MI5 agents watched many reporters criticize their actions in Northern Ireland
British intelligence agency MI5 illegally spied on Irish journalist Vincent Kearney for eight years, his lawyer told a London tribunal. MI5 agents monitored Kearney’s calls, contacts and movements while he was reporting from Northern Ireland.
Kearney was monitored by MI5, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and London’s Metropolitan Police between 2006 and 2014, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) heard this week. The IPT is a special court set up to investigate complaints against Britain’s spy agencies.
Kearney’s phone records were illegally obtained by MI5 while being used by the PSNI and the Metropolitan Police. “Geographical Data” To construct is derived from more than 1,500 of his texts “Detailed Intelligence Profile” Kearney included details of his relationships and addresses of family members, his lawyer told the IPT.
MI5 admitted accessing Kearney’s phone records last year, but claims its agents only did so on two occasions, in 2006 and 2009.
Kearney worked as the BBC’s Northern Ireland correspondent from 2006 to 2019 and is currently the Northern Ireland editor for Ireland’s state broadcaster RTE. His first report for the BBC in 2006 was on the murder of Denis Donaldson, an MI5 informant within the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Before the end of the year, an MI5 agent made an internal request “Open File” On Kearney, the tribunal heard last year.
“What happened in this instance was wrong and should never be repeated.” The BBC said in a statement this week. “The freedom we do is hard-won and we will fight to protect it.”
While the BBC supported Kearney, the British broadcaster allowed MI5 to vet all its journalists from 1937 to the 1980s. When the Observer revealed in 1985 that the BBC was the only one to admit to a vetting program and claimed it was “Withdrawn” – but not canceled – in response.
Read more:
MI5 blames Russia for ‘disaster on the streets’
Kearney was not the only Irish journalist to be subject to surveillance by British authorities. In a landmark ruling in 2024, the IPT found that the PSNI and the Metropolitan Police broke the law when they spied on investigative journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey. Birney and McCaffrey came to the agencies’ attention when they produced a documentary revealing collusion between British police and loyalist terrorists in the killing of six Catholic men in Northern Ireland.
Birney and McCaffrey told the tribunal “no doubt” UK still targets Irish reporters.
You can share this story on social media:
