The rise & fall of a misinformation-fighting team at the Ministry of Health
A history of the Ministry of Health's Covid-19 mis/disinformation team called DART and how they went begging for jobs when their demise appeared imminent...
In the previous post I talked about the dirty secret of Covid misinformation and the shadow interests that profit from it aka consultants. This post continues the story with a heavier, receipts laden, look into the Disinformation Assessment & Response Team (DART) at the Ministry of Health alongside other government agencies in this game.
How DART started
A May 2021 memo set up DART’s formation and called the team necessary to, “…counter or respond to disinformation and ensure that reliable information is prevalent to all New Zealanders.”
Designed to be a clearinghouse for reporting on disinformation, up until then the Ministry’s communications team had dealt with these issues. But a dedicated disinformation team meant their, “...approach could be strengthened with more clear procedure and dedicated resourcing, as well as clearer accountability within CVIP for addressing misinformation.” CVIP stands for Covid-19 Vaccination and Immunisation Programme so it was clearly aimed at combating vaccine misinformation.
The memo also listed a handful of principles in setting up the team. The first 1 was, “We must respect New Zealanders’ rights to freedom of expression and association.”
DART was set up under the National Immunisation Programme. They were made up of 3 full time people.
How did DART work?
I covered in the last post my above graphic - The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT NZ) deals with cyber security like ransomware attacks but they had raised concerns about possible vaccine scams. In response to that, CERT were given the job of collecting all types of Covid-19 misinformation reports from the public, and from May 2021 they were passing them to the Ministry of Health for actioning onwards.
Reports were emailed in a spreadsheet and when DART joined the scene they took charge of receiving them. Although reports appeared slow at times - with the DART team reminding CERT on Monday mornings if they, “had anything for them this week.”
DART had no clear procedures or guidelines yet made referrals to other places - such as the Medical Council, the Department of Internal Affairs, Netsafe, Worksafe and the Police. With no procedures it’s not clear what the threshold for referral of misinformation was.
DART’s involvement with government agencies
The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) comes up a lot as part of mis/disinformation due to national security falling under their remit.
A DPMC briefing to the Covid-19 Chief Executives group, noted DART as a new and necessary cog in the rapidly moving mis/disinformation landscape.
As part of that landscape, DPMC’s Interagency Coordination Group brought DART, along with their own DPMC unit, the National Assessments Bureau (NAB) and the Police unit National Intelligence Centre (NIC) into a, “…virtual triaging and reporting cell…”
This group was coordinated by a dedicated DPMC disinformation advisor, and included input from Netsafe, the Serious Fraud Office and the Domain Name Commission. Terms of reference were drafted for the cell but never finalised.
The cell was to produce the impact of false Covid information to the Prime Minister and other relevant Ministers. From September 2021, some of the cell appears to have had some fortnightly meetings.
Action points show DART were involved in understanding the spread of disinformation. What tools did they use and what was their background to do this?
The only reference I found was to their use of Similar Web to gauge internet traffic to websites like The BFD, and a triage dashboard. The DART position descriptions are vague as to specific skills needed in the team.
Despite intentions to be weekly, only 2 bulletins from the cell were ever released - in December 2021 and February 2022.
In February the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff hopefully (wistfully?) requested an update on, “…recent cross-government work on security threats to the COVID-19 response, including mis/dis-information and violent extremism…” The response noted DART (it’s redacted in the document but…trust me, it’s DART) had been working in the Covid space for 6 months to summarise, “…key mis/disinformation and anti-authority/anti-vaccine narratives circulating online…” and those cell reports were dis-established in early 2022. Wait, huh?
The cell was re-assessed and wound down in favor of updates from agencies on their respective areas. Why? A draft grey areas of disinformation and freedom of speech paper was discussed at a Covid-19 Chief Executives meeting but never finalised. The grey area is everything between free speech and balls out extremism. Did that contribute to the cell’s demise? I’m unsure - I can’t explicitly see why the cell was disbanded in these documents.
There were other groups which looked into Covid related mis/disinformation and Police were 1 of them. While their National Intelligence Center was a cell member, Police also had a open source intelligence team (OSINT) which reviewed social media for anti-vaccination sentiment including adverse reactions, and rated how many accounts involved in them were likely to be inauthentic. This work was done as part of the classified National Risk Register, which has a diverse range of nationally significant hazards and threats.
Inauthentic accounts were a concern to them in case members pushed misinformation and it led to “anti-government sentiment.” Examples of posts OSINT found concerning, were yes vaccine injuries, and when New Zealand went into a country wide August 2021 lockdown:
The team rated 18% of accounts in groups they looked at could be inauthentic but recommended further research.
DART’s reporting on mis/disinformation
Remember the CERT NZ reports that went to DART?
DART appear to be credited in supporting DPMC to deliver an August 2021 false information on Covid-19 summary - which states between February to July 2021 they identified 156 separate pieces of false information. (I should have done more! Kidding. Mostly…) But that’s not exactly an overwhelming number is it?
DART must also have contributed to the October 2021 online and offline Covid activism summary. Which reports anti-lockdown stickers were seen in Wellington and Auckland, and flyers were handed out that were “…claiming young people who contract Covid-19 will not die…”
While I pick myself up off the floor over the shock and fear of stickers - am I strong enough to refrain from linking to Ministry of Health advice, stating that young people simply do not get very sick from Covid? No, I am not.
The majority of the report is really just examples from overseas - what could happen if the gateway drug of sticker activism goes unchecked I guess, accompanied by a long list of news article references.
I’m not sure if this reference was to the bulletins from the failed cell or DART’s main activities, but at 1 point DART promised, “Each month we will focus on a different group or aspect of the disinformation space (focusing mostly on NZ) while our upcoming weekly reports will provide the ‘news and weather’ for disinformation in NZ.”
But I have a feeling the reports weren’t very often - there was a DART report in September 2022, dedicated to what they called the country’s largest spreader of disinformation - the group Voices for Freedom. Or as DART senior advisor Daniel Dominey liked to call them, “Vices for Freedom”.
Relying on heavy rhetoric, “DART assessed the group’s content on their website and telegram for credibility and transparency finding that the website severely violates journalistic standard.” That statement could be meaningful - if the grass roots group were journalists.
DART‘s work with DIA & Netsafe
As well as DPMC, DART also had a close relationship with the Digital Safety team at the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA). DIA has a long history of dealing with questionable content such as digital harms from extremism or child exploitation.
DART (aka Dominey, as pretty much all the released emails I’ve seen were from him) seemed to like to give them tips they came across on non-Covid information too. 1 example is VR sex simulation software which the DIA advisor gently let DART know they were aware of. Another was comments on a proposed firearms consultation.
In March 2022 a triage dashboard for reporting misinformation and tracking emerging narratives was delivered between DIA and the Ministry of Health as part of a proposed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). What it contained and how it worked - I’m unsure. It might have just been a shared spreadsheet.
Covid misinformation & social media
DIA is a key government agency with access to do takedowns through the Meta portal for Facebook posts. And DIA does report take downs directly to Meta (38 in a 2 year period) and emailed Twitter - but this reporting appears extremist in nature and I couldn’t find any explicitly related to Covid.
Which confused me at first, until I realised DART made referrals to Netsafe, for them to do the dirty work of reporting to social media platforms. DART didn’t want to do it directly and be labelled the “internet police” in Dominey’s words.
It was Netsafe who reported conservative commentator Chantelle Baker’s Facebook page. And Netsafe obediently re-reported her when she got banned and used a second account to post - telling DART it was “a bit frustrating” Facebook weren’t quickly banning her again when asked to. Dominey emailed Netsafe back hoping a new and voluntary online harms code of practice with social media platforms, led by Netsafe, could be used to now, “…nudge them along (perhaps in the same way one uses a rolled up newspaper to nudge a wayward canine along).”
Overall, how many Covid misinformation reports did Netsafe do?
Due to Netsafe being the administrator of the 2015 Harmful Digital Communications Act, some of their work falls under the Official Information Act. The few available OIAs have a clear theme - Netsafe will consider and almost refuse the OIA, then say they will charge for doing the OIA - then when you agree - they refuse the OIA. Hence - idk how many Netsafe did in total.
While it doesn’t appear DART had any direct communications with social media companies about Covid misinformation, the Prime Minister certainly did.
In a September 2021 meeting with Facebook, she praised them for their efforts combatting rumors of the ‘consequences’ of the vaccine and, ‘mask wearing conspiracies that are not underpinned by science.‘ (That’s really rich considering the Ministry of Health didn’t support masking until an abrupt u-turn in August 2020.)
How DART ended
On the 1st of June 2022, DART moved to be under the Ministry’s communications team and their work was “rescoped to fit with the communications focus.”
That triage dashboard that had been delivered in March by DIA? An MoU had been initiated but the Ministry of Health never signed it. DIA expected the Ministry to take over the dashboard (or at least use it which they had no evidence of either). Although DART seemed keen to share the dashboard with other organisations, in the absence of any communication DIA formally withdrew their support on the 24th of August 2022.
This was clearly the end of DART.
Dominey apologised over the “shambles” they were in to CERT in a 6th of September 2022 email noting, “…[the] Ministry has decided not to take over the collection of public reporting of disinformation from CERT.”
Yes, the Ministry of Health had been considering expanding their scope further. What’s really interesting about this is the attempts Dominey made to push these interests forward - it shows how the machinery grinds on as individual people both absorb and grow the State’s interests as their own.
After waiting for a senior staffer to formally break the news to DIA that the Ministry would not be continuing with the dashboard and MoU, in later emails to DIA he also apologized to them as well:
In an 8th of September email to Netsafe, Dominey yes - apologises to them for what had happened and clearly started shilling for a job. Comparing DART to a tech start up he said, “…we are nimble and flexible to pivot in the early to mid‐phase when functions, products and practices are still being developed.”
He went on to say they could get out of their fixed term contracts earlier than December if needed, and really they should be a 6 person team but a 12 person team would really enable them to be, “…teaching critical thinking and explaining the harms.” He managed to throw in some reflections on free speech too, “…current legislation is not really fit for purpose and as you would undoubtably be aware there are issues of free speech etc which make entry into this space problematic without a firm mandate to do so.”
He must have been staring down looming after-payments, as in yet another stream of conscious to keep DART going he said, “…having a super big budget and being in a large org would help in some ways but really just as the nature of the space is fluid and flexible so does DART have to be, and I ensure that we embed that in our work so I think once we get ours down we can learn form others but also teach others what we have done...”
Ok.
I’m cutting him off there.
By the end of November 2022 DART was effectively over as all 3 members had moved on prior to their fixed term contracts ending. And this decidedly weak attempt at a mis/disinformation clearinghouse within government was over.
In the next post I’m going to slap a bow on this sorry tale by detailing how this obsession with Covid misinformation neatly hid the real culprit behind declining social cohesion, which culminated in a protest at Parliament, and directly led to the government back peddling on Covid restrictions in April 2022.
Hi Al, appreciate your work here on Substack. If you're able please get in touch with me hello@voicesforfreedom.co.nz. Cheers Claire