NSA surveillance revealed abandoned al-Qaeda's NY stock exchange bombing plot

The US-led surveillance programme which has created a lot of furor for snooping on citizens' web activities and phone records has revealed information about al-Qaeda's plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange(NYSE) in 2008.

FBI Assistant Director Sean Joyce said that the agency found out through the electronic surveillance that al-Qaeda was actually in the initial stage of bombing the NYSE which is just half a mile away from the 9/11 terror strike site World Trade Centre, ABC News reports.

According to the report, the surveillance agencies including the NSA have been defending the alleged 'snooping' programme carried out on the US citizens' tracking their web activities and phone records.

The US officials have claimed that the surveillance programme has helped the security officials to stop more than 50 terrorist plots over 20 countries.

The NYSE plot disclosure centers around an auto parts dealer in Kansas city named Khalid Ouazzani who pleaded guilty in 2010 for his role in a conspiracy to provide funding to al-Qaeda.

Ouzzani had helped uncover the abandoned plan by becoming a cooperating witness about talks with extremists regarding bombing the symbolic heart of America's capitalist system.

The report further said that any attack on the NYSE would not have impacted the market as majority of the trading is now done online and the market networks have been relocated to off site locations in the wake of the 2011 attacks.