PSNI put 'trouble maker' journalists under surveillance
Officers are understood to have accessed the phone bills of the unnamed group of Northern Ireland journalists in a bid to find potential police sources
Former senior journalist Barry McCaffrey and The Detail editor Trevor Birney outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Wednesday. Photo courtesy Sarah Kavanagh
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This week’s stories hit close to home for us.
Revelations that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) mounted a surveillance operation against a group of journalists deemed to be “trouble makers” emerged during a legal hearing yesterday involving our own editor Trevor Birney and former senior journalist Barry McCaffrey.
The hearing was held by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in London, which looks at complaints against the UK’s intelligence services.
An hearing in March has already heard that police spied on Mr Birney and Mr McCaffrey for years.
But yesterday’s hearing showed that the spying operation was bigger and involved more journalists than previously thought.
Solicitor Niall Murphy said the operation was more befitting of a police state than a democracy.
The industrial-scale harvesting of sensitive journalistic communications data by the PSNI is akin to East German secret police in the early 1980s
The revelations raise questions for all journalists working in Northern Ireland.
It is still unclear how many people were spied on, when the operation started and if it is still ongoing.
Mr Birney has now called on Justice Minister Naomi Long to set up a judge-led independent inquiry into the wider surveillance of journalists in Northern Ireland.
It is time for the justice minister to step in because clearly given what we have heard in court… this is an issue for all the “trouble making” journalists mentioned
Hear Trevor Birney talking about the extraordinary revelations
Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey (third and fourth from left) outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Photo courtesy Sarah Kavanagh
New PSNI spying revelations raise more questions than answers
Barry McCaffrey writes for The Detail on how he and Trevor Birney have been fighting for years to get answers.
We are swamped in a Mount Everest of disclosed police documents and are desperately trying to understand what any of them mean.
We’ve been fighting this case for six years now and have visited more rabbit holes than Watership Down.
Mr McCaffrey said that the case strikes right at the heart of the wider UK justice system.
If the PSNI has a secret spying system in place to monitor journalists, do other UK police forces use the same tactics?
Another IPT hearing will be held on July 18, ahead of a more in-depth hearing in October.
For now, everyone involved in the case is calling for police to disclose all their documents to avoid dragging out legal proceedings any longer.
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