The claims were made at a hearing of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in London.
Police in Northern Ireland undertook six-monthly trawls of the phone data of “troublemaker” journalists to see if they were in contact with officer sources, a tribunal has heard.
Barry McCaffrey, centre, and Trevor Birney, third left, with lawyers and supporters outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London . The PSNI had asked Durham Constabulary to take the lead in the investigation into the leaked Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland document that appeared in the documentary, No Stone Unturned, into the 1994 loyalist paramilitary massacre in the village of Loughinisland in Co Down.
“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,” he told the tribunal.But he added: “We don’t know when it started and we don’t know when it’s finished and we don’t know what it involves.
Mr Jaffey said the fresh evidence disclosed to the tribunal suggested he could have been subjected to many more covert spying bids. The BBC has joined the tribunal case amid claims one of its former investigative reporters, Vincent Kearney, was spied on by the PSNI Mr Kearney, who is the current Northern Editor at RTE, said he is determined to find out what happened.
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