MI5 and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) are to pay damages to the prominent journalist, Vincent Kearney, for illegally accessing his phone records in a “landmark” judgement by a UK tribunal. It is understood to be the first time the British security service has been ordered to pay damages to a journalist. In the judgement published on Thursday, the Investigatory Powers tribunal (IPT) found the surveillance of Kearney carried out by the PSNI, MI5 and the Metropolitan Police in relation to seven separate operations for longer than a 10-year period was “not in accordance with the law and disproportionate.”“This is a tremendous victory for journalism and an affirmation of the duty and legal rights of journalists to protect sources,” Kearney said. PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher gave Kearney his “sincere apologies”, stating he regarded him as “a thoroughly professional and impressive journalist, whom I have utmost respect for”.Boutcher said he accepted the tribunal’s judgement and said “significant changes to policy and practice” have already been made, adding that the PSNI was “committed to transparency and using the powers available to us in a way that is lawful and in the public interest.” In a statement following the judgment, Kearney said he was “delighted the court has penalised those responsible for breaking the law” and that it had taken the unusual step of awarding damages “reflects the seriousness of the case”.MI5 and the PSNI were each ordered to pay the journalist £10,000. Kearney said this was not the purpose of the case, which was about bringing “the extent of the law-breaking over a period of many years” and its impact on his ability to do his “lawful duties as a journalist” into the public domain. “The judges make clear that the impact of the illegal activities on me, and on the trust that potential sources can place in the confidentiality of their communications with me, was an important factor in their decision to award damages,” Kearney said. “It is important that agencies charged with upholding the law know that they are not above the law and will be held to account.”‘Landmark judgment’The assistant secretary of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), Séamus Dooley, said it was a “landmark judgment” and a “clear and unambiguous vindication of our member Vincent Kearney and the BBC”.He said the case had given a “deeply worrying insight into the actions of the police and security forces against journalists”, and the judgement “reinforces the need for a judge-led inquiry into the unlawful surveillance of journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders by police and security forces”. It was “vital”, he said, that MI5 be scrutinised in any such review.“For far too long, national security has been used as a shield by police and intelligence services - but the IPT findings have revealed an abuse of that cover that can no longer be tolerated,” he said. Kearney – who is northern editor for RTÉ News, but was previously home affairs editor at the BBC in Northern Ireland – and the BBC took a case to the IPT following reports he had been targeted by the police and MI5. The IPT is an independent judicial body that deals with complaints regarding the unlawful use of covert investigative techniques by public authorities. The PSNI, MI5 and Metropolitan Police subsequently admitted they had unlawfully obtained Kearney’s phone data in multiple operations between 2006 and 2018. Intelligence materialEarlier this year, the IPT heard Kearney was wrongly referred to as a “suspect” in a criminal investigation and the PSNI compiled a detailed profile of intelligence material on him and his family – including his date of birth, phone numbers, car registrations, the names of his wife and mother-in-law and his mother-in-law’s address.In 2013, the PSNI obtained and kept information on more than 1,580 calls and texts made and received by Kearney over a two-week period.In written submissions, barrister Jude Bunting - representing Kearney and the BBC, which took the case alongside its former employee - said the disclosed documents revealed they had been subjected “to a long and consistent campaign of unlawful interference with their confidential journalistic material”, adding that it demonstrated “an unhealthy interest in journalists at the heart of the PSNI”.A spokesperson for the BBC said the issues raised by the case were of “grave concern” and had “caused harm to a journalist, jeopardised trust and threatened the safeguards on which public interest journalism depends and has a right to expect.“Today’s findings are welcome, necessary and significant, and we hope that their effect will be to protect journalists and their freedom to report and investigate stories into the future.”Deirdre McCarthy, managing director of RTÉ news and current affairs, said the “scale of the covert surveillance and accessing of journalist Vincent Kearney’s communications data by British security and policing agencies has been deeply concerning”.She said the judgement “highlights the extent of the intrusion and covert gathering of communications data of confidential sources over many years”, adding that this was “of deep concern for us as journalists and media working in the public interest”. “Any deliberate circumventing of long-established legal protections of journalists and their sources damages trust in media and ultimately our democracy,” she said.