Experienced investigative journalist, currently working as Head of Research & Investigations at the civil liberties group, Big Brother Watch. Formerly a reporter at the Daily Mail & Mail on Sunday, and occasional freelancer across the UK press.
Investigation Highlights
Delivered high-impact public interest long-form investigations at Big Brother Watch, spanning technology, civil liberties, privacy and human rights, including
- Ministry of Truth – exposed the government’s abuse of ‘counter-disinformation’ teams in Whitehall and the Army during conduct political surveillance of critics and censor lawful speech. Led to extensive media coverage with exclusives in the Mail on Sunday and the Telegraph and multiple mentions in Parliament, including at Prime Minister’s Questions.
- Poverty Panopticon – a groundbreaking investigation into the algorithms at the heart of the UK’s welfare state rooted in 100s of FOI requests. Uncovered the use of shadowy algorithms to profile millions of people receiving benefits. The findings were covered by the BBC, the New Statesman, the Daily Mail & the Guardian, among others.
- Who’s Watching You – laid out the dominant role companies linked to atrocities in Xinjiang have in the UK’s CCTV market. 3,500+ FOI requests proved that a majority of public bodies use Hikvision & Dahua, while corporate research found Hikvision marketing ethnicity profiling in the UK. The report was covered across the press, including in the Times, and the issue was repeatedly raised in the House of Commons.
- The Streets Are Watching – revealed how secretive mobile phone tracking is being used to influence the adverts people see on high street billboards. Found that millions of mobile phones in the UK are being tracked to build detailed heatmaps of what kind of people are in which areas and when – so brands can target tiny demographic groups with their adverts, with the findings picked up by Motherboard.
Other investigations placed as major newspaper exclusives:
- Policing Minister Chris Philp’s clandestine lobbying of an independent regulator on behalf of a private facial recognition firm, placed in the Observer
- The Metropolitan Police’s disproportionate use of stop and search to target protests, seen in the Guardian,
- Ongoing recording of frivolous non-crime hate incidents by police despite instructions from the government to stop doing so, with the Daily Mail
- Repeated examples of the government misleading the public about developing vaccine passports given to the Telegraph
- Network Rail’s deployment of emotion-recognition AI first placed with WIRED & widely followed up across the media.
- A feature in The Critic on silly examples of age-gating by social media companies due to the Online Safety Act
- Uncovered police use of facial recognition for low-level crimes and anti-social behaviour as part of a larger Telegraph piece on FRT
Many of my Mail and Mail on Sunday bylines were rooted in open-source and social media verification techniques. They include a front page on Theresa May’s dinner with the wife of a Russian oligarch, exclusives on Instagram drug dealers and defying legal pressure to reveal the sexual misconduct allegations behind a NUS officer’s suspension.
Other front-page bylines include an expose of a Dublin slum landlord illegally renting a single home to dozens of foreign students, coverage of Donald Trump’s refusal to pay for ‘Megxit‘ and reporting on the tragedy of a child thrown off the top of the Tate Modern art gallery.
Responsible for other exclusives ranging from Labour candidate being investigated for errors on electoral forms, to the secret online sex work of a dead teenage aristocrat with more colourful work including an extensive travel feature from southern Florida.
I also have editing and leadership experience, from the six months where I regularly covered as Night News Editor at the Daily Mail, managing a team of late reporters, finding stories for the late edition and making decisions on which should be in the final edition of the newspaper.