Lawyers performing for the BBC have written to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) over allegations that one of its journalists was topic to police surveillance.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is alleged to have spied on journalist Vincent Kearney throughout his work on a 2011 Spotlight documentary investigating the independence of the police watchdog in Northern Ireland.
Kearney, at present the northern editor at RTE, mentioned journalists have to be free to hold out their work with out concern that the police might secretly try and establish their sources. He mentioned he was decided to seek out out what occurred.
The allegations emerged throughout a listening to by the IPT in February following a criticism from journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey that they’d been topic to illegal surveillance by the PSNI after making a documentary that uncovered police failures to analyze the homicide of six harmless folks by a paramilitary group.
Durham Police, working with the PSNI, raided the journalists’ houses and the movie manufacturing firm, Fine Point Films, as half of a “covert strategy” to establish the supply of a leaked doc.
The chief constable of the PSNI apologised for the illegal raids and agreed to pay damages of £875,000 after the journalists had been exonerated in 2019 by the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland.
Following this, the journalists requested the Investigatory Powers Tribunal to analyze whether or not they had been unlawfully subjected to police surveillance.
Phone and electronic mail surveillance
During a listening to in February, the PSNI acknowledged that it unlawfully accessed McCaffrey’s telephone information in 2013. McCaffrey’s telephone was additionally topic to surveillance by the Metropolitan Police in 2011 and it emerged that Durham Police tried to acquire entry to Birney’s work emails in 2018.
L-R: Barry McCaffrey, Grahame Morris MP and Trevor Birney outdoors court docket in February 2024
Disclosures made throughout the case recommended that Kearney had additionally been topic to police surveillance whereas making a documentary for the BBC’s Spotlight collection.
A spokesperson for the BBC mentioned: “We have instructed lawyers to write to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal about the alleged PSNI surveillance of telephone data linked to the work of Vincent Kearney during his employment with the BBC, in connection with a BBC Northern Ireland Spotlight programme broadcast in 2011.”
“We think that serious issues of public interest are involved, including in relation to the adverse effects that surveillance may have on journalistic investigations and freedoms,” the spokesperson added.
The claims relate to Kearney’s 2011 Spotlight documentary, The whistleblower and the watchdog, which reported on the disaster within the Police Ombudsman’s Office and investigated how the work of the PSNI watchdog had grow to be contaminated by inner difficulties.
Kearney mentioned: “The programme investigated allegations that the independence of the Police Ombudsman had been compromised and that it was not investigating complaints about police activities with sufficient rigour.”
The programme resulted in requires the resignation of the ombudsman on the time, Al Hutchinson, and he introduced his intention to step down shortly after it was broadcast.
Kearney mentioned: “I am concerned that the police may have attempted to identify sources of information within a programme that was actually about the independence of the office of the Police Ombudsman.”
“Journalists must be free to carry out their work without fear that the police may secretly try to identify sources, and I am determined to find out what happened,” he added.
Policing Board probe
The newest allegations come because the Northern Ireland Policing Board is conducting a probe into allegations that the PSNI has carried out surveillance on lawyers and journalists by accessing their telephone information to establish their sources.
The PSNI’s chief constable, Jon Boutcher, handed a confidential report back to the Policing Board in April on the request of board members.
We are extraordinarily involved that the revelations to this point on this case level to a a lot wider sample of covert police surveillance of journalists and different human rights defenders Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International
The report, which has been handed to the Policing Board’s human rights advisor, John Wadham, is known to recommend that the PSNI might have been concerned in as much as 18 incidents of surveillance in opposition to journalists and lawyers.
The Law Society of Northern Ireland has additionally written to Boutcher asking for an evidence of disclosures within the report, together with “the statutory or other authority under which any such surveillance operations were undertaken”.
Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International’s Northern Ireland director, urged different journalists and media organisations to make complaints to the IPT in the event that they had been involved about surveillance by the PSNI.
“We are extremely concerned that the revelations to date in this case point to a much wider pattern of covert police surveillance of journalists and other human rights defenders,” he mentioned. “Freedom of the press, including the right to protect sources, is a cornerstone of any rights-respecting society.”
Daniel Holder, director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice, mentioned there was a necessity for full accountability. “This issue of the extent and lawfulness of PSNI surveillance on journalists, lawyers and potentially other members of civil society really needs to be nailed now,” he mentioned.
Jon Boutcher informed the Policing Board in April that he would supply a public model of the report.
The IPT is because of proceed hearings into allegations of illegal surveillance in opposition to Birney and McCaffrey later within the 12 months.
