On June 6, 2013, the Washington Post reported:
U.S. intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program
The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photograph...
The world’s largest internet companies, accused of collaborating with the US National Security Agency over the "PRISM" data-gathering operation, issued the following statements to the media:
APPLE:
We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, And any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.
GOOGLE:
Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. 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:
We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, And provide information only to the extent required by law.
MICROSOFT:
We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers.
If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don’t participate in it.
YAHOO:
Yahoo! takes users' privacy very seriously.
We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network.
AOL:
We do not have any knowledge of the Prism program. We do not disclose user information to government agencies without a court order, subpoena or formal legal process, nor do we provide any government agency with access to our servers.
Dropbox:
We've seen reports that Dropbox might be asked to participate in a government program called PRISM. We are not part of any such program and remain committed to protecting our users' privacy.
PalTalk
We have not heard of PRISM. Paltalk exercises extreme care to protect and secure users' data, only responding to court orders as required to by law. Paltalk does not provide any government agency with direct access to its servers.
Twitter:
Not named in the NSA presentation as being a part of PRISM
Tech Company Denials About PRISM was produced by Tim Bradshaw.