It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.ĭisclosure of the Prism program follows a leak to the Guardian on Wednesday of a top-secret court order compelling telecoms provider Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of US customers. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US. The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012. 'If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge,' one said.Īn Apple spokesman said it had 'never heard' of Prism. They said they would never have been involved in such a program. Several senior tech executives insisted that they had no knowledge of Prism or of any similar scheme. 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.' We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. In a statement, Google said: 'Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. The document claims 'collection directly from the servers' of major US service providers.Īlthough the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program. The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program.

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