The Police Service of Northern Ireland covertly surveilled a group of journalists on a six-month rolling basis because they were conducting unwanted investigations into the force, a secretive tribunal has heard.
Details of what the PSNI are said to describe as a “defensive operation” were heard at the latest hearing of the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) into whether two Northern Irish investigative journalists, Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, were spied on by UK police and intelligence services seeking to identify their sources.
After they produced No Stone Unturned, an award-winning documentary about apparent collusion between the police and the suspected murderers in the 1994 Loughinisland massacre, in which six Catholic men were killed by loyalist paramilitaries, the homes and offices of the pair were raided – a move later criticised by Northern Ireland’s top judge.
At Wednesday’s hearing at the high court in London, Ben Jaffey KC, acting for McCaffrey, said that following an additional 600 pages of disclosures from defendants, it was impossible to say how many times his client had been spied on but the new evidence “appears to us to show further extensive use of covert powers against the applicants and others”.
Describing the use of the words “defensive operation” as an “Orwellian euphemism”, he said: “It appears to disclose the existence of what the PSNI call a defensive operation involving the cross-referencing of billing with police telephone numbers on a six-monthly basis of what appear to be a group of Northern Irish journalists who have written unobliging things about the PSNI.”
Jaffey said it was “plainly unlawful” and called on the PSNI to reveal details of how many journalists it targeted and over what period of time.
Speaking after the hearing, McCaffrey said: “We know it was in operation in 2017, we don’t know whether it was in operation before 2017, we don’t if it’s going on today. This is journalists’ Covid moment, we now have been told the whole system is infected. It’s 2004, not 1984 – is George Orwell in charge of the PSNI? ”
The tribunal also heard that police sought data from Birney’s wife, which Jaffey said was “for the purposes of identifying Mr Birney’s and Mr McCaffrey’s sources”, as well as from his solicitor, Niall Murphy.
Additionally, intelligence was sought from France on McCaffrey, in relation to a trip he took to the country in 2016 with Birney.
Birney said what had emerged at the tribunal was “incredibly revealing but ultimately shocking”.
He added: “Today we started to see what actually was the underlying attitude within the PSNI that led to our arrest, and that’s a complete and utter disrespect for journalists. Ultimately, I think it’s an undermining of freedom of the press in Northern Ireland and an undermining of the relationship between PSNI and journalists. Why did police think this was acceptable? They seem to have adopted the ideas of the Stasi in the 1980s.”
Jaffey criticised the defendants, bar Durham constabulary – which carried out raids against the men due to a conflict of interest within the PSNI – for delays in disclosure, with the five-year anniversary looming of when Birney and McCaffrey first asked the IPT to investigate whether unlawful surveillance had been carried out against them.
The fresh disclosures also showed that an authorisation obtained by the Met to get call data from McCaffrey’s mobile number ran from 12 June 2011 for four months but that data was obtained from at least 9 June 2011 – meaning either there was another authorisation that had not been disclosed or that it was obtained without permission, Jaffey told the tribunal.
Last week, the BBC said its lawyers had contacted the tribunal over claims one of its former investigative reporters was spied on by police.
The corporation said Vincent Kearney believed the PSNI may have attempted to identify sources of information for his 2011 Spotlight documentary that investigated the independence of the police ombudsman’s office.
The substantive IPT hearing is scheduled for October.