NSA PRISM Leaks: New Documents Show NSA Spied on Al Jazeera's Internal Communications

The NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden seem to be endless. A new report from Der Spiegel shows that the National Security Agency spied on the internal communications of Arab news broadcaster Al Jazeera.

NSA documents dating as far back as 2006 show that the U.S. intelligence agency was able to hack into the news organization's internal communications with "notable success." The NSA's Network Analysis Center was able to access and read communications that were "specially protected" by Al Jazeera, looking to analyze transmissions by "interesting targets," which were selected for having a "high potential as sources of intelligence," according to Der Spiegel's reading of leaked NSA documents.

There was no further information in the specific internal NSA documents - dated March 23, 2006 - about whether the NSA possibly spied on journalists or publishers, or if the surveillance is still happening.

So far, NSA leaks have not indicated the agency spies on journalistic organizations, though recently the partner of Glenn Greenwald - the top journalist exposing Snowden's NSA leaks - was stopped in the U.K. and questioned by British security officials for up to the nine-hour legal limit about the NSA leaks under Britain's 2007 anti-terrorism law.

Al Jazeera isn't exactly the most surprising target for the NSA's all-seeing eye. The Arab news organization, based in Qatar, was known for broadcasting audio and video messages from al-Qaida during the height of the "War on Terror."

Recently the news broadcasting organization, which has been listed as one of the top five most influential global brands by Brandchannel (behind Apple, Google, Ikea and Starbucks) has been making inroads into U.S. television. Early this year, the Al Jazeera Media Network purchased Current TV, which has distribution across cable and satellite television networks, in a bid to open an English-language version of their news channel on American television. The channel also plans to launch a Spanish-language news network catering to Latin America.