BBC reporter accuses Police Scotland of spying on him
An investigative reporter for the BBC has claimed he has reason to believe he may be one of the journalists illegally monitored by Police Scotland.
Eamon O Connor made the claims days after Police Scotland’s Counter Corruption Unit (CCU) was outed as one of two UK law enforcement bodies accessing the emails, text or phone records of journalists without judicial approval.
O Connor told BBC Scotland that he was informed by “a very dependable source” that his comms were being monitored by CCU.
He said: “Recently I was contacted by a very dependable source who knows Police Scotland very well and he warned me that he had been told explicitly that the Counter Corruption Unit, which is designed to catch police doing things they shouldn't do, has been monitoring journalists' communications with police sources for some time.
"He believed that I had been one of those people targeted and more significantly he thought I had been targeted without judicial approval.
"I can only assume that (my BBC investigation) has caused some concern inside Police Scotland. I know that it has because I've had contact from senior sources inside Police Scotland, but I don't know if anyone inside Police Scotland has been so concerned that they've decided to monitor my communications to see who I've been speaking to."
He said in particular he felt he was targeted due to him investigating the murder of 27-year-old Glaswegian Emma Caldwell which is to this day unsolved.