A review by Angus McCullough KC reveals that Northern Ireland police failed to comply with the law but that there was no ‘widespread and systemic’ surveillance of journalists, lawyers and NGOs
A review by Angus McCullough KC reveals that Northern Ireland police failed to comply with the law but that there was no ‘widespread and systemic’ surveillance of journalists, lawyers and NGOs
A review of police surveillance of journalists, lawyers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has found that police in Northern Ireland failed to comply with legal provisions during surveillance operations.
But the review by Angus McCullough KC found there was no basis for concerns that surveillance of journalists and lawyers is “widespread and systemic”.
The review, ordered by the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s (PSNI) chief constable examined allegations that the PSNI had unlawfully monitored the communications of journalists, lawyers and non-profit groups from 2011 to November 2024.
The review found:Surveillance not systemic
McCullough today said that he had found no basis for concerns that PSNI surveillance of journalists or lawyers was widespread or systemic following a 15-month review.
“I can find no basis for any suggestion that the powers available to PSNI are being routinely abused in relation to journalists, lawyers, or others of ‘special status’,” he wrote in a 200-page report published today.
McCullough said the review had been given direct, unrestricted and unsupervised access to all relevant PSNI systems.
“The nature and extent of this access from an organisation holding material of the highest sensitivity is . almost unprecedented,” he said.Defensive operation
McCullough said his findings were subject to a “significant qualification” and that he had “profound reservations” about a PNSI programme to identify staff who may have spoken to journalists.
The PSNI was routinely “washing through” a long list of journalists’ telephone numbers to compare against numbers called by PSNI officers and employees to identify any who had contact with journalists.
“The scale of this practice, the duration over which it was carried out, and the apparent lack of any questioning as to the necessity or proportionality … is troubling,” the report stated.
McCullough found that the PSNI appeared not to have sought any legal advice over the practice and appeared to “lack awareness” that it could breach the legal rights of people whose data was unknowingly used.
“This practice does not appear to have been necessary or proportionate, or indeed compatible with the rights of journalists whose personal data was being processed in this way,” the report said.
The PSNI’s Operation Settat in 2011 checked over 65,000 calls against a spreadsheet of phone numbers collected on more than 380 journalists who had contacted the PSNI’s press office. The spreadsheet, which contained 3,100 lines, identified well over 1,000 individuals and organisations, according to the report.
In 2020, in Operation Puddening, the PSNI automated the process by collecting phone numbers of journalists from the PSNI’s corporate communications department’s Vuelio computer system, until the practice was discontinued in March 2023 following concerns about its effectiveness.
According to the review, the targeting and tracking of the media was “so widespread that any individual journalist working in Northern Ireland was quite likely to be on the list used for the check against PSNI communications systems”.Communications data
An earlier report by PSNI chief constable Jon Boutcher to Northern Ireland’s policing board in June 2024 found that the police service had made 10 applications to obtain phone data to identify journalists’ sources.
McCullough found that the total number of unlawful applications for communications data used to identify journalists’ sources was higher, at 21.
