NSA spied on Al Jazeera: Report

Documents leaked by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden show that the US spy agency hacked into Al Jazeera's internal communications, German magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday.

One of the documents, reportedly seen by Der Spiegel and dating back to March 23, 2006, claims the NSA managed to access and read communications sent to the news organization by "interesting targets." The German magazine did not specify what those targets were.

This latest revelation, revealling that NSA’s scope of spy programs extended to monitoring Al Jazeera, comes two days after the Washington Post published Snowden’s leak of the U.S. “black budget” for intelligence agencies. That reports claimed that despite massive spending and a broad network of surveillance and international espionage facilities, the US still had 'blind spots' where key national security questions continued to elude the intelligence community.

Another report by Der Spiegel last week claimed that leaked documents show that NSA hacked United Nations video calls. The magazine said the European Union and the U.N.'s Vienna-based nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), were also among those targeted by U.S. intelligence agents.

Snowden, 30, is currently residing in Russia on a temporary asylum visa after leaking several top-secret documents revealing the agency’s massive spy program on U.S. citizens and internationals through phone calls and internet activities.  

Al Jazeera