Prominent US Muslims were targeted by the NSA’s Prism surveillance programme.
According to leaked data by Edward Snowden, and reported by Computer Weekly, while none of the five had been charged in the six years since the period covered by the Snowden document, they were targeted for domestic surveillance despite posing no threat to the US, suggesting the surveillance may have been carried out illegally.
The report said that it was unclear under what legal authority the monitoring was conducted, as the justifications for carrying out the surveillance remain classified.
Speaking to Wired, reporter Glenn Greenwald said that this was the first time there was a “human face on who the targets of [the US Government’s] most intrusive type of surveillance.”
