A REPORT has revealed that a North-East police force used anti-terror legislation in an attempt to trace a journalist’s source.

Cleveland Police is the fifth UK police force believed to have obtained telecoms data as part of a search for a media source.

The admission comes in a document which was "erroneously" released to Press Gazette in a Freedom of Information Act disclosure.

The Metropolitan Police as well as the Essex, Suffolk and Thames Valley forces have previously admitted to using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to spy on journalists who were not found to have broken the law.

The force is among those to have rejected a FOI application to discover how many times the RIPA legislation had been used but refused citing the interests of national security.

After these revelations the Interception of Communications Commissioner Office (IOCCO) - which oversees the use of RIPA - began an inquiry into police use of the act against journalists.

And as a result a further FOI request was submitted requesting the correspondence between forces and the IOCCO, which was when Cleveland sent out an email to the Press Gazette in error and demanded that it be deleted.

A request which the publication refused.

An internal Cleveland Police email discussing the request said: "As far as I can recall the Integrity Unit has applied for data relevant to this request on one occasion (one investigation)."

Sultan Alam, a former Cleveland traffic officer who was awarded £800,000 compensation by the force after being wrongfully jailed over a malicious prosecution brought by colleagues in 1996, has slammed the force for hiding behind legislation.

He said: “This goes against their claims that they want to work in an open and transparent way – how can they be when they are hiding behind terrorist legislation?

“The relationship between a journalist and a source should be sacrosanct but they are trying to undermine that and use intimidatory tactics to stop people speaking out.

“Instead of wasting time and money trying to find a journalist’s source, why don’t they just address the problem instead.”

Last night a Cleveland Police spokeswoman said: “We are not in a position to comment at this time.”