Leaked Edward Snowden documents reveal eavesdropping by British intelligence agency GCHQ

Newly released NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden have showed that Britain-based GCHQ was eavesdropping on the internal communications of some of the most prestigious media houses of the world including, BBC, Reuters, The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Sun, NBC, and The Washington Post.

A report in The Guardian described a 'test exercise' that resulted in emails from these journalistic institutions to be deposited into GCHQ's internal intranet, which was available to anyone who logged into the system, reported The Verge. 

Although the exercise did not appear to be aimed at intelligence gathering and the resulting emails did not target any sensitive stories, but it could still represent a major violation of privacy and a reminder of how easily bulk collection systems can be abused.

The test was meant to demonstrate a new filtering tool that would remove all irrelevant data from final results. Researchers pulled 70,000 emails directly from GCHQ's cable-tapping sites in 10 minutes. Then, they ran the filter to see which messages would be generated as potentially valuable intelligence and journalistic communications topped the list. However, there was no evidence to suggest that the journalists were intentionally targeted.

The news comes at a time when Prime Minister David Cameron is pushing for new internet surveillance laws that could ban encrypted chat or email clients in the UK.