The UK Home Office is monitoring the tweets of X CEO Elon Musk as well as posts by other users of his platform.
A team at the Home Office’s Homeland Security group has been tasked to monitor the tweets, with those involved in the surveillance being tasked with reducing threats to national security.
A government website says the group “focuses on the highest harm risks to the homeland”.
It says that group “sits at the heart of the UK’s national security system, setting strategic direction and playing a crucial enabling role in national security and law enforcement operations.”
“Its mission is to reduce national security risks to the UK’s people, prosperity and freedoms. It focuses on the highest harm risks to the homeland, whether from terrorists, state actors, or cyber and economic criminals.” it says.
Among the activities being monitored, the surveillance group is also looking at the reach of the posts as well as who engages with them.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “While we can’t comment on operational matters, we routinely use open-source monitoring to be informed of what is being shared and discussed online.”
It is understood that the monitoring came about after Musk began tweeting about the ‘grooming gang’ scandal currently tearing through the UK parliament.
The issue relates to gangs of overwhelmingly Pakistani Muslim men targeting mostly white British girls, and to a lesser extent boys, for in many cases extreme sexual exploitation.
In recent days, Musk has aimed fire at the UK’s safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, accusing her of being a “rape genocide” apologist as well as calling for her to be jailed for alleged failings to deal with the grooming issue.
Phillips refused to agree to a national inquiry into serious allegations of abuse in Oldham, with journalist Charlie Peters saying that a letter detailing this refusal was leaked to him weeks ago.
Last week, Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, called for a national inquiry to be held saying that 2025 needed to be the year when grooming gang victims received “justice”.
Despite a national outcry, as well as huge attention garnered from overseas, the UK Parliament this week voted not to conduct a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal with 364 MPs voting against the motion.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was the Crown Prosecution Service’s Director of Public Prosecution from 2008-2013 caused outrage among many victims of the abuse by accusing those calling for a national inquiry of jumping on a “far-right bandwagon”.
He also dismissed some of the claims surrounding the scandal as “misinformation”.
Reacting to the news of the surveillance of tweets, Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe, said, “I have asked the Home Office how many of Musk’s posts have been investigated, for what reason, by how many officers and at what cost to the taxpayer.
“They will spy on Musk’s online activity, but no inquiry into thousands of foreign rapists. Pathetic.”
Gript has previously reported details of the abuse suffered by girls as young as 11 years old.
Court documents relating to some of the cases reveal that girls were targeted because they were not Muslim in circumstances where victims were referred to as “white slags”, and in some cases quoted verses from the Koran while they were being abused.
One girl was branded with the letter ‘M’ on her backside to signify that she was the property of a rapist named Mohammad.
The father of a young victim from Rotherham, where it is estimated that between 2004 -2012 1,400 girls were abused, says he was arrested by police when he attempted to rescue his 12-year-old daughter from a rape den.
The man said he was told that if he attempted to return to the flat where his daughter was being abused he would be “arrested for stalking”.
Although allegations of abuse date back as far as the 1970s, victims say that their pleas for help were ignored by police who were instructed not to pursue matters in order to not stir up ‘racial tensions’.