PSNI continually viewmobile and internetchatter 100% legally

The Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) west of Cheltenham. A Westminster Committee says it acted legally in its use of the US Prism programme.

In May 2012, this paper reported how the PSNI spent £1m accessing people’s mobile phone data between 2006/7 and 2010/11. The money was paid out to mobile phone companies for access to data under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

The paper also informed its readers the PSNI had applied for permission to intercept people’s telephone calls, emails or letters and acquire their telephone billing or subscriber details on 13,848 occasions between April 2009 and May 2012.

All of this surveillance was perfectly legal. Yet the Sentinel also reported in November 2011 how illegal bugging may have been sanctioned by the Government for over two years contrary to a Northern Ireland High Court ruling.

A ‘Freedom from Suspicion: Surveillance Reform for a Digital Age’ report suggested Government may have allowed police and prison governors to authorise covert surveillance of private consultations between solicitors and clients.

This would have been in breach of a Northern Ireland High Court ruling on an appeal brought in the aftermath of the PSNI’s secret taping of rogue Londonderry solicitor Johnny Sandhu.

Manmohan ‘Johnny’ Sandhu was secretly bugged inciting loyalist paramilitaries to murder and was later jailed for 10 years in 2009. Mr Sandhu’s case prompted an application for Judicial Review in November 2007, on behalf of two prisoners taken to Antrim Police Station on April 19, 2006 for questioning on suspicion of terrorism offences.

Controversy, recently erupted over interception of phone and internet communications after former CIA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the US National Security Agency (NSA) was monitoring European citizens via a programme called Prism.

Now Westminster’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has cleared GCHQ of acting illegally in using the Prism programme. The Committee’s chairman Malcom Rifkind said the authorities “can only operate under acts of parliament.” But the ISC is now to launch a wider inquiry into the matter.