Oxford and 11 other British universities paid a firm of ex-military intelligence officers to monitor pro-Palestinian students. Over three years they sent it £444,000

A joint investigation by the British journalism centre Liberty Investigates and Al Jazeera, published on 20 April, revealed that twelve British universities — including Oxford, Imperial College London, King's College London and the London School of Economics — paid the firm Horus Security Consultancy Limited to monitor the social media of pro-Palestinian students and academics, track campus protests, and conduct security assessments of invited guests. Between January 2022 and March 2025, the firm collected a total of £443,943 (more than €521,000) from these institutions. Liberty Investigates ↗

Besides Oxford, Imperial, KCL and LSE, the list also includes University College London, the University of Sheffield, the University of Leicester, the University of Nottingham, the University of Bristol, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Manchester. Reporters sent Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to more than 150 British universities; these twelve institutions confirmed the existence of contracts, but seven of the firm's clients refused to disclose specific briefings, citing commercial confidentiality. Al Jazeera English ↗

Insight, AI and £900 a month for encampments

Horus's main service is "Insight" — open-source intelligence reports which, according to Al Jazeera, the firm compiles using tools for automated data collection from social media, into which it has integrated artificial intelligence since 2022. A special package consists of weekly "encampment updates" from protest camps, priced at £900 a month. Al Jazeera English ↗

Internal documents obtained by reporters through FOI requests allow two specific cases to be reconstructed. Palestinian-American academic Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi was due to give a guest lecture at Manchester Metropolitan University in June 2023; ahead of the lecture, the university commissioned Horus to carry out a "counter-terror threat assessment" on her. London School of Economics PhD student Lizzie Hobbs, meanwhile, found herself named in Horus's daily encampment briefing for LSE during the protest camp in the summer of 2024 — according to a document dated 18 June that year, because she had shared a post on X the day before supporting the protest camp. Liberty Investigates ↗

"A person is supposed to be innocent until proven otherwise — but they made an assumption of guilt," Abdulhadi responded. Hobbs described the universities' willingness to invest in such systems as "chilling." Liberty Investigates ↗

Bristol: £8,700, 21 briefings, subject line "pro-Palestine protests" — and six animal rights groups

The most thoroughly documented contract is the one in Bristol. The local investigative outlet Bristol Cable found from FOI documents that the University of Bristol paid Horus at least £8,700 between 2024 and 2025. From October 2024 to March 2025 it received weekly Insight briefings — 21 documents in total. The Bristol Cable ↗

In email correspondence, a Bristol staff member requested a bespoke service covering "anything relating to the proposed student protest ... all protest activity across the city." In October 2024, an email with the subject line "pro-Palestine protests" expanded the list of groups Horus was to monitor to include six animal rights initiatives — Camp Beagle, Free the MBR Beagles, MBR Suppliers, Vivisection Exposed, Liberate or Die, and Animal Rising — which campaign in Britain against vivisection and the breeding of animals for research. The email's subject line thus did not match the full scope of the monitoring: the contract for Bristol covered the pro-Palestinian and animal rights movements in parallel. Internal correspondence captured feedback from Bristol staff: "Our management is thrilled with the briefing." The Bristol Cable ↗

Max de Bono, the postgraduate representative of the UCU union branch in Bristol, warned Bristol Cable that British universities are positioning themselves in a way that could come to resemble the American precedent of deporting foreign student activists, especially were a Reform UK government to come to power in Britain. The Bristol Cable ↗

The firm grew out of Oxford's security team

Horus Security was founded in 2006 by former Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Whiteley, who, according to the company's website, had a 23-year career in the British Army's Intelligence Corps behind him. According to the firm's own materials, it originated as a security project directly within Oxford University's security team — meaning that the company now used, according to FOI responses, by Oxford itself, grew twenty years ago out of Oxford's own internal security operation. Al Jazeera English ↗

In 2020, Colonel (Retd) Tim Collins became director of the parent company, Horus Global — a British officer who entered public memory for his famous address to British troops on 19 March 2003 in Kuwait, on the eve of the US-led invasion of Iraq. At the time he was still a lieutenant colonel; he was promoted to colonel in June 2003 and left active military service in August 2004. Al Jazeera reporters contacted Collins by email and via LinkedIn on 8 April, and Whiteley on 7 April; neither Collins, nor Whiteley, nor the company itself responded to questions. Al Jazeera English ↗

Oxford itself, responding to the student newspaper The Oxford Student, stated: "Claims of surveillance are inaccurate. External security consultants are used solely for security assessments of public events and known protests — not for monitoring individuals or political activity." However, the university refused to disclose the specific amount it paid Horus, citing commercial sensitivity, and has not responded for almost a year to an internal request for review submitted in June 2025. The Oxford Student ↗

Universities cite Prevent. Critics speak of a "state of terror"

The universities that responded — Sheffield, Imperial College London, Manchester Metropolitan and Bristol — denied that this amounted to surveillance of specific individuals; in their statements they speak of "security assessments" and "identifying potential risks to the university community." Five others — Oxford, UCL, KCL, Leicester and Nottingham — chose not to comment. Al Jazeera English ↗

The legal framework the universities rely on is the UK's counter-extremism strategy Prevent — since 2015 a statutory duty for public institutions to assess radicalisation risks, including regarding external speakers and campus events. Critics argue that Prevent, in practice, pushes back the boundaries of what a university may lawfully gather about its own students, and that hiring a private firm beyond the reach of parliamentary oversight extends those boundaries further. Al Jazeera English ↗

Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), called the contracts "shameful" — the institutions, she said, had "wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds spying on their own students." Gina Romero, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, told Liberty Investigates that the use of artificial intelligence to collect and analyse student data "under the guise of open-source intelligence" raises "serious legal questions" and creates a "state of terror" among student activists. Liberty Investigates ↗

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, now an independent MP, responded to the investigation for the outlet Middle East Eye: "Britain is becoming a surveillance state. This is yet another troubling example of the growing draconian crackdown on Palestinian solidarity. Universities should be encouraging students to learn, not intimidating them into silence." Middle East Eye ↗

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