On July 23, 2026, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled that MI5 and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) unlawfully obtained the communications data of journalist Vincent Kearney across seven separate operations spanning 2006 to 2018. The tribunal ordered each agency to pay £10,000 in damages — the first time MI5 has been directed to pay damages by the IPT (BBC News).

The IPT is a specialist court that investigates complaints against UK intelligence agencies. The three-judge panel — Lady Carmichael, Mr Justice Chamberlain, and Stephen Shaw KC — found the surveillance was disproportionate and not in accordance with the law. The PSNI ran four of the seven unlawful operations. MI5 admitted in 2025 to unlawfully obtaining Kearney's phone data on two occasions between 2006 and 2009 (The Guardian).

Kearney, a former BBC Northern Ireland home affairs correspondent who now serves as northern editor of Irish broadcaster RTÉ, was co-applicant in the case alongside the BBC. The case named the Chief Constable of the PSNI, the Chief Constable of Durham Constabulary, and MI5's parent government department as respondents (IPT Judgment).

The scale of the surveillance was extensive. In one operation alone, the PSNI obtained data relating to 1,580 calls or texts from Kearney's phone. The surveillance captured call and text numbers and timings, though not the content of communications. The PSNI also created a profile of Kearney that included his car registrations and the names of his wife and mother-in-law (The Guardian).

MI5 made at least four applications for Kearney's phone data, seeking to identify his journalistic sources (Computer Weekly). The PSNI made false assertions about Kearney in their applications for access to his communications data (Doughty Street Chambers). The Metropolitan Police were also involved in the surveillance alongside the PSNI and MI5 (NUJ).

Kearney's lawyer, Cormac Kehoe, described the surveillance as "unprecedented" during the tribunal proceedings (The Guardian).

Kearney brought the legal action after information emerged from the case of Belfast-based journalists Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney. In December 2024, the IPT found that the PSNI and the Metropolitan Police had unlawfully carried out covert surveillance on McCaffrey and Birney. The two journalists had produced the documentary "No Stone Unturned," which examined alleged collusion between police and loyalist paramilitaries in a Troubles-era massacre. McCaffrey and Birney were wrongfully arrested in 2018 after producing the film (The Guardian).

PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher accepted the IPT ruling and apologised to Kearney. An independent review commissioned by Boutcher found that the PSNI used journalists' phone numbers to check for information leaks by officers or staff. The PSNI also conducted surveillance on solicitors, including Peter Corrigan, in connection with the same leak investigations (BBC News; The Guardian).

The broader context here is a now-established pattern of UK security and policing bodies using communications data powers to identify journalistic sources, particularly in Northern Ireland. The Kearney ruling follows the McCaffrey and Birney judgment, and the IPT's findings extend beyond journalists to include solicitors caught in the same leak-investigation dragnet.

The tribunal's willingness to award damages against both a police service and a security agency, rather than issuing declaratory relief alone, signals a sharpening of judicial expectations around proportionality and lawful authorization when surveillance targets legally privileged and journalistic communications. The damages award, while modest in monetary terms, carries institutional weight. MI5 in particular has not previously been directed to pay damages by the IPT, which historically has preferred declaratory findings — that is, formally stating that a breach occurred without attaching a financial penalty. The £20,000 total, split equally between MI5 and the PSNI, reflects the tribunal's assessment of each agency's share of the unlawful conduct across the seven operations.

The involvement of Durham Constabulary as a named respondent has not been separately explained in the available facts, though its presence in the case title suggests a role in the chain of authorization or data handling that the tribunal examined.