A report into the Northern Ireland police has confirmed they have unlawfully used covert powers to try to uncover journalists’ sources – and found double the number of attempts previously admitted.
The McCullough Review into surveillance practices in the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) found 21 attempts to identify eight reporters’ sources between 2011 and 2015 – compared to 10 previously admitted by the PSNI.
The review by lawyer Angus McCullough, published on 24 September, was commissioned by the police service after a tribunal last year ruled that an undercover police operation to try to unmask the sources of two award-winning documentary makers was unlawful. The special British legal tribunal ruled last December against two UK police forces that secretly pursued Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey – using the journalists’ communications data to spy on their communications, colleagues, and suspected sources.
The McCullough review expressed “significant concerns” about the PSNI conducting trawls of its own communications systems records in “an untargeted wholesale attempt to identify unauthorised contact between PSNI personnel and journalists” but said covert surveillance of journalists and lawyers by police was not “widespread or systemic”.
Amnesty International said the report “exposes a disturbing pattern of unlawful covert surveillance of journalists” and called for a full public inquiry.
Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty Northern Ireland director, said: “The scale of the wrongdoing is alarming, from repeated attempts to identify reporters’ sources to covert operations concealed from oversight bodies.
“But questions remain. How far has MI5 gone in unlawfully monitoring journalists in Northern Ireland?
“A free press simply cannot function under the shadow of state surveillance.
Issues around police surveillance of journalists in Northern Ireland have attracted increasing scrutiny since the 2018 arrests of McCaffrey and Birney in a police investigation into the alleged leaking of a police watchdog document that appeared in their documentary. The documentary – No Stone Unturned – on the 1994 murder of six civilians while watching a football match in a pub in Loughinisland, County Down, names the murder suspects and highlights allegations of collusion between the police and the gunmen. It premiered at the New York Film Festival in September 2017 and has been broadcast by RTE, Ireland’s public service broadcaster.
Report confirms police in Northern Ireland used unlawful powers – The Independent 24 September
Police used journalists’ phone data – BBC News 224 September
Special British legal tribunal exposes illegal police surveillance – AEJ 19 December 2024
