Tribunal hears secret PSNI surveillance creates ‘chill factor’

Ben Jaffey KC said the legal protections for journalists and their sources was not lost, even if the source was acting wrongfully or even criminally.

Because the police had acted secretly, he said the safeguards to protect sources had been bypassed and the journalists had been unable to challenge the police actions.

He argued that it was insufficient for the tribunal to simply rule that there had been a breach and that an award of damages would be appropriate.

The lawyer said during the tribunal that the PSNI had misled journalists about what was going on and had argued that no covert powers had been used.

Mr Jaffey said the purpose of the surveillance operation had been to see if the journalists met their source.

“You can’t evade the legislation when you target the source and not the journalists,” he said.

It also emerged the PSNI had run what it called a “defensive operation” – running checks on journalists’ phone numbers every six months.

He said journalists would have been unaware that their numbers had been added to a database of searches after they had contacted the press office.

Mr Jaffey said this was another example of a covert operation.

He said the officer who led the investigation, Darren Ellis, had been motivated by “animus and unjustified antipathy” towards the journalists and the documentary.