British police claim a criminal investigation they launched into journalists who have reported on leaked documents from Edward Snowden has to be kept a secret due to a possibility of increased threat of terrorist activity. Following Snowden's disclosures from the National Security Agency in 2013, London s Metropolitan Police and a lawyer for the United Kingdom government separately confirmed a criminal probe had been opened into the leaks.

Sarah Harrison, an editor at WikiLeaks who has also worked with NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, won t return to her home country of England because she fears prosecution under terrorism laws for seeking to influence her government. Harrison s fear comes straight out of the language of the U.K. Terrorism Act of 2000. Writing in The Guardian, Harrison reports the act defines terrorism as the use or threat of action [...] designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or which is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause or is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system. Elsewhere the act defines government as the government of any country, including the United States.