NSA Claims U.S. Tech Firms Knew All About PRISM Data Surveillance

Contradicting earlier tech-company denials, the NSA’s top lawyer told a privacy committee on Wednesday that companies such as Google, Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook knew all about the NSA surveillance program PRISM, the Guardian reported. That effort extracted user data such as photos, emails and documents stored in the cloud by big Internet services, allowing NSA analysts to track users communications.

Since the release of documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, tech companies denied involvement in any government data collection operation, and have fought for increased transparency regarding requests for data and increased security measures.

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