MI5 and PSNI ordered to pay £20,000 to journalist

A British tribunal has ordered the domestic intelligence service MI5 and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) to pay damages to a journalist for unlawfully obtaining his phone records over more than a decade. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in London ruled on July 23, 2026, that the agencies must each pay 10,000 pounds to Vincent Kearney, a former BBC Northern Ireland Home Affairs Correspondent who now works for Irish broadcaster RTÉ.

The tribunal found that the security services and police made seven separate unlawful authorizations to access, retain, and use Kearney's confidential communications data between 2006 and 2018. In a 16-page judgment, three judges stated the interferences with Kearney's privacy and journalistic sources were "numerous" and took place over years. They emphasized that legal protections for journalists exist not for the individual's benefit, but to serve the public interest in ensuring the free flow of information.

The case revealed that MI5's authorizations in 2006 failed to identify Kearney as a journalist or explain why the data could not be obtained by other means. In 2009, MI5 sought all call data from his mobile phone on national...