According to new leak from Edward Snowden’s trove of documents, the NSA spied on at least one media outlet. Der Spiegel reports that documents show the spy agency accessed “internal communication” from Al Jazeera. The extent of the spying isn’t clear, but it’s said that the agency was able to successfully access communication from “interesting targets.” Those targets were likely sources who provided information to Al Jazeera — the Qatar-owned network has broadcast messages from Al-Qaeda for over a decade.
NSA spied on Al Jazeera’s ‘internal communication system,’ according to new leak
One of the documents obtained by Der Spiegel from Snowden, dated March 23rd, 2006, says that the spying efforts were a “notable success,” but the leak doesn’t detail whether the NSA was able to obtain information on Al Jazeera’s sources. It’s also unknown whether employees, journalists, or managers at the news network were spied on. The news comes after officials from British intelligence agency GCHQ raided The Guardian’s offices to destroy hard drives thought to contain data from Snowden.
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