Security consultancy Horus received £443,943 from twelve UK universities for spying on pro-Palestine students/Image: BBC
A dozen British universities paid more than £440,000 to a private company run by former military intelligence officials to spy on student protesters and academics, including those who support Palestine, according to a joint investigation by Al Jazeera English and Liberty Investigates. It has been revealed.The investigation, based on freedom of information requests sent to more than 150 universities, found that Horus Security Consulting Limited collected information from students’ social media and conducted counter-terrorism threat assessments on behalf of several institutions. The company earned at least £443,943 between January 2022 and March 2025, according to the findings.Universities that have used the company’s services include the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, University College London, King’s College London, University of Sheffield, University of Leicester, University of Nottingham and Cardiff Metropolitan University.
There is no indication that this activity was illegal.
Monitor students and academics
According to the documents he reviewed Al Jazeera English and Freedom InvestigationsThe company tracked a group of individuals, including a Palestinian academic invited to speak at Manchester Metropolitan University and a pro-Gaza PhD student at the London School of Economics.In one case, internal emails showed that the University of Bristol provided Horus with a list of student protest groups in October 2024 and requested alerts about their activities.
The groups included pro-Palestinian and animal rights activists.Seven universities declined to share details of the briefings they received, citing confidentiality or commercial sensitivity, even though the information is based on publicly available data.
Case 1: An LSE student has been flagged in reports
One of the individuals identified in the investigation was Lizzie Hobbs, a PhD student at the London School of Economics. The briefing sent to the university’s security team on June 18, 2024 included a social media post she had written a day earlier.Her post, along with thousands of others, formed part of daily ‘camp updates’ compiled by Horus and sold to universities for £900 a month.Hobbs said she didn’t find out until after he called her The island. “We knew the university was conducting surveillance, but it was shocking to see how organized it was,” she said. She added that it is “very scary” to know how much money universities are willing to spend on such monitoring.
Case 2: Academic subject to counter-terrorism assessment
In another case, Palestinian-American academic Rabab Ibrahim Abdel Hadi underwent a counter-terrorism “threat assessment” before lecturing at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2023.The documents he obtained Freedom Investigations View The university asked Horus on April 6, 2023 to evaluate the 70-year-old researcher before her scheduled lecture. The application was made under obligations linked to the UK’s Prevent programme, which requires universities to assess risks relating to external speakers.Abdul Hadi said in response to the results The island: “You’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty…but they actually assumed guilt and started investigating me because of a scholarship.” She added: “What am I supposed to study and teach to avoid this unwarranted, unfair and unjust scrutiny and surveillance?”The university later allowed the event to continue with security present, stating that there was no evidence linking it to banned groups, and that any protest risk was unlikely to be violent.
Universities advocate for the use of services
Several universities defended their use of external intelligence services. The University of Sheffield said it uses such tools to “scan the horizon” for potential problems such as large-scale protests, and added that it was “incorrect” to suggest the aim was to discourage activism.Imperial College London said it does not monitor students and uses Horus “to help identify potential security risks to its community,” adding that the information used is taken from the public domain.
Concerns about surveillance and data use
Gina Romero, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of peaceful assembly and association, raised concerns about the findings. “The use of artificial intelligence to collect and analyze student data under the guise of open source intelligence raises profound legal concerns,” she said. The island.She warned that such practices allow large amounts of data to be collected without public oversight and can be used in ways that individuals cannot anticipate.Joe Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union, also criticized the practice. she said The island It is “shameful” that universities “wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds spying on their students.”Romero also described the situation as contributing to creating a “state of terror” among some student activists. “Most of the students I come in contact with are traumatized, mentally exhausted, burned out… and many of them drop out of the activity altogether,” she said.
Fixed and responsive background
Horus was founded in 2006 within the security team at Oxford University by former Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Whiteley. Its leadership includes Colonel Tim Collins, who has publicly linked the pro-Gaza protests to foreign influence campaigns and called for tougher measures against protesters.Despite multiple requests for comment from Al Jazeera English In late March and early April, the company did not respond. Horus states on its website that it follows the “strongest ethics” and operates in a legally compliant manner.
