“Police told Broomfield they were engaged in “a mopping up operation”. They seized his phone and laptop and have since refused to return them.”
Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act lets UK police hold anyone at an airport for up to six hours with no arrest and no suspicion required. They used it to ask a journalist whether he considers his reporting objective, then kept his devices. No charges followed. 2,498 people were stopped this way in a year, including a former Haringey mayor stopped every trip since 2012. A terrorism power that ends with a confiscated laptop and no case is a search of a reporter’s sources with extra steps.