Beyond the five prominent, public men listed, 7,485 email addresses are identified as under surveillance between 2002 and 2008; 202 of those addresses are tied to "U.S. persons," while 1,782 are tied to "non-U.S. persons." Another 5,501 don't contain identifying information. Other standouts on the US side include Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, two men accused of terrorist activity (both were killed in a US drone strike in 2011).

The scope of the US government's surveillance efforts was widely revealed last summer when former-NSA contractor Edward Snowden began leaking classified documents to reporters at The Guardian. The documents detailed a variety of programs, including PRISM -- which allows the mass collection of data on US citizens -- and MYSTIC -- which allows data to be retrieved from the past.

This morning's news is especially interesting as it's the first we're hearing of US surveillance efforts specifically targeting prominent religious and ethnic leaders. At least in recent years: the US government, through a program named "COINTELPRO," specifically targeted US political groups (like the Black Panthers and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in the mid-20th century. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 -- the law at the heart of the FISA court which approved the surveillance of five Muslim-Americans -- is intended to curtail such surveillance overreaches.