Twelve UK universities paid over £440,000 to a private firm run by former military intelligence officials to spy on student protesters and academics, including those supporting Palestine, a joint investigation by Al Jazeera English and Liberty Investigates has revealed.The investigation, based on freedom of information requests sent to more than 150 universities, found that Horus Security Consultancy Limited gathered information from student social media and carried out counter-terror threat assessments on behalf of several institutions. The firm has been paid at least £443,943 between January 2022 and March 2025, according to the findings.Universities that used the firm’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 suggestion that the activity was illegal.
Monitoring of students and academics
According to documents reviewed by Al Jazeera English and Liberty Investigates, the firm tracked a range 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 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 refused to share details of the briefings they received, citing confidentiality or commercial sensitivity, despite the information being based on publicly available data.
Case 1: LSE student flagged in reports
One of the individuals identified in the investigation was Lizzie Hobbs, a PhD student at the London School of Economics. A 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 “encampment updates” compiled by Horus and sold to universities for £900 per month.Hobbs said she only became aware of this after being contacted by Al Jazeera. “We knew surveillance was happening by the university, but it is shocking to see how systematised it is,” she said. She added that it was “deeply scary” to see how much money universities were willing to spend on such monitoring.
Case 2: Academic subject to counter-terror assessment
In another case, Palestinian-American academic Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi was subjected to a counter-terror “threat assessment” before a lecture at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2023.Documents obtained by Liberty Investigates show the university asked Horus on April 6, 2023 to assess the 70-year-old scholar ahead of her planned talk. The request was made under obligations linked to the UK’s Prevent programme, which requires universities to assess risks related to external speakers.Reacting to the findings, Abdulhadi told Al Jazeera: “You’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty … but they actually made an assumption of guilt and started investigating me because of my scholarship.” She added: “What am I supposed to study and teach about to avoid this unwarranted, unfair and unjust scrutiny and surveillance?”The university later allowed the event to go ahead with security present, stating there was no evidence linking her to banned groups and that any protest risk was unlikely to be violent.
Universities defend use of services
Several universities defended their use of external intelligence services. The University of Sheffield said it uses such tools to “horizon scan” for potential issues like large-scale protests and added it was “incorrect” to suggest this was intended to discourage activism.Imperial College London said it does not surveil students and uses Horus to “help identify potential security risks to its community”, adding that the information used is drawn from the public domain.
Concerns over surveillance and data use
Gina Romero, UN special rapporteur for freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, raised concerns about the findings. “The use of AI to harvest and analyse student data under the guise of open source intelligence raises profound legal concerns,” she told Al Jazeera.She warned that such practices allow large amounts of data to be collected without public oversight and may be used in ways individuals cannot anticipate.Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union, also criticised the practice. She told Al Jazeera it was “shameful” that universities had “wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds spying on their own students”.Romero further described the situation as contributing to a “state of terror” among some student activists. “Most students I have reached out to are experiencing psychological trauma, mental exhaustion, and burnout … many of them are leaving activism altogether,” she said.
Firm background and response
Horus was founded in 2006 within the University of Oxford’s security team by former Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Whiteley. Its leadership includes Colonel Tim Collins, who has publicly linked pro-Gaza protests to foreign influence campaigns and called for stricter action against demonstrators.Despite multiple requests for comment from Al Jazeera English in late March and early April, the firm did not respond. On its website, Horus states that it follows “the strongest ethics” and operates in a legally compliant manner.
