Universities hired intelligence firm to spy on pro-Palestine students

UK universities, including Oxford, Imperial College London and King’s College, have hired a private intelligence firm to spy on pro-Palestinian students and academics.

The operation was carried out over several years by Horus Security Consultancy on behalf of 12 elite academic institutions. Horus shareholders include an ex-SAS colonel who helped found the hard-right, pro-Israel Henry Jackson Society.

The joint Liberty Investigates and Al Jazeera report claims the task netted the firm “at least £440,000 ($594,000)” since 2022. The surveillance operation reportedly involved using AI technology to monitor online activity.

After sending freedom of information requests to 150 universities, the team uncovered:

evidence that Horus Security Consultancy Limited trawled through student social media feeds and conducted secret counter-terror threat assessments on behalf of some of Britain’s most elite institutions.

The bizarre spy mission targeted students and academics exercising their right to campaign against Israeli brutality and genocide — and it did so even before the 7 October 2023 attack.

Universities target campus activism

The investigation found:

Among those monitored were a Palestinian academic invited to give a guest lecture at Manchester Metropolitan University and a pro-Gaza PhD student at the London School of Economics, according to internal documents.

Adding:

In October 2024, the University of Bristol provided the firm with a list of student protest groups it wished to receive alerts about, an internal university email suggests. It included pro-Palestinian and animal rights activists.

Ultimately, some of the best universities in the UK “paid the firm to monitor campus protest activity”.

The report also named:

University of Oxford
Imperial College London
University College London (UCL)
King’s College London (KCL)
University of Sheffield
University of Leicester
University of Nottingham
Cardiff Metropolitan University

AI-integrated private spy service

Horus provides a special spy service called “Insight”. Insight provides “open-source intelligence reports” to customers using an unidentified tool to “harvest a vast range of sources on the internet”.

Liberty Investigates and Al Jazeera noted:

According to its website, [Horus] has been integrating AI into its operations since 2022.

Horus Security’s CEO and founder is Jonathon Whiteley. Whiteley is a former UK Intelligence Corps colonel. His bio says he worked for the British Army, where he served in Iraq, the Balkans and Cyprus.

He was seconded at various times to all three UK national intelligence agencies and was Mentioned in Despatches for his work in Northern Ireland.

The UK’s three main intelligence agencies are the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the Security Service (MI5) and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). They respectively deal with external security, internal security and electronic and signals intelligence.

Whiteley left the army in 2006 before running a “successful project” for Oxford University and founding Horus.

Ex-SAS Henry Jackson-linked shareholder

The Horus website names former SAS colonel Tim Collins as a shareholder. Collins is a founding signatory of the hard-right ‘thinktank’ the Henry Jackson Society (HJS).

HJS invests much of its time in:

intellectual agitation on behalf of elite Anglo-American financial, security and fossil fuel interests.

Experts have said that the spying programme had gruesome implications. Gina Romero, the UN special rapporteur for freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, told Al Jazeera:

The use of AI to harvest and analyse student data under the guise of open source intelligence raises profound legal concerns.

The head of the lecturer’s union, Jo Grady, told Al Jazeera it was “shameful” that institutions had “wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds spying on their own students”.

Lizzie Hobbs was a PHD student at the London School of Economics (LSE) when she was targeted by Horus.

She said:

We knew surveillance was happening by the university, but it is shocking to see how systematised it is.

Horus also targeted Palestinian-American lecturer, Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, in June 2023, before the Israeli genocide began. She had been invited to speak at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) in memory of British student Tom Hurndall, who was killed by an Israeli sniper in Gaza in 2003.

Documents, including emails between Horus and university staff and a copy of the assessment Horus provided, were uncovered by journalists.

Together, these show that on April 6, 2023, MMU asked Horus to conduct a secret counter-terror “threat assessment” on the 70-year-old Palestine studies scholar.

Horus and Collins did not respond to requests for comment. Some of the universities did respond, often citing ‘security’ and ‘safety’ as a rationale for commissioning acts of espionage against students and scholars.

It is evident that private and state geopolitical and security interests have merged into a brazenly authoritarian apparatus. This all-encompassing security blob, with AI surveillance at its very core, threatens our essential liberties. The fact that it comes on the same day as genocide-linked AI firm Palantir announced their openly fascistic manifesto only makes the revelations more chilling.

Featured image via the PA/ Nick Forbes