The British government was alarmed at the increasingly successful use of the internet for propaganda purposes by republicans, confidential files released today show. The possible threat to British national security from a sophisticated Sinn Féin website was raised by minister of state at the Home Office David Maclean in a letter to Sir John Wheeler, the Northern Ireland Office minister, on March 12th, 1996. “Amongst the unsavoury nasties were these very professionally produced pages, apparently showing our complete [military] deployment in NI,” Maclean wrote. He enclosed documents from the website which gave details of British military, Royal Navy, RAF and Royal Irish Regiment numbers. “It horrifies me to find such dangerous and nasty propaganda on the internet,” wrote Maclean.

Source: The Irish Times December 30, 2019 01:18 UTC