Tech Giants Deny Granting NSA 'Direct Access' To Servers
Tech companies that cooperated with government intelligence-gathering efforts by allowing access to their databases say they did so only reluctantly and that it never involved 'direct access' to servers, according to The New York Times.
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, Apple and Paltalk all negotiated with the government under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide the National Security Agency with user data as part of a program code-named PRISM, the Times reports, quoting people familiar with the discussions. Google owns Youtube, while Microsoft owns Hotmail and Skype.
Each of the nine companies named in media reports of PRISM, which first appeared in The Guardian and The Washington Post, have denied turning over direct access to their servers.
Instead, the NYT says:
"In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said."