The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has ordered MI5 and the Police Service of Northern Ireland to pay £10,000 each in damages to former BBC Northern Ireland home affairs correspondent Vincent Kearney, after finding that a series of communications data authorisations targeting him between 2006 and 2014 were not in accordance with the law and disproportionate, in breach of his rights under Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Kearney, now northern editor at RTÉ, described the ruling as "a tremendous victory for journalism" and said it was the first time MI5 had been ordered to pay damages to a journalist. "The IPT does not normally award damages, and that was never the purpose of this case," he said. "The aim was always to bring into the public domain the extent of the law breaking over a period of many years and the impact that had on my ability to perform my lawful duties as a journalist."
The claims, brought by Kearney and the BBC in May 2024, followed disclosure in separate Tribunal proceedings - the case brought by documentary makers Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney - which revealed interferences by public authorities with Kearney's journalistic data.
The judgment, [2026] UKIPTrib 4, was handed down by a panel comprising the Tribunal's President, Lady Carmichael, Mr Justice Chamberlain and Stephen Shaw KC. The Tribunal found that MI5 applications in 2006 for subscriber and billing data relating to Kearney's mobile phone, and for subscriber details of numbers that had been in contact with him, made no reference to the fact that he was a journalist or that the purpose was to identify his sources.
A further MI5 application in 2009, for all call-related data from his phone on national security grounds, did identify him as a journalist and made clear the intention was to identify his sources, but failed to recognise that such a measure had to be justified by an overriding requirement in the public interest. This error, the Tribunal said, was one of substance, not merely a failure to recite the right legal mantra.
The PSNI's unlawful authorisations included applications made in March and October 2009 during the investigation into the murder of PC Stephen Carroll, after Kearney received a call from an individual claiming responsibility on behalf of the Continuity IRA, as well as applications in 2013 under Operation Samarium, an investigation into alleged corrupt payments to a senior PSNI officer, and in 2014 under Operation Basanti, an investigation into a suspected police source of Kearney's. The Tribunal noted that one Samarium authorisation appeared to proceed on the footing that Kearney was himself a suspect, when he was not.
The Metropolitan Police, commissioned by the PSNI to investigate Kearney's journalism after the October 2011 broadcast of a Spotlight programme alleging that the independence of the Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland had been compromised, obtained more than three months of call, cell site, IMEI, MMS and GPRS data from his work mobile under Operation Erewhon. The Tribunal said the collection of geographical data about Kearney's movements over this period involved a serious interference with his right to respect for his private life, and it had seen nothing to suggest any overriding public interest remotely sufficient to justify the intrusion.
The judgment also addressed Operation Yurta, the Durham Constabulary investigation launched in 2017 at the PSNI's instigation into alleged leaks by ombudsman staff following the documentary No Stone Unturned. Durham obtained from the Met a spreadsheet and attribution list containing communications data gathered during Operation Erewhon. The Tribunal held that the retention and use of the data was a separate interference requiring, at minimum, a lawful consideration of why retention was justified where the provision of the data was itself unlawful and that nothing of that kind had occurred. Because Durham officers were acting as delegates or agents of the PSNI, the illegality was attributed to the PSNI.
The authorisations were granted under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. Under the Strasbourg case law beginning with Goodwin v UK, protection of journalistic sources is one of the basic conditions for press freedom, and any measure interfering with source confidentiality must be justified by an overriding requirement in the public interest, convincingly established. The Tribunal confirmed that these principles apply equally to communications data as to the content of journalistic communications, since communications data may be all that is needed to identify a source.
On remedy, the Tribunal rejected the claimants' invitation to draw on Gulati v MGN, the phone hacking damages authority, holding that to do so would disregard the guidance in Faulkner, elide the distinction between the Human Rights Act and the law of tort, and provide a victim with a remedy he would not receive from the Strasbourg court. It instead drew on the Strasbourg decision in Sedletska v Ukraine, noting that damages were awarded there notwithstanding that no data were actually recovered and no physical search took place. Adjusting for inflation and the difference in cost of living, it concluded that £10,000 was necessary to provide just satisfaction, and saw no reason to distinguish between the conduct of the PSNI and that of MI5.
The panel observed that by contrast with McCaffrey and Birney, where communications data were obtained on a single occasion, the interferences in Kearney's case were numerous, took place over a period of years, and came many years after the Strasbourg Court's decision in Goodwin. It noted that the heightened protection provided to journalists is not for the benefit of the journalist personally, but for the public interest in the ability of his readers or audience to receive information from him.
Cathryn McGahey KC, for the PSNI, said the force had made a number of clear and extensive concessions, but opposed an award of damages as unnecessary to provide just satisfaction. The Tribunal made no determination against GCHQ, the Northern Ireland Office, the Home Secretary or the Foreign Secretary, and none in favour of a third claimant, Christopher Moore, whose case was considered entirely in closed proceedings.
A BBC spokesperson said: "What happened in this instance was wrong and must never be repeated. It caused harm to a journalist, jeopardised trust and threatened the safeguards on which public interest journalism depends, and has a right to expect."
The judgment is available here: Kearney and BBC v Chief Constable of the PSNI and others 2026 UKIPTrib 4Kearney and BBC v Chief Constable of the PSNI and others 2026 UKIPTrib 4
