Fitwatch Resisting and Monitoring Forward Intelligence Policing

National Public Order Intelligence Unit

The NPOIU collect and analyse intelligence on political protest that has been judged to be ‘domestic extremist’. They do this in a number of different ways:

• Collecting intelligence at demonstrations. They regularly attend protest around the country, and are frequently seen taking stills photographs of people they decide are ‘of interest’ to them. We believe this is used to ‘track’ people’s political activity, as well as to identify individuals involved.

• Operating CHIS (Covert Human Intelligence Sources). They are known to run undercover operations, which could include undercover police, informants or electronic interceptions.

• Analysing existing or publicly available information. They have access to various databases operated by police forces around the country, including the image database of protesters operated by the Metropolitan Police’s public order unit (CO11). Their status as a private company does not hinder them from having access to whatever police records they wish.

• Directing and advising regional forces in their collection and use of intelligence. They were credited in one of the reports on Kingsnorth as having an effective role in ‘disruption’ of the Climate Camp protest.

Run by ACPO, the NPOIU is an organisation that hides in the shadows. Until organisations such as Fitwatch started publicising their existence, there was little official information available.

ACPO admitted the existence of the NPOIU back in 1998, but has only very recently published information about them on its website. http://www.acpo.police.uk/NCDE/NPOIU.aspx

Their website now proclaims that “The National Public Order Intelligence Unit was established to support police forces in managing the intelligence around the threat to communities from public disorder connected to domestic extremism and single issue campaigning.”

It is not clear how much data on us (including photos) the NPOIU hold themselves, and how much is stored on police databases. They have recently released a statement claiming that they hold ‘only’ 1822 photos. However it needs to be remembered that in addition to this, they have the ability to store and access images held on a variety of police databases. We strongly suspect that there are many more than 1822 who have been flagged up as a potential 'domestic extremist'.

The intelligence processed by NPOIU is also made available to NETCU (National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit), a private sector operation similar to NPOIU. NETCU’s role is in liaising with companies and corporations who have become the target of protests, such as Eon, the power giant which has been the target of environmental campaigns. Activists have expressed fears that NETCU pass on personal details of protesters to the companies concerned.

See also wikipedia on NPOIU