PRISM, secret US government spying program, mines data from Google, Facebook and others

A career intelligence officer has provided PowerPoint slides and other materials to the Washington Post that reveal that the US National Security Agency and the FBI have been tapping directly into the servers of nine US Internet companies through a clandestine government program called PRISM. The program was launched in 2007.

The nine companies – Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple – allow analysts free reign to extract audio, video, photographs, emails, Skype chats, documents and connection logs from their servers, according to the Washington Post.

Several of the companies told the Guardian, however, that they had never heard of PRISM and had not granted the government secret access to their servers.

"Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data," the search company said in a statement. "We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."

Facebook, Yahoo and Apple have made similar denials.

Read more: PRISM, secret US government spying program, mines data from Google, Facebook and others: report | GlobalPost