The Scottish FA say referee "John Beaton and his family spent last night at home under police surveillance following a leak of personal details online" and have urged "tolerance and perspective to prevent any further, unthinkable escalation". Beaton has faced criticism following the award of a late penalty, which was converted, in Celtic's 3-2 Wednesday win at Motherwell. The incident at Fir Park, which involved VAR, was the latest in a series of controversies involving decisions by referees as the Scottish Premiership title race reaches its conclusion.
The PSNI made 21 applications for communications data to identify journalists' sources without recognising the "overriding public interest" in protecting their confidentiality. The police force maintained a secret register containing the phone numbers of over 1,000 journalists and others, as part of a "defensive operation" to identify PSNI staff who had spoken to journalists. There were concerns about a PSNI operation to monitor the social media posts of investigative journalist Donal MacIntyre.
"Our passports have been secretly turned into mugshots. The government has taken all of our passport photos and secretly turned them into mugshots to build a giant, Orwellian police database."
