WHAT PRIVACY?

Report: NSA, FBI Tapped 9 Internet Companies

Data collected from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and more.

It's all coming out now. The Washington Post reports that the National Security Agency and the FBI have been tapping into the central servers of nine top U.S. Internet companies in a highly classified program code-named PRISM that began in 2007. The tap allegedly collects audio, video, photos, emails, documents, and connection logs that let analysts follow a user's movements and contacts from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. Senior officials from the aforementioned Internet companies told the Guardian that they did not offer direct access to servers and that if data collection was taking place, it was without their knowledge. James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, also issued a statement on his website saying that the reports "contain numerous inaccuracies" and that the collection of communications "cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States."