PSNI chief sorry over failure to delete data unlawfully seized from journalists

PSNI apologised to surveillance tribunal

Separately, the PSNI has apologised to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, for failing to disclose information during legal proceedings.

The PSNI disclosed to the court that it had applied for subscriber and outgoing call data from McCaffrey’s phone in 2012 as part of an investigation to identify a PSNI employee who may have passed information to McCaffrey.

The police force said that following investigations by Angus McCullough KC, it had become aware of an authorisation to obtain incoming call data from McCaffrey’s phone that had not been fully disclosed to the tribunal during the court hearing.

“The PSNI sincerely apologises to the Tribunal… for this error in disclosure. It clearly should not have occurred,” according to a letter from the Crown Solicitor sent to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal on behalf of the PSNI on 18 September.

“It appears that the authorisation was mistakenly considered to have been disclosed…when this was not the case,” the letter, first reported by the Irish News, states. “The PSNI would stress that there was no deliberate attempt to conceal the authorisation.”

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal found in April that the PSNI and the Metropolitan Police had unlawfully spied on Birney and McCaffrey, and ordered the PSNI to pay damages.

A separate IPT hearing last week, revealed that the PSNI and MI5 had unlawfully spied on the phone of former BBC investigative journalist Vincent Kearney in 2006 and 2009.

Former BBC journalist, Chris Moore, known for his work on the Kincora boys home, is bringing a separate case against the PSNI and MI5 over allegations of unlawful surveillance in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

Chief constable Boutcher reported last year that the PSNI had placed more than 500 lawyers and 300 journalists under surveillance.

The PSNI also made 10 applications to use covert powers to identify journalists’ confidential sources between 2021 and March 2024.

The PSNI recently apologised to the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office (IPCO) for failing to disclose two covert operations against journalists, Barry McCaffrey and Dónal MacIntyre, during the statutory inspections.

PSNI agreed to delete data

The PSNI agreed in November 2020 to pay damages to Birney and McCaffrey following a ruling by the High Court that found they had been unlawfully arrested.

They were detained by the PSNI in an attempt to identify their confidential journalist sources after they had produced a documentary exposing police collusion in the paramilitary murder of six innocent Catholics in Loughinisland in 1994.

Under the settlement, the PSNI which had arrested the journalists in a failed attempt to identify a confidential journalist source, agreed to delete data seized during the raid, which were transferred to a range of police computer systems.

Despite the ruling, Computer Weekly reported that the PSNI was unable to delete all the seized data from its back up tapes.

The latest findings from McCullough show that the PSNI also held copies of the seized data on one of its computer systems.

Journalist Trevor Birney said it was difficult to take the PSNI at its word after it had told a court six years ago that it would delete the data.

“I think that the PSNI is going out of its way to show that in terms of data handling, its processes are not fit for purpose, that's if you take a benign view… or that somebody, somewhere within the PSNI, believes that they're above the law,” he added

“If you breach a court order, to my mind, you're in contempt of court.. it's inevitable that we're going to end up back in the High Court, ” he said.

He told Computer Weekly that the data seized by the PSNI, included confidential sources from multiple countries, and gigabytes of data from the film production company’s server, of which only 3% had anything to do with the documentary film.