An independent review of covert police surveillance of journalists and lawyers in Northern Ireland is to be published later. Last year, an internal report by the PSNI disclosed that officers had made 323 applications for communications data relating to journalists since 2011. The PSNI insisted the vast majority of applications were related to journalists who were victims, suspects or witnesses to crime. In 2019, Mr Birney and Mr McCaffrey lodged a complaint with the IPT asking it to establish whether there had been unlawful surveillance of them. Mr Kearney brought legal action after reports that documents in the case of Mr McCaffrey and Mr Birney had suggested that public bodies, including police forces, had spied on him.