Jon Boutcher, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, told the Northern Ireland Policing Board that he had appointed an "eminent" legal counsel, John Beggs KC, to review a 200 page report on PSNI surveillance and report back to confirm there was no misconduct or wrong-doing by police officers. Beggs, a specialist in police misconduct cases, represented the police commanders at the 2016 Hillsborough inquests, and is the co-author of Police Misconduct, Complaints, and Public Regulation
Chief Constable Jon Boutcher has apologised after investigations by an independent reviewer, Angus McCullough KC, revealed that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) retained copies of the data on its computer system more than six years after it should have been deleted under a court agreement. Boutcher commissioned McCullough to carry out an independent review - which is due to report this week - into allegations that the PSNI had placed journalists, lawyers and non-government organisations under unlawful surveillance.
Jude Bunting KC, representing the BBC and Kearney, who now works for RTÉ, told the tribunal that MI5 had conceded that it unlawfully accessed Kearney's communications data in 2006 and 2009. It passed the data on to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). "This appears to be the first time in any tribunal proceedings that MI5 has accepted any interference with journalists' communications data and publicly accepted doing so unlawfully," he said.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland kept inspectors from the Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office (IPCO) in the dark about two covert operations against journalists in 2018 and 2023, it has been disclosed. Brian Leveson, the investigatory powers commissioner, confirmed in a letter to Northern Ireland's policing board that the PSNI only informed IPCO about the covert operations in 2025, after they had become public.
