They took away people's rights in order to fight "narratives" they didn't like.

Note they're not even patrolling for false facts any longer. No, now they're patrolling for narratives -- interpretations of facts -- that are harmful to The Regime's preferred narrative, The Regime's preferred way to think about things.

And obviously we'll soon find out that the British were monitoring US accounts and relaying that information to the FBI and CIA.

The Daily Mail's Mail on Sunday edition:

Army spied on lockdown critics: Sceptics, including our own Peter Hitchens, long suspected they were under surveillance. Now we've obtained official records that prove they were right all along

Military operatives were part of an operation that targeted politicians and high-profile journalists who raised doubts about the official pandemic response

A shadowy Army unit secretly spied on British citizens who criticised the Government's Covid lockdown policies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Military operatives in the UK's 'information warfare' brigade were part of a sinister operation that targeted politicians and high-profile journalists who raised doubts about the official pandemic response.

Documents obtained by the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, and shared exclusively with this newspaper, exposed the work of Government cells such as the Counter Disinformation Unit, based in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and the Rapid Response Unit in the Cabinet Office.

But the most secretive is the MoD's 77th Brigade, which deploys 'non-lethal engagement and legitimate non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviours of adversaries'.

According to a whistleblower who worked for the brigade during the lockdowns, the unit strayed far beyond its remit of targeting foreign powers.

They said that British citizens' social media accounts were scrutinised -- a sinister activity that the Ministry of Defence, in public, repeatedly denied doing

Papers show the outfits were tasked with countering 'disinformation' and 'harmful narratives... from purported experts', with civil servants and artificial intelligence deployed to 'scrape' social media for keywords such as 'ventilators' that would have been of interest.

The information was then used to orchestrate Government responses to criticisms of policies such as the stay-at-home order, when police were given power to issue fines and break up gatherings.

It also allowed Ministers to push social media platforms to remove posts and promote Government-approved lines.

The Army whistleblower said: 'It is quite obvious that our activities resulted in the monitoring of the UK population... monitoring the social media posts of ordinary, scared people. These posts did not contain information that was untrue or co-ordinated -- it was simply fear.'

Last night, former Cabinet Minister Mr Davis, a member of the Privy Council, said: 'It's outrageous that people questioning the Government's policies were subject to covert surveillance' -- and questioned the waste of public money.

[Lockdown critic and target of "information warfare" surveillance Peter Hitchens] says: 'The most astonishing thing about the great Covid panic was how many attacks the state managed to make on basic freedoms without anyone much even caring, let alone protesting.

That is very frightening.

The whistleblower from 77 Brigade, which uses both regular and reserve troops, said: 'I developed the impression the Government were more interested in protecting the success of their policies than uncovering any potential foreign interference, and I regret that I was a part of it. Frankly, the work I was doing should never have happened.'

You don't say -- the government using the pretext of Foreign Emmanuel Goldsteins as a pretext to attack its critics and cover up its failings? I've never heard of such a thing!

The British government now admits that yes, it used military "information warfare" units to surveil citizens, in saying those units have "scaled back their work" since the end of the lockdown: