Spiegel: NSA Hacked Al Jazeera For Sources

How rare... the NSA spying on someone other than Americans at home! Still, via DSWright at FDL, we find that Spiegel Online International discovered among documents released by Edward Snowden a March 23, 2006 document showing that "the NSA's Network Analysis Center managed to access and read communication by "interesting targets" that was specially protected by [Al Jazeera]."

One could argue endlessly over whether this was legitimately the NSA's job. One could so argue because nobody outside the NSA and probably a few members of Congress and the president is permitted to know what is legitimately the NSA's job. This was not so much a problem until the entire federal government became a patchwork of three-letter agencies whose internal workings were, as far as the public is concerned, completely secret. Then it became a real problem: when those three-letter agencies govern the US to a point where it doesn't really matter who the American public elects to Congress or to the White House, our government is effectively totalitarian, no matter what noises are made about "freedom 'n' democracy." Have a nice day!