Brilliant work by anti-racism group founder exposes more than 100 fake accounts and ties them to DHSC

The Department of Health (DHSC) has been tied to a string of fake social media accounts by investigative work that discovered a single sign-on tied to the government department.

John O’Connell spotted the fake accounts and his investigations have revealed that 128 accounts were definitely operated by the same individual – with four ‘assigned contributors’ – and that the individual sign-on belongs to a ‘contracted individual assigned’ to DHSC. There are also a number of other ‘probables’ and ‘possibles’.

Around a third of the accounts used photos of actual NHS staff – and of those O’Connell contacted, all confirmed that the accounts were not theirs and the photos had been used without permission:

One of the real NHS images is shown and the top of this article and, ironically, seems to have first appeared in an article on the website of the Unison union, to which many NHS staff belong – and to have been stolen by the fake account creators:

What appears to be the first appearance of picture stolen for fake account

That the fake account’s creators used a picture with a name badge clearly stating ‘Mia’ on an account supposedly belonging to ‘Susan’ about sums up the arrogant sloppiness of the Tories.

Mia is Staff Nurse Mia Magklavani, from Greece. Unlike the fake ‘Susan’, she is not deaf.

The DHSC and its NHS trust management appear to be showing no concern for the welfare of the NHS staff whose identities were stolen for the fake accounts:

Additional :



DHSC and various NHS Trusts seem to show no interest in the welfare of the genuine staff members who's identities have been lifted and used for Government Propaganda.



Surely 'Duty of Care' comes into it?



No interest in the data when I offered. — John O'Connell (@jdpoc) April 20, 2020

‘No comment’ – then a propaganda attack

O’Connell contacted DHSC – who declined to comment, even though he had identified a DHSC ‘contracted employee’ as the owner of the Hootsuite account controlling the fakes. O’Connell offered to provide them with his data – and that was declined too:

A reminder ; DHSC were fairly offered an opportunity by me, via email and telecon, to address these issues. A chance to 'get ahead' of the story. I was duty bound to offer that to them.



It was dismissed out of hand. — John O'Connell (@jdpoc) April 20, 2020

However, as O’Connell’s work began to gain traction on social media, DHSC mounted a propaganda campaign to smear the revelations as fake news by responding in O’Connell’s threads and those of Twitter users sharing his findings:

Mass deletions

In a further sign of central control of the fake accounts, they were all deleted en masse after they were exposed by O’Connell – including the fake ‘NHS_Susan’ account:

In spite of the DHSC claims that the revelations are ‘categorically false’, the opposite appears to be true, as O’Connell explained:

O’Connell has said that further work is being done to nail down all the details, not least because he fears a smear campaign to discredit him similar to that mounted against the Cambridge Analytica whistleblowers:

The SKWAWKBOX is in discussion with Mr O’Connell about a potential guest article or series when he is ready to proceed.

SKWAWKBOX view:

This is not the first time that a series of fake accounts has been set up to hide Boris Johnson’s and the Tories’ abuse of our health, health service and health staff.



During the last general election campaign, fake accounts were set up in droves to discredit revelations about a sick little boy forced to sleep on a hospital floor because of a hospital’s shortage of beds.



But this is the first time such actions appear to be definitively connected to an official government department and those acting exclusively on its behalf.



To behave like this in a national crisis, diverting DHSC resources to a campaign to con the people of the country while hundreds are dying each day, in an attempt to distract from Tory guilt and failure, is unforgivable. It deserves to become a government-toppling scandal – but do not hold your breath waiting for the so-called ‘mainstream’ media to pay attention.

The SKWAWKBOX needs your support. This blog is provided free of charge but depends on the generosity of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here for a monthly donation via GoCardless. Thanks for your solidarity so this blog can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.

If you wish to reblog this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.

Like this: Like Loading...