Concerns raised over social media surveillance
THE Department for Education has been busy processing Subject Access Requests after it was revealed that it was storing and tracking the social media activity of education experts – including at least one librarian. The discovery was made after the
DfE threatened to pull funding on an education conference back in March, telling conference organisers that authors Ruth Swailes and Aaron Bradbury were “unsuit able” headline speakers, accord- ing to The Observer.
Ruth Swailes was so shocked that she
filed a subject access request, requiring the DfE to disclose any documents it held on her, the paper said. Her example appears to have been followed by a number of her connections and other critics of govern- ment education policy. CILIP is monitoring the reports, not only because at least one of the people who has found their accounts being monitored is a school librarian, but also because of the
wider implications over the legitimacy and ethics of public bodies collecting and analysing this kind of information. CILIP said it was “deeply concerned” by
the reports and is looking at how it can sup port CILIP members who may have been affected, including liaising with other library and education sector bodies to seek clarification and assurances from the Department for Education. CILIP also believes that the actions could represent a serious incursion into individual civil liberties and freedom of expression, and may well be subject to the “legitimate interest” test under Data Pro- tection legislation. The Observer published its first story,
“ Revealed: UK government keeping files on education critics’ social media activ- ity”, at the end of September, revealing: “At least nine experts have uncovered files held on them, some as long as 60 pages. One individual even discovered the department had compiled an Excel
spreadsheet in which officials had detailed who she interacted with.” In a follow-up story, published on 21 October, the paper revealed the results of more subject access requests with one, Jon Biddle, claiming that “dozens” of teachers had found out that the DfE had discovered that their social media accounts were being monitored. The story included a higher-level teach- ing assistant and primary school librarian, Nicki Cleveland, who was SLA School Librarian of the Year: Honour Librarian in 2018. Nicki made her Subject Access Request because she knew and interacted with other education experts involved. She said the file she was sent by the DfE
in response showed how social media information, much of it not critical of the government, was shared between govern- ment officials.
We asked the DfE if it wanted to com- ment on this story but have not yet received a response.
October-November 2023
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