list past the European Parliament first, as well as deliberately withholding budget and internal market strategy documents from member states until hours before publication, making deliberation impossible.
Former European Council President Charles Michel has described her governance as “super authoritarian.” Surrounded by a “tight-knit” and “micromanaged” circle of mostly German advisers, including Flosdorff, von der Leyen has reduced her commissioners to little more than administrators, whose opinions and criticisms rarely make it past her advisers.
Von der Leyen is “obsessed with demonstrating that she’s in charge,” and “is constantly jumping into the middle of the latest crisis, even when it’s outside her remit,” unnamed EU diplomats complained to Bloomberg in May.
Some of the commission chief’s ambitions are grand – she has pushed for the creation of an intelligence agency answering to her office, and backed a Franco-German plan to strip some of chief diplomat Kaja Kallas’ foreign policy powers. Others are more petty. On the day of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, every commissioner under von der Leyen reportedly received strict instructions from Flosdorff: their own communications teams were only allowed to repost von der Leyen’s message to Trump on social media, without adding any comments of their own.
All of this is to illustrate two characteristics of the European Commission under von der Leyen. Firstly, with its jobs for life, its three-dozen communications departments, and its web of interconnected think tanks, it is a bloated organism whose reform would be a generational undertaking.
Secondly, with its unelected president controlling everything from job appointments and social media posts to foreign policy and intelligence gathering, it is an autocracy so at odds with its democratic rhetoric that it requires 43 communications offices to explain away its contradictions to the public.
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