THE row about whether, how and when, Police Scotland may have used its counter corruption unit to spy on journalists’ communication with their sources matters to more than journalists.

It matters because some of the most important stories you read are obtained by journalists who gather information regularly from a variety of people with inside knowledge on the basis of strict confidentiality.

It matters because whistleblowers in important areas such as health and crime need and deserve protection. Those who have been identified in the past have faced stiff personal penalties for their honesty and sense of public duty.

But it matters too because we need confidence in our public authorities; that they perform their function for the right reasons and in accordance with the legal requirements.

And of course it matters because, since its inception two years ago, some of the activities of Police Scotland have suggested that it is in danger of becoming a law unto itself.

The genesis of the present unease was the passing of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 15 years ago.

It allowed public authorities to look at communications data – though not its content – to engage in directed surveillance, and to use, where appropriate, undercover officers. Its purpose was to give these authorities new tools to deal with criminal activities including loan sharking, rogue traders and more serious offences.

Unfortunately many authorities took it as a green light to behave like cut price private eyes. One celebrated case in 2008 concerned a mother targeted and monitored by undercover officers to confirm she lived where she said she did and wasn’t trying to get her kids into the local school by deception.

The language used in that illegal surveillance by council officers in Poole sounded as if they were hot on the trail of SMERSH operatives.

A subsequent report by Big Brother Watch uncovered widespread use and misuse of RIPA by public authorities, and, just as worryingly, a refusal by many of them – including major institutions like the BBC, Ofsted, and the Office of Fair Trading to disclose how and why they’d used RIPA.

Three years ago, in an attempt to stem this wholesale invasion of civil liberties, the Protection of Freedom Act was passed which required councils to seek judicial approval before they saddled up posses of council detectives – until March of this year police forces needed only the permission of their chief constable. The new guidelines from The Interception of Communications Commissioner Office (IOCCO) brought the police into line with other agencies.

Which brings us to the current stushie, the IOCCO having confirmed that two have breached those rules and that neither the Scottish Government nor Police Scotland will confirm that the latter is one of them. Both have hidden behind the useful all-purpose alibi of not commenting while an investigation is in progress.

This, to use a technical term, is self serving hogwash. It’s absolutely right that no conclusions should be jumped to while that investigation is proceeding and until after its findings are published. But equally we are entitled to know if Police Scotland features in that investigation.

As it happens, I served as a lay member on the committee which examined the case for retaining eight Scottish police forces or creating a single force. And I can still see the merit of a single force in as much as there was a huge amount of indefensible and expensive duplication, and defensiveness around patch protection which militated against good policing.

To give one telling example, we have seen in cases such as the Soham murders in England the damage to investigations which arise when separate forces have different computer systems.

Nevertheless, the creation of a single force carries within it the danger of too much power being invested in the office of a single chief constable. The public deployment of armed officers without proper consultation smacked at best of a lack of transparency and at worst of raw arrogance. The overuse of stop and search, not least with children, hardly helped police public relations.

And the man at the top should have been at the forefront of calls for answers as to why and how Sheku Bayoh died in police custody rather than allowing a shameful time lapse before officers gave evidence.

All of which has been exacerbated by the performance of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) which seems from the start to have had a challenging relationship with the body it is charged with overseeing.

One of its principal roles is “to hold the chief constable to account for all functions including operational policing”.

Whatever is happening backstage there has been little visible holding to account, fuelling the suspicion that the SPA has been consistently under-informed and outflanked by Police Scotland.

Its chair, Vic Emery, will stand down in September. Chief constable Stephen House has indicated he will go next year. A completely new duo will be in place within 15 months. Nobody should underestimate the scale of the task the present incumbents took on – a massive re-organisation and merging of bodies not all of whom were persuaded this was a brave new world.

Nevertheless one force or eight the basics remain the same: transparency, accountability, and no assumption that the police can be above the law.