Police monitored cellphone information of BBC safety editor Brian Rowan to determine confidential sources
Police in Northern Eire monitored the cellphone communications information of the BBC’s former safety editor Brian Rowan in an try and determine his confidential sources.
Court docket paperwork disclosed by the BBC Highlight programme reveal that Rowan was topic to surveillance after he reported the homicide of an agent working for MI5 and Particular Department. The case got here to gentle after the BBC and journalist Vincent Kearney introduced a case to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) for illegal surveillance of Kearney’s cellphone information.
The IPT present in Kearney’s favour final week. The case represents the primary time that the Safety Service, MI5, has been ordered to pay compensation to a journalist for unlawfully monitoring their cellphone information.
In accordance with BBC Highlight, the Police Service of Northern Eire (PSNI) launched Operation Mally after Rowan wrote a narrative for the Belfast Telegraph about Denis Donaldson, who was shot and killed in 2006 after being uncovered as an agent for Particular Department and MI5.
The PSNI monitored Rowan’s cellphone information for any contact with police cellphone numbers in an try and determine his sources.
Operation Mally
The programme reported that Operation Mally expanded, and in 2007 detectives started compiling lists of journalists, together with cellular numbers, residence landlines, electronic mail addresses and residential addresses.
These surveillance operations fell exterior the scope of an impartial evaluation performed by Angus McCullough KC, into police surveillance of journalists and attorneys, which investigated incidents between 2011 and 2024.
McCullough discovered there had been failings however concluded there was no “widespread and systemic” surveillance of journalists, attorneys and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). He reported in September 2025 that the PSNI had made 21 purposes for communications information to determine journalists’ sources with out recognising the “overriding public curiosity” in defending their confidentiality.
The report discovered that the police power additionally maintained a secret register containing the cellphone numbers of greater than 1,000 journalists and others as a part of a “defensive operation” to determine PSNI workers who had spoken to journalists.
PSNI chief Jon Boutcher stated that he had ended the observe.
Surveillance might have gone additional than cellphone information
Rowan informed BBC Highlight that he believed surveillance might have gone past monitoring the cellphone numbers he had referred to as or who had referred to as him. He stated that way back to 2002, he was warned by a police officer that his “cellphone could be on”, which he took as a warning that his conversations have been being listened to.
He informed the programme that he had been informed by a contact that MI5 had critiqued a cellphone dialog he had over the Denis Donaldson story.
“The one method you possibly can critique that dialog is if in case you have a transcript of it, otherwise you’ve heard it, otherwise you’re conscious of its element,” stated Rowan. “So, I don’t rule out that risk that this went a lot additional than merely making an attempt to match one quantity up with one other quantity.”
Rowan informed BBC Highlight that the PSNI didn’t inform him about Operation Mally after they disclosed the data to Kearney and the BBC throughout Vincent Kearney’s case on the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.
“What else have been they as much as? What else? What have been the opposite intrusions?” he requested.
PSNI chief affords to fulfill Rowan
The PSNI chief constable, Jon Boutcher, has supplied to fulfill Rowan to debate the matter. “Mr Rowan is an expert and revered investigative journalist, and I’m completely satisfied to fulfill him to debate any points or issues he might have,” he stated.
Boutcher stated in a press release that important adjustments to observe and coverage had been carried out for the reason that Residence Workplace remedied defects within the 2008 Communications Knowledge Code in 2014.
“It has been famous by Mr McCullough KC that no additional breaches of the code have been authorised since that point by the PSNI,” he added.
McCullough KC is because of produce a follow-up report following the IPT’s verdict within the Kearney case.
