UK Universities Offered To Monitor Students' Social Media For Arms Firms, Emails Show
- Reference: 0179715908
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/10/08/1759244/uk-universities-offered-to-monitor-students-social-media-for-arms-firms-emails-show
- Source link:
> Universities in the UK reassured arms companies they would [1]monitor students' chat groups and social media accounts after firms raised concerns about campus protests, according to internal emails. One university said it would conduct "active monitoring of social media" for any evidence of plans to demonstrate against Rolls-Royce at a careers fair.
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> A second appeared to agree to a request from Raytheon UK, the British wing of a major US defence contractor, to "monitor university chat groups" before a campus visit. Another university responded to a defence company's "security questionnaire" seeking information about social media posts suggestive of imminent protests over the firm's alleged role in fuelling war, including in Gaza. The universities' apparent compliance with the sensitivities of arms companies before careers fairs has emerged in emails obtained by the Guardian and Liberty Investigates after freedom of information (FoI) requests.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/oct/08/uk-universities-offered-to-monitor-student-social-media-for-arms-firms-emails-show
INGSOC (Score:2)
Did the UK government just recently pick up 1984 and treat it as a how-to guide?
Re: (Score:2)
> Did the UK government just recently pick up 1984 and treat it as a how-to guide?
This is an interesting twist. This is not purely a matter of government intrusion but rather more about corporate intrusion. An optomist might say that the university is trying to balance getting funding and jobs for its graduates from these companies in exchange for squelching the rights of its students. Perhaps an even more difficult question is whether the protesting students would be willing to trade off their rights to free expression against the loss of jobs from the related companies.
Re: (Score:2)
What rights are being squelched? If you post something on social media, you don't have a right to privacy. Is there a right to not be monitored? I am not a Brit so I don't know what rights they have.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, Jan.
Re: INGSOC (Score:2)
Recently? There's one closed circuit camera for every 10 people. And it's been that way for a long time.
Re: INGSOC (Score:2)
And yet they still achieve bugger all with those cameras. So why do we accept the continued push towards more and more invasive things. âoeThis time it will workâ
Re: (Score:2)
Last count was 30 people a day. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xorkq9jX5k
Re: Hmmm (Score:2)
Yes.
[1]https://www.haaretz.com/opinio... [haaretz.com]
[1] https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-07-22/ty-article-opinion/.premium/israelis-are-even-calling-holocaust-survivors-antisemitic/00000198-1e38-d3be-a5bc-3e7b6b140000
Sensationalist headline (Score:2)
I was all up in arms the way the title and excerpt portray the situation. If you read the article you finally get down to this statement:
A Cardiff University spokesperson said: “We reject the suggestion that we’ve put students ‘under surveillance’. The protest was posted on a public-facing social media account. This was picked up as part of our day-to-day media monitoring.
“We routinely monitor mentions of Cardiff University, including those made on social media platforms, t
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like a bunch of sugar coated bullshit to me.
"We routinely monitor mentions of Cardiff blah blah blah customer engagement blah blah not unique etc ."
Just because we admit we abuse our students, makes it right?
You can't see thru that?
Smells like freedom (Score:2)
from any of the so-called "Western world values", lol.