Article

2026-02-14 Britain

Matt Taibbi: British GHQ spied on Racket and other journalists

If you're not on Substack you should be. Lots of this before-it-hits-the news and will never be on the news stuff. Independent journalists you can support with your own money. Nobody can fire them and they can do real journalism, which is astounding to see after so long.
The Keir Starmer-aligned group Labour Together had former Racket editor Matt Taibbi and contributor Paul Holden investigated, then passed details to an office in the GCHQ, their NSA analog

Of course they did. The police are arresting girls for complaining about being prostituted by Muslim groomer gangs and old men for demanding the shop clerk speaks English. Compared to that, this is picayune stuff.

British reporters were shown a statement Wednesday in which a cabinet official claimed to be "distressed" and "furious" that Pogrund was targeted, and claimed "no other journalists" were investigated or featured. (Apparently Holden and the rest of us don’t count.) The Labour Together work was commissioned by future MP and current Parliamentary Secretary Josh Simons, who told the Sunday Times last weekend: "Those who know me know I think the work of journalists is vital to our democracy." Simons added it was "nonsense" that APCO was charged with investigating journalists, and that Labour Together was merely interested in investigating a "suspected illegal hack."

This story was first broken by Khadija Sharife and Peter Geoghegan at the Substack site Democracy for Sale a week ago, but there have been developments. Not only did Labour Together hire APCO to investigate Holden, me, and others after we published internal emails and financial information, but Labour Together told journalists the APCO reports were passed to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which is part of GCHQ, the British analog to the NSA. This trick has apparently come into increasing use in recent years, with Britain’s passage of the draconian National Security Act, in addition to more aggressive use of old laws like the Official Secrets Act, which shares "Basically, Everyone is Guilty" qualities with America’s Espionage Act.

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Posted by Jairong+Scourge+of+the+Gepids2435 2026-02-14 00:00|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [1799 views ] Top
File under: Lawfare

1 I'll pass on the sign-in. To anyone that's surprised? Welcome to the Steele Dossier, 5-Eyes Obama Deep State, and so on.

Posted by Frank G 2026-02-14 00:03|| 2026-02-14 00:03|| Front Page Top

2 Sign up, it's worth it. Really exciting things going on on Substack. It's where all those laid-off Washington Post people ran away to saying they don't need jobs any more, they can get supported by Substack.
It's wonderful ridiculing them and telling them to learn to code.
Remember when Twitter banned people for telling laid-off journalists to learn to code despite Biden told laid-off coal miners the same thing?
Besides you can post Rantburg articles there and probably get more of an audience than here. Yesterday's top article was 203 views. You gotta get those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers.

Posted by Jairong+Scourge+of+the+Gepids2435 2026-02-14 00:32|| 2026-02-14 00:32|| Front Page Top

3 I believe that America will find its way out of the maze of control of these evil people. I am not as optimistic about the UK.

Posted by Super Hose 2026-02-14 08:04|| 2026-02-14 08:04|| Front Page Top

4 So, like the Obama and Biden administrations?

Posted by Procopius2k 2026-02-14 09:12|| 2026-02-14 09:12|| Front Page Top

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